Natural Stone Surfaces Should Not Have Topical Finishes Applied - If They Do, Here is How to Fix It

Frequently we are asked to apply urethane or acrylic coatings to a natural stone. Anyone that knows anything about natural stone will tell you these products should never be applied to a stone surface. Stone is porous and proper sealers are resins dispersed in either solvents or water that penetrate the stone and are invisible on the stone surface. Topical finishes, like urethane or epoxy are best used on wood or vinyl, but have no role in natural stone. The reason is that these finishes penetrate the stone and cannot be removed by normal means, as you would vinyl with a simple water based stripper. Stone on the other hand is porous and will not respond to strippers, but will have to be ground out with expensive and labor intensive procedures.

We also find these types of topical finishes applied to tile and grout as a sealer or to just grout as a sealer. We would especially include the consumer product Mop N Glow, a finish suited for vinyl floor finishes. These products are neither appropriate for porcelain, ceramic or stone tiles. Due to the porosity of these materials, topical finishes penetrate deeply and are sometimes impossible to remove - short of grinding or stripping with heavy paint strippers.

Needless to say these are projects that are labor intensive as well as inconvenient to the owners. Heavy paint strippers and solvents are necessary to break down these sealers. They require careful handling due to chemical odors and difficulty of slurry recovery.

Remaining slurry have to be removed with great effort. These processes are time consuming and expensive. Stone floors on occasion have to be ground if acrylic penetrates deep into the product. For these reasons we strongly recommend against application of any acrylic floor finish (intended for use on vinyl flooring) to grouted product.

If you find yourself confronted with a topical sealer applied to your stone, you can try a simple test to remove the sealer. Many floor strippers are based on a glycol ether solvent. Find one of these and apply it to the stone in a small area and see if it loosens the topical sealer. If so you will need a wet vac, or some other manner to remove the accumulated slurry for disposal.

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