Cleaning old tiles

weeze210

Hi all, wondered if any of you could help?
As some already know I have moved to Wales from Staffordshire.
The house we have moved to needs lots of work.
In the lounge we have some old tiles, the house was bult 1954, we aren't sure what these tiles are but they need a dam good clean. We have quarry tiles in the dining room but in the lounge the floor tiles look, at first glance, like parquay flooring but on closer inspection are actually some form of tile. They are a really dark brown colour but as I have found out, after leaving a wallpaper steam stripper switched on, they loose their colour if steamed. Any ideas what I could clean them with or use to restore the dark brown colour?
Thanks Weeze x

weeze210

Has no-one any ideas?
I'm a bit stuck as to what to do!

Weeze x

fairtrade

You could try a micro-fibre cloth, normally give good results on any hard surface.

SailorSam

I think it's going to take a lot of elbow grease.
Could you try something like Tcut, you know the stuff you use on cars to get ingrained dirt out.
Or, be careful using it but caustic soda.

weeze210

Thanks for the replies
There is some old paint and other stuff which hasn't shifted with a scourer and ordinary floor cleaner so I'm wondering if chemicals might be required! Also where I left the wallpaper steamer on the floor it seems to have 'bleached' the colour out, any ideas what to use to put the dark brown colour back?

Weeze x

Memory_Girl

I know this is going to sound nuts - but could the tiles be encaustic tiles? In which case you need to rub linseed oil on them to put the colour back in .............. worth a try on a small area.

MG

tpt

are you sure its not parquet? 1954 is a bit modern for encaustic tiles.

Could you pop a picture on?

squeaky

I can't believe that a steam cleaner would leach colour out of a ceramic tile. So either your tiles are not ceramic - or they are covered with a layer of "something" which is a dark colour.

There are all sorts of colourants for tiles on the market, so could this be the case?

weeze210

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-HEsSuWbw5bA/To7r90EeSJI/AAAAAAAAAi8/AtSqwsOXrTc/s800/IMG_2077.JPG

If you click on the above link it'll show the floor and the 'bleached' patch the wallpaper stripper did!
Thanks for all your ideas so far

Weeze x

squeaky

I still can't tell if those are ceramic tiles or not - though it's odd that the steam cleaner did a better job (judging by your picture) of cleaning the tiles than it did of cleaning the grout between them.

One possible way round all this, given that it's likely to be pretty much impossible to get a good colour match, is to clean all of the floor with the steam cleaner and then find a suitable colourant that you like and apply it. ?

Memory_Girl

Do the tiles "sound" ceramic when you tap them with something hard?

If they don't, well I think they look like proper linoleum - my Gran had something similar. Linoleum (the made with wood dust and boiled linseed oil - not the modern vinyl stuff) was hugely popular in the 1950s (sorry I missed that bit on your original post).

Asked a mate and he suggested that the "whitening" may be that you have melted the wax polish that was once applied - the heat of the steamer melting the wax and it resets "clean and white" as it cools.

As for restoration - he says that you should be able to buy a "wax stripper" and wax restorer if you are going for the authentic 1950's thing from people who stock stuff like "marmoleum"

He also says "Lucky you" because the floors are practically undestructable and apparently antiseptic too - they were use in hospitals to keep a germ free environment.

Then again - just guessing from your photograph

MG