Working in historic buildings is one of the highlights of our job here at Boston Stone Restoration. Over the past several months we had been contracted by a management company for a chain of banks that recently changed their name. Part of their rebranding has included the restoration of the floors in their older branches. We have now finished four locations in buildings ranging from 75 to 100 years old.
Before floor restoration.
In their heyday, banks were housed in upscale buildings with rich finishes like marble, mahogany and brass. It was a pleasure restoring the gorgeous black and white marble at the Salem, MA branch this past week.
While we were working, we had trouble getting some of the black tiles to shine. Curious as to why this was happening, our crew chief, John made an interesting discovery. It turns out that not all of the tiles were marble! Some of the black tiles were actually made of slate! When the floor was dingy and scuffed you couldn’t tell, but once we started honing, some of the black tiles “popped” and others still looked dingy! The builder must have either run out of marble tiles, or maybe in an effort to cut cost, a less expensive replacement slate was used in some areas. Fortunately our experience and expertise allowed us to determine what was wrong and improve the look using a method appropriate for slate.
The end result was one fabulous looking floor!