DIY Woodworking, Home Improvement, and Art Projects

This is a third post in the “cleaning the slate before we seal it” odyssey. Hopefully someone will find this to be useful information, because as I said before, there isn’t a whole lot of reliable, up-to-date information on this step of the process out there. That being said, I am happy to be the guinea pig here.

So we got the TileLab grout and tile cleaner product. Well as you may, or may not, know, slate tile is very, very porous. If you just spray this cleaner onto said tile, it will just soak it right up. You can’t even get the rag or sponge onto it quick enough before it just finds every last hole and pore to sneak into. Here’s my idea…and it is untested at this point.

Wash all of the tiles with a very mild soap and warm water, probably with the same type of sponge we’ll be using to clean off the excess grout. Something like this for example…

Tile grout sponge

Then after the tiles have been thoroughly cleansed with the mildly soapy water, then rinsed with clean water, we’ll wait for them to dry.  Just for clarification, this step is going to happen at least four or five days after we laid all of the tiles and the adhesive has totally set.  Then when the tiles are free of most of the visible dust, mud, etc., we’ll spray a bunch of the TileLab cleaner onto a sponge, and go in there to scrub the tiles down.  Hopefully this will get any remaining gunk that the soap and water didn’t get to.

Probably going to test this theory over the weekend, so I’ll get back to the blog next week with a full report.  Until then, enjoy your weekend, and if you’re in the Northen half of the country, try to stay warm!

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