Crema of maril marble, is probably one of the most sold natural marble in the World. For those who may not be familiar with it, it has a light beige colour and normally some veins that combine perfectly with the stone. Today I’m dedicating this post to creme of marfil marble. Yes, natural marble, and creme marfil or crema marfil. A few years back a close friend bought creme marfil marble tiles 40 cm x 40 cm for his home. At the time, we had spoken about engineered marble, but he and his wife had the natural stone choice in their mind, and went ahead with the installation. I was invited to the home inauguration party, and it was a really good combination, and the floor looked fine back then regarding: shine, finish, edges, instalment, etc. Well, a few weeks ago, my friend called me and asked for my opinion, after 6 years of living in the home and using it with some care and maintenance, I went to his home and quickly noticed a few things that had happened, namely:
- Big chips of pure stone just jumped out of place
- The resin from the veins has changed color, probably due to UV exposure, noticing a horrible effect on the tile
- Some veins have become small craters as the softer stone has disapeared
- The shade of the stone has become uneven, due to some humidity that came in from the ground
To be honest with you, every product has pros and cons, in this case unfortunately due to several factors, problems arose, with the humidity that he has coming in through the ground underneath the floor, I figure he would probably have bigger problems if he installed other products that are less porous than this stone, like engineered quartz or even porcelain tiles.
It's not my intention to reveal specific problems with creme marfil marble, it's more to say, choose wisely the product you intend to install. Make sure you follow all the manufacturers requirements to avoid installation problems. Everyone does mistakes and the decision to install a product should be taken seriously, and other aspects besides colour should be carefully evaluated.
Sometimes the information available regarding a specific product may be hard to find, in the engineered stone business fortunately it's standard procedure by most manufacturers to have installation, maintenance and care guides. A few years ago, the natural stone business lacked of documentation and certification. Today things have changed, and also natural stones have CE standards to obied. So when buying or installing make sure your creme of marfil marble or any other natural stone has a CE certificate.
2 comments:
Thanks Tomson for this article.
One thing I notice is that companies use resin or fillers to make poor stone look like good stone.
In your friends case, it is the resin that has deteriorated and discolored and caused the chips to fall out.
For me, natural stone should be left natural. As it ages with time, it just looks natural and beautiful.
We often get asked to repair resin or polyester coatings on stone, and its much more difficult to repair than if the stone was just natural finish.
Answer to the doctor,
Just to say that the pictures are my own the shade is even, I just changed the mega-pixels on the first picture to capture the chip.
Some marble is really difficult to produce, in some cases, wastage at the quarry may be more than 50%. To improve the quality and resistance of the product they use resin fillers, resin to improve the slabs resistance, they even in some cases glue a fiber glass mesh on the back end of the slab to make it more resistant.
The problem is that resin is not UV resistant and with time it will end up either changing shade or chipping.
Thanks for your comment, I see you have had some professional challenges due to the coatings.
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