Everything off the floor
Furniture, rugs, plants, bins. A grinding machine needs the whole surface, and anything left becomes an island of unpolished stone.
Home · Marble Polishing · How to Prepare for Marble Polishing
Preparation Guide · StoneHow to Prepare for Marble Polishing
Marble restoration is a wet, dusty, machine-heavy process. The floor has to be completely empty, and the room is out of use for longer than most people expect.
Written for Dubai and Abu Dhabi properties, where marble is the default floor finish in most villas and the dust load is high year round.
Clearing the floor
Completely, not mostly
Skirting and door thresholds
We mask them, but tell us about anything delicate — gilded skirting, timber thresholds, or a threshold strip that is already loose.
Low furniture in adjoining rooms
Fine dust travels. We seal doorways, and moving what matters out of the neighbouring room is still worth ten minutes.
Curtains up or out
Floor-length curtains sitting on a floor being ground will not survive it.
Plan the route
The machine and water tank need a path from the door. Narrow staircases and lift restrictions change the equipment we can bring, so mention them when booking.
The test patch
Insist on it
A square metre, before anything else
Twenty minutes, in a corner, so you see the actual finish on your actual stone rather than a photograph of someone else's.
Choose the finish
High gloss, satin or honed matt. This is a design decision, not a technical one, and a matt honed finish hides wear more forgivingly in a busy hallway.
Understand what will not come back
Deep etching, pitting, cracked tiles and previous poor repairs. We show you these on the test patch and tell you honestly what the result will be.
Ask what is being used
Diamond abrasives in progressive grits, or a coating. If the answer is a product name rather than a grit sequence, it is a coating, and it will wear through in months.
Timing and afterwards
Room out of use
A day per large room
Grinding, honing and polishing are separate stages and each needs the previous one finished.
Wet and dusty
Slurry is contained and extracted, but the room is a work site while it runs. Not something to schedule around guests.
Sealing after, not instead
An impregnating sealer goes on once the finish is achieved. It slows staining; it does not prevent etching.
Care afterwards
pH-neutral cleaner only. Vinegar, lemon, bleach and most supermarket floor products are acidic and will etch the stone you just paid to restore.
Questions
Answered plainly.
Matching a new polish to an old one across a threshold is difficult and usually visible. Where rooms flow into each other, do them together.
Marginally, and it is measured in fractions of a millimetre. Stone can be honed many times over its life.
Cleaned and, where needed, refilled before polishing. Polishing over failed grout traps slurry in the joint.
No. Crystallisation is a chemical and mechanical hardening process suited to calcium-based stone in high traffic. It complements honing; it does not replace it.
Same day for light use once dry, 24 hours before furniture goes back and rugs return.
Everything runs against a written list.
Scoped at an inspection, priced in writing, and signed off with you before the crew leaves. See the checklist or the full Marble Polishing scope.