Home Staging Tips: Easy, Effective Stain Removal Tricks for Tile Floors
Many people choose to install tile flooring because they believe that out of all of the options available to them it is the one that is pretty much indestructible and practically stain proof. That’s why tile floors often appeal to home buyers too.
Although they are very hardy and indeed relatively easy to clean, tile floors are , unfortunately, neither of things I mentioned first. Drop something onto a tile floor hard enough and it will crack it. Spill certain substances onto it and they will stain it.
That having been said, tile flooring is a great choice for busy homes and with a regular mopping, a visit from a company offering professional tile cleaning about once every 12-18 months, a professional grout sealing treatment to help keep grimy grout syndrome at bay and some prompt action when things do get accidentally spilled then you can indeed have a shiny, sparkling clean floor most of the time! And clean is a must when you are staging and selling your home.
With the last point in mind, quick stain removal, here are a few tips for effectively dealing with some of the most common of them.
Coffee or Tea – Just like coffee and tea can really stain your teeth it can also stain ceramic tiling and it will certainly stain ceramic, and especially porcelain tiles very quickly. To prevent this, as soon as you realize a spill has occurred blot the mess up with warm water and paper towels and then go back over it with a little household hydrogen peroxide. This is also a good way to get rid of those very colorful juice stains as well.
Grease or Oil – Many kitchens feature tile flooring and for some very solid reasons, but, however careful the cook is eventually some cooking grease or oil will be spilled on the tiles at one time or another. To prevent hard to get rid of stains, or a buildup of hazardous, slippery grime mop up the stain with soapy soda water.
Sounds silly? It’s not, the bubbles help cut through the grease faster, and obviously a detergent of some kind is needed as water alone simply can’t take on oil (as you probably remember from those early school science experiments)
Ink or Dye – Ink or dye – whether it is from markers or the byproduct of home hair coloring efforts, can seem very hard to get rid of. The key to doing so is to clean it off the tile the right way the first time.
Take a clean white cloth soaked with a diluted bleach solution and place it over the spill/stain. Leave it in place for 30 minutes to an hour, remove and then rinse the area with plain water and hopefully all of that unwanted color will be gone.
Gum – Someone trod discarded gum into the tile floor, no one saw it, it dried, and it now it seems stuck, rock like, and you are not sure how to remove it without causing permanent damage to your tile.
The solution is easier than you might think though. Place several ice cubes in a Ziploc type bag and lay it over the gum you want to remove from the tile. After s few minutes the extreme cold should make it possible for you to fairly easily remove the gum with a craft stick, or, if you are careful, even a butter knife, without having to gouge or scratch the tile around it. This trick will work for tar and wax as well.
Nail Polish – Today’s nail polishes dry very quickly, so the chances that you can tackle a polish spill on your tile floor while it is still wet are very slim. Rather than simply pouring nail polish remover all over it, which may permanently discolor the tile, make a solution of one part NON ACETONE nail polish remover (check the bottle) and two parts household hydrogen peroxide and use that to gently rub away the stain.