This house has this large stone enterance with the stones wrapping the house foundation and two large steps,one in the front and one in the back. I was able to take pics of the front because i did it yesterday and it’s dry now. I used a 5% mix in a pump sprayer and did the whole steps and sides. The treads are limestome. I was trying to get all the green and black out of the treads and mortar joints which it did but also whiting of the face. I have to see what the back looks like tomorrow and other parts of the foundation but the stone was very porous and I’m not sure if it’s real or fake but I’m leaning towards fake because i thought i saw some shiny specks and it just doesn’t look natural. Seems like its more of a decorative fascisa than structural but thats neither here nor there. Any testing i can do? Any ideas?
I’m confused about what you’re asking. Are you asking if you made it too white? Do you have before/afters?
Why did you start off with 5%? What was your theory behind it?
light it up and get it done.
What have you learnt? Lol
Well you’re nickname is appropriate. How long did you let sit before you washed? A 1.5 % mix, let sit for about 5-10 min and wash with medium spray at about 200-300psi would have easily cleaned.
dwell time was probably 20 mins
You might be able to etch and seal the stones to get the color back
Looks like you got some of the color back! What fixed it?
no sorry those are other parts of the house where the color is normal or better. the ledge below the vinyl looks bleached out to. yes take before and after pics. I don’t even remember what it looked like before .
You should probably avoid this line of work.
I love it!!!
“light it up and get it done”
You said you sprayed 5% on the entire front steps. I’m curious why the lightened area isn’t the entire front steps area, instead of just the first few steps. It makes me wonder if something else may have contributed to the lighter color. More exposure to sunlight or weather? Just a thought.
it happened in the back steps too
This is what happens when you get spoon-fed on here. You never actually absorb any of the information given to you and then you make costly mistakes like this.
Replace everything you damaged.
I 'm just guessing here, but they seem to get lighter as you go down, thinking the excess on the higher steps may have just kept running down so they in essence got hit more than once. That was my first thought when I saw it, but as I said, just guessing, w/o being there.
I’ve never tried etching stone to get the color back. These look like the fake cement stone that are stained to me. Does etching the fake ones work? I just washed a chimney with fake stone, even where I just washed it with water color was coming out. They were getting it painted so I didn’t care, just needed it to be clean and free of the copper runoff from the old copper flashing. I did look into restaining it, but wasn’t worth it for the money. This awas fake stone over an exsisting brick or stone chimney (couldn’t tell due to mesh and scratch coat underneath.
No etching won’t do anything for fake stones . Think of etching as chemical sanding
