I would like to inform all that we have a lovely second home that has a full living basement that was built in mid 1940's. The floor and outer walls are cement. thick. the floors through this basement dwelling. (close to 2000 square feet.) were covered with apprx 9"x9 " Brown and beige marble looking tiles in some of the rooms and Dark green and light green marble looking tile in rest of rooms. They had to be scrubbed clean, rinsed and then waxed to look nice and they did but, anything wet ruin the beauty. While we were gone, We had a toilet water issue upstairs that run and filled the basement with 1 foot of water. Of course this soaked the tile up and also ruined the insulation and sand plaster on the walls. We rushed to get the mess cleaned up, took up all the tile without thinking about asbestos. We would like to know if any of you know what the content of these tile might have been, please inform us. It was easy to take the tile up and out. However, a lot of the tile left the black tar paper backing stuck to the floor. We are at the point of finishing this portion of this home, but, is the black stuff that is still sticking dangerous? or can we clip I t out ourselves. no one seems to know the content. we will not be putting any type of square tile back in. and do not want to have a problem with asbestos.

I missed out on a house built about 1880 when I was looking (long story, but there was another offer I wasn't told about, otherwise I'd have bid right there)...anyway, this house had four fireplaces, and the owners were the children of the original buyers. All four fireplaces had wooden mantels, but the surrounding area of the firebox was covered in tiles about 1" by 3". All the tiles were a mottled medium green color, which I also remember from my grandmother's house. In my neighborhood (a historic district), almost all the fireplaces have tile rather than marble...I don't know if this is a Columbus quirk or what, but it seems to me from reading that marble may have been used in more expensive houses and earlier in the century, say about 1860. Upshot is, marble depends on how fancy your house was originally and it's age--the latter part of the nineteenth century had tile surrounds with wooden mantels, while earlier houses commonly had slate mantels with iron surrounds between that and the firebox--like those in a friend's house, and my sister's old rental, built in 1815.

I just had a glazed porcelain tile put in and the GC was asking what kind of sealer finish we wanted. I was definitely going to go with the matte, but you are saying we shouldn't do a sealer at all? The only place you should use a sealer, if at all, would be on the grout. There is no "pro" to using it on a galzed tile, and the con is that I've already discussed what happens with a finish sealer. As for a penetrating sealer, it won't penetrate a glaze, and so it dries on top of the tile into a nice white haze that's hell to get off. No sealer on the tile.

Thank you. That makes sense and the multi-point on the 2nd door does sound like what I'm wanting. As it turns out the multi-point lock this manufacturer uses, won't work on the secondary door. I guess all locks are not created equal and this particular one doesn't bolt into the head jamb and threshold. Regardless, you help me better communicate my needs to the manufacturer.