How To Polish A Damaged Marble Countertop : 6 Steps - Instructables

When we bought our condo, the marble countertops in the bathrooms were already badly damaged by inappropriate cleansers. In one bathroom, there were drip marks and the imprint of a spritzer-bottle from something acidic (acid dissolves marble), and in the other, the area near the sink was completely dulled by the use of an abrasive powder.

Marble is a rock, but it's also quite delicate. Some of you may be reading this because you just learned that fact the hard way, and if so, my sympathies! This Instructable will explain how to repair some of the damage.

But first, a public service announcement: NEVER USE TOOTHPASTE OR ANTI-PERSPIRANT TO POLISH YOUR COUNTERTOP, omigosh. You may have read about people trying that, but it is a baaaaaad idea, and when you read farther into their tales, you invariably see them say, "Yeah, it made my counter look even worse."

The reason why is that when you polish something, you want all the abrasive particles in your polishing slurry to be the same size. If they're not the same size, then the big particles will constantly scratch up the polishing that the smaller particles are trying to do, and you never get a shinier surface. The big particles will just keep gouging it up.

The abrasives in toothpaste and anti-perspirant are not sorted by size, so you will never get a good polish on your countertop with them, and you will probably make your counter look worse than it currently does.

For that reason, there is only one "hard" thing you need to do in this Instructable. You have to buy the right polishing compound. You cannot cheap out with a Home Depot maybe-it's-equivalent product, and you can't swap in some household goo; you have to get the right stuff.

What you want to buy is Aluminum Oxide "polish" powder with a grit-size of somewhere between 1 to 3 microns. There are other things that will work, but this is a common product and a really dependable one.

Where do you buy this stuff? You can get it from a store that sells supplies for "lapidary" enthusiasts (lapidary means stone-polishing), rock tumbling hobbyists (which is also stone-polishing), and sometimes for jewellry makers. You can also order it online.

They sometimes don't know the exact grit-size of what they're selling, but if it's called "polish" and is used in the final stage of rock-tumbling, then it will work fine for you.

You're not going to need more than a little sprinkle of it, so buy the smallest container you can.

What else will you need? Well, here's the complete list of supplies, including the polishing compound:

LIST OF SUPPLIES:

• Aluminum oxide polishing compound with a grit-size somewhere between 1 to 3 microns
• Disposable fabric rags (squares of clean denim are ideal for this)
• A spritzer bottle of water
• A rectangular object you can use as a sanding block

Fun fact: Aluminum oxide is sapphire. Very tiny sapphires, but that's what it is. It's also what's in your anti-perspirant, which means the reason you don't sweat is because you've clogged your armpits with sapphires!