Kristy asked me about sealing the feature pebble strips in the showers, and since I've had a few questions along those lines, I thought I'd post a quick explanation.
Natural stone is porous, so it requires sealing to make it waterproof, and also to bring out the colours. Think about rocks and pebbles in a creek and how pretty they look - but when you take them out of the water and they dry off, the colours aren't as brilliant. Slate floors or outdoor stone pavers require the same treatment to weatherproof them and bring out the natural beauty of the stone. The samples you see in tile showrooms are sealed, but the product you get to bring home looks dull and colourless in comparison.
A tiler would probably do the sealing for you and include it in the price if you ask for it, but it wasn't a standard process provided by our builder, and we saw no reason to pay extra for something simple that we could do ourselves.
So a trip to Bunnings revealed numerous products that would do the job - most were in giant economy-sized containers though, obviously intended for large expanses of flooring or outdoor paving. All I needed was enough to do two strips of pebbles.... I ended up with a litre of All-Stone Sealer - still way more than I needed, but the smallest quantity I could get. Cost was around $25, I think. Plus about $2 for the cheapest paintbrush I could find, since I had no intention of cleaning it for re-use.
Then it was just a matter of applying 3 coats with a brush as per the instructions on the bottle. So simple, any idiot could do it. If only all DIY was that easy....
8 comments:
Yep I used the same product as you Kek. I went to Bunnings a week ago and the person there didn't know which product to give me and got a bit flustered so I rang NT at Mitcham and they told me to get the All Stone sealer by Tasman Chemicals. We could have gone halves in a tin :-)
I wonder if we need to repeat the process down the track?
I don't know about repeating the process, Toni - I suppose we'll find out when we see how it wears.
I'm glad you found it easy to do. Sealing the grout was a whole other thing - that was hard on my knees!
Thanks Kek, that helps a lot and sounds like something that I can easily do...
Kek sorry to ask more questions, but was wondering about glass splashbacks in the kitchen. Did you get yours as part of the package or was it an extra cost? Also do you mind me asking what type of cost if extra?
Thank you again
Kristy
Ours was part of a package deal, Kristy, but the builder put a value of around $1100 on it - that's for an area up to 3.6m long.
It's a great way to get exactly the colour you want - but you might have to pay extra for some colours, as the standard glass has a greenish tint, so it can change the paint colour. You can upgrade to clear glass, but that costs more.
You could check with some kitchen, tile or shower screen companies for an idea of prices for your area. Just Google and pick up the phone.
Thanks Kerryn I will ring around and see what I can find out. Everyone is still on leave, which really sucks!
Kek did your contract individually list the items you had as part of your promotion with a price attached to each one?
Thanks!
Hi Chris - yes, our contract documentation did exctly that. At least the reduced promotional prices of the items we selected were listed.
The quoted "actual" prices weren't in the contract, but they were listed in the promotion brochure. I'm not sure whether they still do it that way.
The promo we got was way back in the first half of 2007.
Post a Comment