The MIL passed away a few weeks ago and we now have the job of dealing with the house, which is a large victorian jobbie.
The estate agent (a bit surprisingly to me) reckons there's no point in doing much as most buyers for this type of house are looking for potential rather than a finished job, but the one thing we both agreed on is that the Minton tiling in the hallway could look a lot better if it was cleaned up etc. Overall, it's in pretty good nick, even if it hadn't been cleaned with more than a sweep over for the past few decades, and should scrub up nicely. I was just wondering if anyone had any good tips for this type of surface in terms of what to clean it with and whether to seal it with something after that.
Very little scope for the use of SDS drills or angle grinders here, I suspect!
Assuming a minton floor is a decorative ceramic tile surface, I would have thought that a deck brush, some warm water, detergent and plenty of elbow grease would do the trick.
Ceramics are God Things, in that they are chemically very inert, so you can use a variety of chemistry on them to attack the dirt without damaging them.
Start with the simplest solvent there is - water. And a scrubbing brush.
99% of all the dirt in our slates and tiles and indeed the grount, comes away with warm water plus a non foaming detergent - typical floor cleaning stuff. I get down and dirty and slosh the water all over, use a scrubbing brush to get in the cracks, and squeegee (google 'magic mop') the surplus away.
Anything left over of an organic nature, is probably best left to abn aggressive solvent like acetone or MEK..any rubbery residues or chewing gum etc.
An stained grout may well benefir from being doused with a good oxidising agent like bleach or strong caustic (rubber gloves and glasses if you don't know what alakali burns feel like and do to eyes).
Anything plastery or cement like can be removed with acid. This will in fact gradually etch the grout as well, and is another way to get down to good clean grout.
HOWEVER, I question the value of any of this. People looking at a floor like that in a victorian house will have one of two reactions (ooh, lovely, That will clean up a treat' or 'God how positively 19th century, that's got to go..I'll vinyl/carpet over that'
I had a very interesting experience when my mother died..we went back to hold a memorial service, and popped in to see what the owners had done to the old house, sold 5 years previously. They weren't in, but the neighbours were, and we popped in to see them, also redoing the house I grew up next to, and I was amazed to see this 1950 built house has still got its original oak parquet floor that I remembered so well 'Oh yes, we found that when we started redoing it, it had been covered with carpet for the last 25 years we think'
One man's wonderful period feature is another man's heap of awful tat, to be covered over as fast as possible.
Mind you, it was laid on an uninsulated concrete floor..
I rather thought this would be the case, although I have a faint memory that the Minton type tiles were susceptible to something or other, so had to be treated with some care, but perhaps that was something about sealing them when first laid. Perhaps the best way is try a bit in the corner and see if it comes up OK(!)
I'm sure you're absolutely right, though i would hope that anyone looking to dispense with getting on for 7 figures of dosh on a big Victorian house would be drawn by the period features and not be looking to turn it into a parody of a 1970's semi...Never know though.....
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