If you have natural stone tile in your home, it is important to remember that your shower requires the most care. When a shower is not cared for properly, there are various problems that you will see: soap scum build up on the surface of your shower walls, mildew stains, etching on the stone surface, etc. Here are some tips on how to take care of your marble, travertine, or other natural stone shower.

1. First of all, make sure that your shower is sealed. It's easy to check it regularly (link).
2. Squeegee off your shower walls every single day. This is a big step in caring for your marble shower.
3. Clean mildew stains that appear on the grout lines of your shower enclosure with a mildew stain remover that is been formulated to be safe on natural stone
4. Don't pee in the shower. I hesitate to point this one out, but I suppose this list wouldn't be complete if I didn't point it out. :)

Use these tips and you will have a shower that looks good for years to come!

It is so important to seal natural stone. Whether you have a travertine floor, marble countertop or vanity, or a slate shower, they all need to be thoroughly sealed. Here's a quick and easy way to test your stone to see if it needs to be sealed:

1. Wet your finger with water from a faucet
2. Rub your wet finger along the grout lines
3. Do your grout lines suck up the water and instantly change color? If so, you need to seal your stone. Do your grout lines change color after a few seconds? If so, you should look at getting your stone re-sealed sometime soon. Do your grout lines keep the exact same color as they had before you put water on them? If so, your floors are protected and you can rest easy. Check again in a year

Isn't that easy? Now you know how to check to see if your natural stone needs to be sealed or not.

Recently, Stone Touch finished polishing a travertine floor in the Ancala development in Scottsdale. The customer was ecstatic at the job done!   But, there was a problem. Upon receipt of the final payment, we realized that we estimated a separate step in the process that our lead technician decided was not necessary after all, and which he had decided to skip. It was a step that added an additional $500 to the price of the job.   Around here, we try to do everything according to our "Culture of Honesty". Even though the customer loved the work that we had done on his travertine, and had paid us according to what we originally agreed upon, we felt that we had money that we had not earned. We called the customer to tell him that we were able to refund him $500. You can imagine how excited he was to get that call.   Essentially, this is our refund policy: We do not want money that we haven't earned. If it somehow ends up in our hands, we'll give it back.   We love opportunities to prove to people that we deliver superior service. I believe that this was one of them.

One of the most common phone calls that we receive goes something like this:

"My travertine floor is dirty. No matter how much I clean it, I can't get the  "cloudy" look removed. So, I figured that it must be time for it to be professionally cleaned."

We've found that 9 times out of 10, when a customer has this problem, it is not really so much a problem with it being "dirty" per se. It typically means that the floor needs to be re-finished. The surface of a floor made out of travertine, marble, or limestone will wear away after time. This is caused by foot traffic, pets, and using the wrong types of cleaners. Fortunately, Stone Touch can bring your floor back to life by either honing or polishing your floor. It will look amazing when we're done with it. We promise. So, when is the right time to clean travertine, marble, or limestone? The answer to that depends on you. If you clean your travertine, marble, or limestone floor every week or every other week with water and a microfiber mop, you really shouldn't ever need to have a professional company like ours come in to clean. However, if you don't clean your floor until you see the grout lines turning dark, and the pits collecting dirt, you'll probably need to have Stone Touch come in once a year to do a professional cleaning on your floor.

We are officially relaunching the Stone Touch website, and are so excited about the changes. The new site is going to better showcase the great work that we do here at Stone Touch, such as polished, honed, and cleaned natural stone. Additionally, the new site will let you peak into our business more than any other natural stone care company in Phoenix, Arizona. We hope you like it as much as we do!