New Install Travertine Coffee Stain

[swimmermom]

Hi,

A new installation of honed, but not glazed or sealed cream colored travertine is being installed throughout my house-- we inadvertently dripped coffee down the hallway and since we did not realize it, it soaked in-- we tried cleaning with soap and water but stains are still visible. We plan to seal, but this hasn't been done yet. Is there any solution to this, other than having the poor floor guys rip it out and install new tiles? It is a tough installation, 18 by 18 diagonal with every other joint a small marble insert.

Any tips on sealing this tile will be welcome. I don't want this to happen again!

thanks so much from a newbie.

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[sgrandjean]

Greetings, swimmermom. Have you got a first name? Off the top of my head, I might advise using a poultice on your travertine. I'm sure one of the pros will be around shortly to give further advice. If you can post a picher of the affected area, that would be helpful.

Cheers.

[Stonehenge]

Hi Mom,

On a spare tile I want you to run a similar stain experiment and then try a water and bleach with 4:1 dilution ratio. Soak this solution into a plain white paper towel and let sit for 1/2 hour, rinse with water and let dry.

Michael

[swimmermom]

sorry I don't know how to post a picture. we got most of it out using a spray laundry spot treater called Oxy-wash (or some such thing-- non-chlorine). To be honest, the stone itself is cream with some natural golden brown-ish veining and spotting and at this point we feel we are almost obsessing about it-- my guess is we won't ever notice these spots. But there's one stubborn spot that I am going to try Stonehenge's diluted bleach treatment on (after trying it on a spare!). I tried both white vinegar and hyrodogen peroxide on a spare that I spotted with coffee, and they took up most of the stain on the spare too-- but it didn't work as well on the real thing, maybe it had soaked in more.

Thanks so much for the help! (name is Karen)

[Davestone]

For the peroxide you'd need to use some commercial peroxide you can get from a beauty supply,at about 30 to 40% and add a couple drops of ammonia.

[Mike2]

Many years ago I was given a book published by Consumer Reports on stain removal. For coffee it recommends a solution of Cream of Tartar diluted in water. Cream of Tartar can be found amongst the many other containers of spices in most grocery stores.

Note: It produces a mild acidic solution so testing before use on any calcite based stone would be a good thing to do.