The Experiment of Etching Marble: Part One

Okay, we all know marble etches. Right?
Right?
Well, I guess we all do not know that marble etches.
Let me give you a little back story to how this experiment came about...
I had a customer put Crema Cappuccino marble in her Master Bath about a year ago. I was very clear with her that it would etch. She chose not to hone the surface and kept it polished. I don't want to talk people out of marble, I just try to educate them on the pros and cons. She wanted to use marble in her Powder Bath as well, but ended up using granite because she knew it was her grand kids that would mainly be using the Powder Bath and she worried that the etching might be out of control.
So, she was happy with using the marble in her Master. She knew it may etch, she loved it, it looked beautiful and all was good.
It did end up etching in a few spots after it was in for about 6 months. I think it was aftershave or maybe soap that etched it. It really didn't look bad, you could only see it in certain lights or looking at it at a certain angle. She knew that this was going to happen and it didn't really bother her.
UNTIL some Not-Smart-Girl at one of our suppliers misled her!
My customer was in their showroom looking for tile for another project. In passing she mentioned how her marble had etched. The Not-Smart-Girl said "Oh, they must not have sealed it FIVE times with BulletProof Sealer! It doesn't etch if you use five coats of BulletProof."
Of course I immediately get a phone call from my customer asking if we had sealed the marble five times with BulletProof. Of course I said no, we had sealed it with another brand of sealer twice, but it didn't matter I told her, the BulletProof would not prevent the etching.
I mentioned this story to a couple of other people in the stone business and I guess the rumor had been going around. They too had heard that five coats of BulletProof was the miracle trick.
I still didn't believe it. Etching is a chemical reaction. Anything acidic that gets on a calcium based stone WILL etch the surface! This is why granite doesn't etch, granite is not calcium based like marble, travertine and limestones are.
So I decided to dispel the myth. I should be on MythBusters. :)
This was such a long process that I decided to show the experiment over a couple of blog posts.
Here is part one:
I got two pieces of Carrara marble. One is polished, one is honed (honed is a matte finish).
Corey at Italia Granite was nice enough to seal one portion of each piece with two coats of Tiger Ager. Tiger Ager is a more expensive sealer, but it's supposed to be a pretty awesome. Two coats is the recommended amount.
I then took the pieces home and sealed one section of each with five coats of BulletProof. It took me all freaking night, because you have to wait an allotted amount of time between each coat.
I left one section of the polished piece unsealed.
Last, I left the pieces alone for about a week, so they had plenty of time to cure.
Below is a picture of the polished Carrara after it has been all sealed.

Here is the honed Carrara all sealed up.

On Saturday night I went to town finding stuff in my kitchen that I thought may etch or stain the pieces. I tried to use foods that I thought people would actually drip or spill on their countertops.
I used...

• lemon juice
• hot sauce
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• berry jam
• Hershey's chocolate syrup
• honey
• peanut butter

I let everything sit on the marble pieces for 10 minutes before I wiped them off.

Here is the picture of everything on there. I also put a lemon slice on each area and left that overnight, but we'll talk about that later.

Tomorrow I'll show you the results!

Would you like to predict what stained and what etched? Leave me a comment, I'd love to hear your predictions!

I also talked about granite etching here and here.

This post is sponsored by Italia Granite.