Whilst Cornwell Services is known for restoring hard stone floors and wooden floors, we also restore stone tables and worktops. In this case, our commercial client was based at the impressive North Mymms Park estate in Hertfordshire and needed help a valuable antique marble table restored.
North Mymms Park is an Elizabethan mansion nestled in acres of parkland and brimming with period features from the marble entrance hall to the Jacobean staircase and historic long gallery. Everything about this corporate and wedding venue is immaculate. So, a damaged table was a problem that needed to be resolved. Sadly, the antique table had been dropped causing the green marble and granite top to break in two. Fortunately, with specialist care, it could be restored.
One for the workshop!
The complete marble tabletop weighed around 60kg. That made it quite a task to get back to the Cornwell Services workshop, where Saul could tackle the restoration project.
This antique tabletop is 50mm thick. The top 25mm are a beautiful green marble whilst the lower 25mm is granite. When it had been dropped, albeit from a low height, it had broken into two pieces. A further triangular section from the back edge came away and was missing. This presented a real restoration challenge. So how was this antique marble table restored?
Broken marble restored in 9 steps
Firstly, Saul at Cornwell Services assembled the pieces upside down. This allowed him to mark out where to incorporate stainless steel rods. These are used to put strength into the joint and prevent the marble from coming apart when moved.- Once marked, the channels were precisely ground out to a depth of 8mm and length of just over 400mm.
- Saul then glued the rods into the larger section of stone. For this he used a specially developed epoxy resin know as ‘stone glue’ which sets as hard as the stone itself.
- Once set, stone glue was then applied to both faces of the pieces. The other two channels were also filled with this special glue. All the pieces were put together whilst applying pressure for a strong, close bond. The resin took up to an hour to set each time, making it a tense and time-consuming operation!
- Once the resin had thoroughly set, the next step was to turn the piece over so that the marble was facing upwards. This surface needed to be restored to pristine condition as it would be on display. So, first Saul chamfered the edges of the crack to allow the resin to take hold when filled.
- Saul painstakingly colour matched various sections of the crack to disguise the line it had made from the front to the back of the marble. Fortunately, marble is not uniform in colour or pattern so the natural shapes, colours and veins in the marble provided the guide for creating and blending the colours.
- Meanwhile where the triangular section was missing at the back edge of the console table, this had to be gradually built back up with resin to make it robust. Attempting to fill this gap with resin in a single application was not an option because the resin would have been prone to breaking away. Again, Saul created a marbled effect with different colours added to the resin.
- Once the marble tabletop was one piece yet again and all the filling was complete, Saul sanded the resin flat, in line with the surface of the marble. To do this he used silicon carbide abrasive papers attached to a hand grinder. This quite obviously causes the marble to become scratched and dull. For this reason, the tabletop was honed and polished using progressively finer abrasives until it produced a deep glossy shine across the entire surface of the tabletop.
- Finally, a solvent based penetrating sealer was applied to make the stone impervious to oil and water-based spills, providing added protection in future.
It was a pleasure to return this marble console tabletop to its rightful place in this grand Elizabethan property in Hertfordshire. Our business client was overjoyed at how good it looked once more.
Cornwell Services are in the business of cleaning and restoring tiled stone floors and sanding and refinishing wooden floors. Restoring natural stone tabletops and worktops is also part of the service. We work for both homeowners and businesses in north London and across Hertfordshire, Essex, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. Just contact Saul on 07738 022813 if you have a restoration or cleaning project in mind.
