LESLIE: Bill in California’s got an unwanted stain. What happened? Something leaked in the bathroom?
BILL: One of the water pipes busted in the bathroom and it flooded throughout the house. We weren’t there at the time. And it lifted the – discolored the tiles; they were Spanish (ph) tiles and just lifted some of the sealer and stuff of them and they’re kind of discolored now.
TOM: Yeah, because you probably got water trapped in between the sealer and the tile.
LESLIE: And the tile itself.
TOM: I think what you’re probably going to have to do, Bill, is strip the old sealer off – you’re going to need a stripper for that – and pull the sealer off and try to get down to as much of the original clay as you can and then reseal them. Now, if you can’t get a stripper to work, the other thing that you could try to do with some of the tiles that are stained is consider using a concrete stain and actually staining all the tiles …
LESLIE: Yeah.
TOM: … darker to match it.
LESLIE: Well no, you can also take the areas that have the damage on them and if you get it down to a fresh surface on the tile, whether by using a stripper or even mildly sanding them – but don’t go crazy with it; just use a very fine sandpaper to try to rough up that surface – you can use a concrete stain. Like Tom said, have them tint them – you know, get two tinted to a lighter shade and a darker shade of the color that the tiles are – and sort of brush them on together to create that same look and that same texture and color of the tiles that weren’t damaged and then reseal them once it’s dry. But you should be able to redo that exact coloration of the tile with just some stain.
BILL: Yeah, I don’t know because quite a — quite a large area. You know, the house is like 3,500 square foot and it pretty much flooded, you know, a lot of the rooms. I think there’s two rooms that weren’t – that the tiles weren’t discolored or anything.
LESLIE: Well, it might be time to put a laminate floor on top of that.
BILL: Yeah, it might be. I don’t know.
TOM: Alright, Bill. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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