Refinishing and Maintaining a Slate Tile Floor - Without getting a Divorce

When we bought the house, my husband and I were enamored with the beautiful tile floor. 2000 sqft of gorgeous wall to wall slate tile from one end of the little ranch to another. Jackpot! we thought. No carpet to vacuum or shampoo. Bonus for my allergies. And just imagine how easy it will be to maintain when we have kids! Sweep it up and you're done! Little did we know that 6 years and 2 kids down the road, that beautiful tile floor would have become the bane of my existence... or that we were about to embark on a home project that could bring us to the brink of divorce.

A few things you should know about slate tile. It is not, hard, durable and impervious to destruction. Slate is, in fact, extremely porous. It is not wash and go, low maintenance flooring. It requires love and attention and a fair amount of upkeep. That being said, it is beautiful, versatile in terms of interior decor, and excellent for sock skating. And, with a little know-how, it can remain so for years to come.

The previous owners of our house, either did not keep up with floor maintenance, or did a shoddy job of refinishing to make the floor all "purtied-up" for potential buyers. It looked great at first glance, but upon closer inspection, we realized they had polished dirt right onto the baseboards and gotten cat hair stuck in the floor. They used a standard floor polish, of which they left a few bottles ostensibly for our use. Upon reading the directions, I was horrified to find that the polish needed to be completely stripped using ammonia and re-done every 3 to 6 months. I did so diligently in the main traffic areas of the house for the first year. Then, I had my son, and I got bored with the floor and overwhelmed with the task of mommy-hood. I decided that the stripping and polishing could wait... what difference would it make, thought I? (more on what a HUGE difference it would make later.) I still swept and mopped, the floor was clean. That was all I could handle. I spent large chunks of my daydreaming time thinking of plush luxurious carpet and large chunks of my spending money on various gadgets and gizmos claiming to make floor cleaning a snap. And yet, the floor kept looking dirtier and dirtier, and getting harder and harder to clean.

Skip forward 3 years to son number 2... He's a food flinger. You moms know what I mean. Each delectable dish must be investigated, dumped and dropped; wreaking havoc on my already belabored floors. I now steam clean the floor with a floor sanitizer (I highly recommend the HAAN steam products. They allow you to clean, disinfect and sanitize almost your whole house without a single chemical product... just clean water) and scrub the most soiled areas with a scrub brush attachment on a hand held steamer. The floor steamer was getting harder and harder to push and "sticking" and the tile was picking up more and more grub. No matter what I did, my floors still looked dirty. So, I started to research. I learned a lot about floors, even more about slate, and figured out what our next home project had to be.

Many websites offer a step by step plan on how to strip and refinish any floor. What I hope to accomplish here is to add a few additional steps for those of us without unlimited time and money, and with marriages we'd like to keep intact.

First, approach your significant other with a plan. This is not the kind of job to do alone. You will need to move furniture, occupy children and work with potentially dangerous chemicals. Unless you are still living in a tiny aparment with inflatable furniture and no kids... you'll need some help. Set aside a few days for the project, considering how large an area you need to work with and what stage of marriage you are in. (If you are in the honeymoon phase... tack on a few days. C'mon, we all know how easily distracted you newlyweds are.) For our great room (living room and kitchen combined) we set aside 3 days. One for stripping and two for sealing.

Note: Keep in mind that after stripping, the floor will need to dry for 24 hours before sealing so that you don't seal any moisture into the floor. Many new topical sealers are "breathable" but only for normal moisture levels, not a freshly soaked floor. Also keep in mind that you will not be able to walk on the newly sealed floor for up to several hours and will not be able to place furniture there for up to 1/2 a day. You will need to figure this all into your schedule.

To strip the old polish, you will need:

1) a chemical floor polish stripper

2) scrub brushes (or, if you choose to spend the money and save the back, an electrical floor buffer with the appropriate black stripping pad)

3) Buckets for mixing stripper.

4) Buckets for clean cool water.

5) A mop for sopping up the stripper/polish slurry, or a wetvac w/ squeegee attachment.

6) Another mop for rinsing. 2 if you and your significant other are not good at sharing.

7) Goggles, facemask, gloves, kneepads or any other safety gear you feel is appropriate, or that your bottle tells you to purchase.

Step 1: READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS AND FOLLOW PRECAUTIONS AS LISTED ON YOUR CHOSEN PRODUCT.

Step 2: MAKE YOUR SPOUSE DO THE SAME, AND NOT IN THAT "YEAH, YEAH I'M SURE ITS FINE HONEY" WAY HE USUALLY DOES.

Step 3: Apply the stripper liberally to a workable area (you must be able to scrub and remove the "slurry" of stripper and polish before the stripper dries. If it dries, you have effectively put the polish back down on your floor and need to start over.) Let it set for the recommended time (usually about 10 minutes). Scrub vigorously, or use the floor buffer with stripper pad. Be sure to get in corners and tight spaces with a hand brush.

Step 4: Clean up the sloppy mess on your floor. (You can apply the stripper to your next floor section while doing this so that it has time to soak in while you are working.)

Step 5: Rinse the floor once or twice with clean, cool water and a fresh mop.

Step 6: Patiently watch your spouse stretch and proclaim "my back" while you continue cleaning. Do not suggest that they return to work, this is only the first section of floor. You still need them.

Step 7: Apply stripper to next section of floor and repeat.

Step 8: Allow to dry fully. 24 hours is recommended.

Step 9: Order pizza. Your work is done for 24 hours. (Hey! Are the kids still at the babysitter you so cleverly arranged so you could get your work done? In that case, make it pizza and a beer, and why don't you rent a movie starring real people instead of cartoons while your at it?)

Tip: One of the 3 strippers we tried (um, yes, we ran into some issues) suggested that we "flood mop" the floor before the final rinse. In this process, after you soak up the "slurry", you fully re-wet your section with clean water and soak it up again. Then, you rinse with cool water and your mop. We found this to be extremely helpful. It left way fewer lines of polish from the slurry.

Now comes the easy part... The re-sealing. One your floor is completely dry, it is time to put that permanent seal on top. Its tempting to speed through this process. Don't. You've put all the time and effort into the painful stripping; this is where it gets worthwhile. At this point, your floor will start to look better instead of worse.

Step 1: Read all instructions. (And, again, make your spouse do the same. If YOU tell him he can't leave puddles, it will cause an argument. If the BOTTLE tells him, it must be true.)

Step 2: Plan where you will begin and where you will end. Be sure everything you need for the next few hours is at your ending point, and that there is a door there. There is a waiting period before you can walk on the floor/apply a second coat. You will be much happier if you spend this waiting time near the couch and the tv instead of in a corner. Depending on how things are going so far, decide if you want to wind up in the same small area as your spouse, or separate rooms.

Step 3: Apply the sealer to the floor. (Our instructions said to use a painter's sponge, we used mops and it worked just fine and saved our backs.)

Step 4: If you want to apply a second coat, wait the allotted amount of time and do so.

The steps above are simple enough, but nothing ever goes as planned. In our house, Murphy's is the only law. If you'd like to learn from my mistakes, rather than your own, read on.

Plan how much time you think you will need for your project. Add 2 days. This is how much time you will actually need. I planned 1 day for stripping, and assumed we would be done by 3pm. Then we would wait till 3pm the next day and seal 1/2 the house, picking the kids up at daycare by 6pm. The next morning, we would drop them off, seal the rest of the house and have a blissful evening to ourselves for dinner and a movie. The reality? Stripping became a nightmare. We spent 2 full days doing it, finishing at 2:30am on day 2. Meaning we couldn't start sealing until 2:30am on our final project day. (I, by the way, had to be at work by 6:30am the following day.)

If you can, find out what is actually on your floor by any means necessary. If I ever move, and that won't be anytime soon considering how much time I just put into re-doing my floor, I will ask the owner exactly what was used to treat any flooring. We assumed that the only thing on the floor was the polish the previous owner had told us to use. The reality? We think they originally sealed the floor and then polished on top of it. This means that after 2 days, 3 chemical strippers, a steamer, a brass brush, a professional buffing machine with stripper pad, and various attempts at scrubbing, we still had patches of some sort of sealer or polish on our floor. Stuck at a point of no return, we decided to attempt to seal over them and hope for the best. (So far, this seems to have worked out o.k., but, if it holds, we're very lucky. If it doesn't, we'll be buying some new area rugs.)

Find a good janitorial supply place and make friends with a manager.I started my purchasing journey at Lowe's and Home Depot. This was fine for most of our supplies, but they didn't have the pads we needed for the buffer. The reality? Once we went to a janitorial supply place to get the pads, we found the manager there to be a very valuable resource. He advised us that the "industrial strength" stripper at the hardware store, was no where near as strong as the one on his shelf. He also suggested we buy an extra stripper pad and alternate them, rinsing in between. Getting the bristles unclogged in this manner and using a stonger stripper really helped.

Splurge a little.Unless money is really tight... and I mean really tight. Get yourself a wet vac and a rent a floor buffer. I originally thought we would scrub the floor with bristle brushes by hand and soak up the "slurry" left after stripping w/ rags and a mop. The reality? My brilliant husband was amazing enough to insist that we borrow a buffing machine instead. I broke down and bought the $10 squeegee attachment for our wet vac. I'm fairly certain that our sanity would not have survived this process without those 2 items. (The hand scrubbing might be alright if you are only doing a small area. We were attempting about 1000 sqft.)

Take the time to make your sealer application very even. Toss down the polish with a sponge! Easy, right? The reality? Applying that second coat is a lot like painting (or putting on nail polish). There's a fine line between too much and too little, and the resultant streaks show up in the final product. Take your time (but not so much time the sealer gets tacky while you work with it), and, if you have to break the project in two, choose a stopping point that makes sense. We had to leave out one small section of the room where we had moved all of our big furniture pieces. The overlap line between day 1's polish and day 2's polish is obvious. Luckily, it lines up with where our couch goes, but it would have been better if we'd been careful to polish up to a specific grout line so we had a starting point for day 2.

Collect your resources.I did my research ahead. I spent weeks online reading forums and talking to co-workers. I thought I knew every detail. The reality? Questions came up. We were uncertain of how the tile should look when we were done stripping. We needed to know if we could seal after 20 hours instead of the recommended 24, etc. This is one area we did right. I chose a sealer (Aquamix) that had a fantastic technical support line. (Thank you Barbara!) The 800 number was right on the bottle, and they actually had answers. I also made use of the knowledge of the janitorial supply manager mentioned above. When all else failed, and I needed advice, I even called a few local flooring contractors and picked their brains. If you are polite and gracious (and mindful that their time is money), I find most people who have some level of expertise will be willing to share it with you.

At the end of the day (actually 4 days) my husband and I finished the biggest diy project we have yet attempted.  It was exhausting and frustrating, like most major home projects.  But, last night I spilled some water on the floor, and it beaded up instead of soaking in! I nearly did a jig.  And, this morning when I got up, I was greeted by a shining, clean and "un-foodified" floor.  Hopefully, the floor will continue to look as good as it does today, and the time I save in maintenance going forward will more than make up for the 4 crazy days I spent cleaning, sealing and stripping.

Oh, and in case you were wondering... I'm still married.