Polishing Marble

I'm so glad to be back to my regularly scheduled program.  Last week we had our floors polished and had been to lazy to reconnect the computer. I asked/begged my husband to do it for me, until I finally did it myself this morning at 6:00 a.m.  Here are some before pictures of our floors.  These floors were once mirror shiny.  You can see, especially in high traffic areas (like our kitchen), how dull they look.

Here's another dull spot.   

The first step in the process, is getting all of our belongings out of the way. Luckily the workers did this for us. An option that would have sped things up was placing everything outside, but as you can see the dull skies in the background, that was not an option.

Here are all our accessories.  I had prepped this myself the night before.

 Look at this craziness. 

So basically, the first step of the process is they strip or take away a hair thick layer of the marble.  They use a cleaner, water, a salty like substance, and a grinder (not sure the name of the machine).  You can see here the floor completely stripped.

They spot treat any holes or imperfections.  They then use the polishing machine with another polishing liquid.  Here you can see where he has placed the liquid.  Then they put a sealer and then buff the floors to get maximum shine.

 Here you can see the start of shine.

I took these pictures this morning and the sun hasn't really come out yet, so you can't get the whole effect. (I'll update the pictures later today).  This is the same spot as the first picture.

You can see the furniture, vases, and art reflected in the floor.  When the sun is out, you can see the trees, as well.

The difference is huge.  The house feels so much cleaner.  The floors feel brand new again.  We had this process done 8 years ago and it should really be done every 3 years.  The company was great and a team of 3-4 guys worked for 12 hours straight.   It was a long day.  I took advantage that I was home and organized papers in our office and cleaned out those corners in the house you never get to.  It feels so good to cross something off the list.