Natural stone counter cleaning, polishing, sealing

Prestige Floor and Carpet Care at 602.620.7881 can polish your marble, travertine, and limestone counter tops to your desired look. 

What look do you want?

New marble stone is mostly a high gloss.  A new customer had white polished marble installed and she wanted it to have no shine at all, so we honed it and applied a enrich and seal penetrating sealer made for all natural stone and maintenance.

Travertine and Limestone usually have a matte finish.  However there is high quality travertine that is high polished from the manufacturer.  Customers choose what shine they are wanting on their travertine and limestone. Sometimes people use the phrases marble cleaning and marble polishing interchangeably. Prestige Floor and Carpet Care has run across a number of people who believe that the dull look on the marble counter top or travertine can be removed by cleaning. Often, cleaning the floor using our pressurized cleaning process that makes the counter look significantly better.  However, if the counter is dull, more than likely you will need a marble polishing process described on this page.

Your Marble or Travertine counter: It Does not Last Forever?

You put a tremendous amount of time in contemplation and finally you made the decision to go natural. Maybe it was the touch, the look or how it made you feel. Once installed, your marble countertop looked wonderful; lustrous shine, depth of reflection and smooth to the touch and so pristine. Life was good. And then it began. Worn patterns, stains and scratches emerged.  And what was once a focal point of the home, has now become an eye sore.

Your Marble counter tops looks dull. How Did This Happen?

Often when people think about marble or travertine stone they assume that no care or maintenance is required. Marble floors or marble countertops are ignored or the stone is cleaned with the wrong method or chemical. Because of misinformation or no education, the consumer is not in a good position to maintain their new stone; consequently, damage to the stones crystals sets in. The damaged crystals prevent light from being reflected evenly thereby giving you a dull look. Let’s go into this with a little more detail.

Reflectivity of Marble or Travertine Stone:

Marble or travertine stone contains natural crystals. These crystals reflect light to provide a shine on the surface. When these crystals turn dull, crushed or broken, they cannot reflect light evenly. For example, when the lens of a flashlight breaks, it cannot reflect the light that is being emitted from the bulb.

Polished marble stone counter tops become dull over time due to acidic food and liquids that erode the crystals. Normal footwear does not cause the main damage, sediment and grit do. The sediment and grit that finds its way inside from outside, is often harder than your stone. This becomes the main enemy of stone crystal. The damage to the crystals occurs when the pressure from the shoe forces the sediment to abrade or fracture the crystals.

Other issues that negatively affect the stone are etching from acidic substances such as food, alcohols, perfumes and certain cleaning materials. If the counter top is not properly sealed, it can easily stain from spills or accidents.