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damp, black & white tiled floor


Isobel
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Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make a black & white tiled floor look a bit more respectable? They are obviously laid direct on the earth but we like them so want to leave them in place. When they are wet they look fine, but when dry, the black ones look salty and the white ones show damp stains. Does anyone know of a product to paint on to give a permanent wet look? Eventually we may dig them up, but for now just want a way to make them look better. Thanks for any suggestions.

Iz
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Try washing with vinegar-in-hot-water, which may or may not remove the mineral stains.  Will not harm them anyway.  Then try rubbing in a 50/50 mix of turpentine and linseed oil, which should lubricate and clean the tiles and take away the raw look.  If all this fails to give the effect you want, try something like "Klir" or Luberon "lait de tomettes" both of which give a sort of shiny varnished effect - try on a non-obvious tile first and see how you feel - they are devils to remove after a couple of years topping-up.....

Good luck

Chrissie (81) 

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Hi,

We had a similar floor in the house we rented when we first came to France and, like you, I thought it would look so much better with a wet look so we applied "Klir". Big mistake! The Klir collected in all the uneven spots on each tile & looked completely disgusting after 2 days. It took us many, many more days to get the darned stuff off again!

Having lived with that type of floor for over three months I finally accepted that it was never going to look great (unless you count the 1/2 hour straight after mopping) and I just settled for living with the knowledge that it was actually clean even though it rarely looked like it!

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sorry cat run over keyboard yesterday cut me off before had time to finnish.

rough floors can be made to look a lot better just by re-grouting you would be surprised at the difference it makes .

best bet is remove grout clean tiles apply one coat of finnish, regrout and then when dry apply second coat.

just used this web site as example because liberon is available in france http://www.axminster.co.uk/category.asp?cat_id=206901

      but they say they will deliver to france ,but as yet untried but hope they do we are out there in a few weeks and will be lost without them

                 dave

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