Granite Worktops Help and Advice 2
With care and attention your granite worktops should last a lifetime. Occasionally you may find a small fine or hairline scratch. Help is at hand and you will be surprised how simple it is to blend in or disguise the scratch.
Firstly follow the steps below, in the order recommended.
If you have Black Granite Worktops, simply obtain a ” Sharpie ” type marker pen, and simply colour the scratch with the pen, it may take a few goes and you can leave it to dry, or wipe the excess off with your finger, to acheive the best result.
Try using a hairdryer to heat up the granite and once warm rub a common clear candle, or bees wax over the scratch, once you have the scratch covered, warm the wax again with the hairdryer to turn it to a thin liquid, and constantly wipe off with a clean cloth, warming and wiping continually to remove the excess. This will leave a fine coating of clear wax over the scratch, and blend it in. You can remove any excess with a clean sharp stanley blade but please be carefull. Your last job will be to warm it without wiping top leave a high gloss finish on the wax, that will match the finish of your worktops.
If you a have a surface indentation or chip in the top face, this wax method can work just as well, but on darker granites try the marker pen first to stain the rock darker, before applying the wax finish.
If you are not satisfied with your outcome, please feel free to contact us by clicking here, and we can send one of our trained Stonelux engineer to your property. He is like a ” french polisher for granite ” and has a kits full of matching fillers, waxes and the like to achieve an almost invisible permanent repair to your granite kitchen surface. We will quote you for this on contact, but we usually need a digital photo of the damage for this.
Steve
Granite Worktops Help and Advice
It is important to keep Natural Granite Worktops Sealed with a purpose made sealer.
If you have not sealed your granite worktops then you should do so with a product like Akemi Stain Repellant, as contained in the Akemi Care Kit.
This is available here…Purchase Akemi Care Kit from Granite Care
Alternatively you could use the Lithofin Stain Stop MN, as contained in the Lithofin Care Kit
This is available here…Purchase Lithofin Care Kit from Granite Care
If you haven’t sealed your worktops, or have inherited some granite worktops and have an existing stain, then help is still at hand.
Most food / drink stains like grease or fat, tea coffee and juice stains can be removed with a poultice mixture made from products easily available, and just follow the easy steps below to remove stains from granite worktops
The following advice is offered withour recourse, and we recommend you try these techniques on an inconspicuous area to ensure your worktops do not have an adverse reaction to the process. Please wear the appropriate protective mask and gloves.
Firstly try decorators acetone wipes, commonly available from B&Q and builders merchants as Decorators cleanup wipes, these remove a lot of common stains quite easily, if this fails, go onto the next step
Obtain some plain flour, white talcum powder, or plain clay powder. This is purely a medium to hold the liquids in place and to draw the stains out.
Obtain some of the following liquids and try them in this order. Water, Washing Up Liquid, Flash Antibac Liquid spray, Lemon Floor Cleaner, a 50/50 mixture of thick bleach and water, If all else fails…..Acetone
Mix an amount of the above powder with the liquid to obtain a smooth cream, and apply the cream to the stain about 5mm thick over the stain and around 30mm past the stain reducing the thickness to nothing towards the edges.
Cover the mixture with cling film to keep the area moist and tape down the edges with masking tape. Piece a few small hole in the cling film to allow the mixture to breathe
Leave for 24 hours and clean with soapy water and dry the whole area. Inspect the stain to see if there is any improvement. If there is improvement allow 24 hours for the pores in the granite to recover, and repeat the process with the same mixture, until all the stain is removed, repeating the whole process as required.
Another excellent heavy duty cleaner we commonly recommend is “Bar Keepers Friend” commonly available at some Tesco stores and certainly from your local hardware store. We have acheived excellent results with this product, just mix a small amount with water and cover the stain, leave for 1 hour and wash off. It is imprtant not to scrub with this product as it contains abrasives, and could affect the polished lustre of your worktops.
Good luck, and remember once you have removed the stains, you must dry the worktops completely and then seal them to protect from further staining.
Steve
Granite Worktop Showroom Colours
Granite Care Ltd are committed to constant improvement of their customer experience. With this matter in mind they have conducted a lengthy consultation with clients past and present, and have concluded that the granite worktop showroom could benefit from some minor improvements, as their new quartz worktops showroom had outshone the existing granite worktops showroom.
This week some improvements were started with one of their displays being removed and replaced with more popular colours that customers wanted to view. This work will be complete by 9am Saturday 30th May in time for the weekend viewing.
Granite Care will then have 11 Natural Granite Colours on display, including
Nero Impala, Nero Angola, Verde Ubatuba, Nero Cosmos, Absolute Black, Emerald Pearl, Kashmir Gold, Black Pearl, Icon Brown, Sardinian White, and Star Galaxy.
They have plans to include at least 1 more new display incorporating 2 more colours, and are currently in consultation as to what would be their customers preferred choice of colours to display.
In their Quartz Showroom they have now 16 colours on display, bringing the total displayed colours to 27
Further to this they have around 2000m2 of stock material in the on site factory wharehouse for customer viewing.
Granite Care are committed to giving all customers the absolute best experience that is within their power to supply, and are always open to suggestions in what ways they can improve this. If you have any comments or suggestions which you feel may help in this, then please feel free to contact their Managing Director personally.
Click here For granite worktops or quartz worktops suggestions
Should i choose Manmade Composite Quartz Worktops or Natural Granite Worktops
Its a question we are often asked, but there is no simple answer. Often its simply a question of choice. In terms of Marks out of 100, you could say Natural Granite is a good 90, and therefore Quartz Worktops would be a 95. We would put Laminate worktops at only 20, Glass Worktops and Stainless Steel Worktops at 30, and Wooden Worktops at 50.
Simply speaking if you have teenagers, or younger children we would recommend Quartz Worktops. They are highly Scratch resistant, and virtually stainproof. Important for children making drinks with the acids present in some foods, juices and cordials, and where young children are learning to cook and bake. We resist saying stainproof as there will always be someone who manages to stain anything, however at Granite Care we are yet to receive a single report of a staining problem with Quartz Worktops. Quartz Composite work tops have no pores or natural pits, which effectively means they are by design antibacterial, this is most important where babies are concerned, or the elderley and infirm. They are also easier to keep clean, and virtually maintenance free.
We personally recommend the make COMPAC Quartz. Compac offer a truly unrivaled range of colours and quality, with thousands of tonnes of stock available and a UK base.
Natural Granite Worktops can be confidently chosen, as long as you realise that granite is a natural product, formed of natural and volcanic rock. This inherently means that there will be natural pores in the material which require sealing. Once sealed they will be equally as stain resistant and they will be equally as antibacterial, however the sealant will wear away, and will require periodic re-sealing.
Whether you choose Natural Granite or Manmade Composite Quartz, as long as you choose a reputable fabricator, who uses the very best tooling, highly qualified staff, and a bespoke template and fitting service, then your worktops should give you many years of trouble free use.
Granite Care, are a quality, family company, with a long established reputation for reliability, quality staff training, and superb production. We only ever use the latest computer controlled digital cutting and polishing equipment, incorporating the latest water cooled, diamond technology. All our templaters and installers are highly qualified and experienced men from within the industry, but it should be worth noting we do not subscribe to the cut in your garden routine. All granite and quartz work is done in our bespoke £1million factory
All customers are welcome to our factory, and showrooms, based in Wigan, Lancashire, North West England. See our fabulous range of granite worktops and quartz worktops here
Granite Kitchen Worktops Granite Worktops and Quartz Worktops
At Granite Care we continually check our quality of production. We have a dedicated quality control officer, who personally checks and signs every single Granite Worktop for quality of accuracy, cutting and polishing. We aim to be 100% accurate, 100% of the time, and deliver your Granite Worktops and Quartz Worktops on time. We are confident we can produce your Quartz worktops and Granite Kitchen Worktops, on time and perfect, with reliable and quality finishing. We aim to be on time and efficient, as we know our customers have other trades following us on, and we are able to work with all trades, guaranteeing your installation date for your Kitchen Granite.