On 2007-08-26 13:21:16 +0100, Jeff said:

On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:12:18 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Jeff wrote:
On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 13:48:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
removal of grout from slate tiles
Its murder doing the grouting: If you had posted earlier I would have
told you how I evolved a system...that works.

Just be ultra happy it was slate, not limestone. That etches faster with
the acid than the grout does...

T

Any chance you can enlighten us?

We are just about ready to lay a limestone tile floor in the kitchen
and we've never done this before. Any advice will be most welcome TNP.

TNP's advice to someone about to lay limestone in a kitchen?

DON'T.

Feck, am I glad I asked you :-)

I'd been cruising the tiling sites and they make it look a doddle. At
least I have some idea of the misery to come. Thank you very, very
much TNP, advice, converted to PDF for later use and to compare
experiences :-)

I'd completely echo what he says.

On the issue of suitability of materials, a few years ago I looked at
different stones for floors in hallway, kitchen cloakroom and
conservatory - e.g. whether to go for different ones or the same
throughout. The conclusion from everyone asked was not to go for
marble, limestone etc. for areas such a kitchens and near to outside
doors where there is a dirt issue. They might have been suitable for
the cloakroom but it wasn't worth it for one small area. Slate is
far more maintainable because virtually any cleaner can be used.
Limestone may be suitable for bathroom floors but that's about it
unless one has an area well isolated from sources of dirt.

These soft materials are suitable for wall tiling in most areas, so for
example, I've used marble in the kitchen and limestone in the
cloakroom. Again one has to be careful with cleaners but with
suitable impregnation with Lithofin MN Stainstop no issue.

The other thought with floor tiling is that it can be very hard work in
stone. I went for 600x400 slates and these are veryheavy to start
with. When held at arms length for tiling they become very heavy
indeed. I had a professional tiler do the job because frankly it
would have been back breaking for me and would have taken far too long.
As it was, this amounted to well over a week's work for two tilers.