Wiley’s Marble Restoration
Not Afraid to Take on the Big Jobs
Joel Davis
Special Contributor
Photos Courtesy Jeff Wiley
Hover over photos to read caption
For Jeff Wiley, success in the stone industry is all about being hands-on rather than trying to grow his business ever larger.
Owner of Wiley’s Marble Restoration in Portland, OR, Wiley has spent nearly 16 years providing the personal touch while offering natural stone repair and refinishing services.
“Over the years, I could have built this business,” he said.
“I’ve never advertised and kept my head down. The only thing I didn’t want to do was start hiring employees.”
This has been the biggest factor in the success of Wiley’s business.
“We’re doing it ourselves,” he said.
“I’m not just hiring crews and hoping the guys I’m sending out care enough about my business to do it right.”
Wiley said he’s known small shops that expanded and lost their edge as they brought in employees who weren’t as dedicated as the owners, something that he is not wiling to risk.
“The quality of their work just went downhill.”
The individual approach seems to have proven successful over the year.
“We just have no end of referrals and calls without any advertising,” Wiley said.
“Just so many people out there now have been using us for years, our reputation has gotten around.”
The stone industry is a livelihood that is dear to Wiley’s heart.
“I really do enjoy stone,” he said.
“I have this term I like to use, it came from a movie, ‘romancing the stone.’”
Wiley’s Marble Restoration follows what has been a Wiley family tradition for about 86 years.
“My family has been in the natural stone business here in Portland for four generations,” he said.
“My son who works with me full-time is the fourth generation.”
Wiley’s pedigree in the stone industry stretches back to his grandfather, J.A. Wiley, who started a stone flooring company in Portland.
“I grew up in the marble business,” he said.
“My grandfather started working with stone back in 1927, and then in 1952 my father took over the business. I grew up working with him.”
After taking a break from the family business to pursue other interests, Wiley returned in 1989 to work at the Stone Center, now his brother’s business an offshoot of J.A. Wiley Co. and started in 1952.
“I started working in the shop,” he said.
“Then I was running the shop. Then I was running the installation crews. We installed hundreds of kitchens. I was always the guy that went out and fixed the little issues we’d have on the job.”
The toll of overseeing employees proved an impetus for Wiley to look for another niche to serve.
“I was basically being run ragged by trying to run a crew of 15 people and taking on all these responsibilities and trying to get other people to work like I wanted them to do,” he said.
“It finally dawned on me that I could make a full-time job just doing all the little repairs and refinishes.”
In 1997, Wiley left the company to found his own business. “I starting doing refinishing, repairs, and restoration and had to learn a whole new trade,” he said.
“There is a lot of difference between refinishing and fabrication.”
Since that time, Wiley has enjoyed the satisfaction that a small-scale family operation can bring.
He works with his son Jaren, daughter Jenifer, and wife Buarian (Boua).
“I have a little shop here at my house,” he said.
“I will be working on these things by myself in my shop at nighttime, and it’s amazing to me. I really enjoy doing the hands-on work myself and refinishing the stone and looking at patterns.”
Wiley serves a niche market that has few providers to serve customers.
“There is very little competition in refinishing and restoration —certainly little in residential and small commercial size,” he said.
“Among the competition I do have, I am by far the only one who has been working with stone for years and years and years, who actually knows installation and fabrication.”
This leads to a breadth of expertise that Wiley’s competitors can’t match, he said.
“We get into some pretty radical modifications of countertops in finished homes. What really makes us special is the level of skill and experience and ability to do things way beyond refinishing.”
One of the strengths of Wiley’s Marble Restoration is “our ability to go into a high-end finished home and do some really radical repairs or refinishing and not make any mess,” he said.
Natural stone repair and refinishing involves an ever-challenging process of dealing with an endless variation of material combinations and environmental conditions. “I am learning every time,” Wiley said.
The first visit to a site involves a survey of conditions and an inventory of possible tools to use, Wiley said.
“We’ve developed quite a kit bag,” he said. “I spend the first few minutes just figuring out what kind of pads to use, to get where I need to be on this material. The conditions you encounter and type of material and the placement are just creative challenges every day you have to overcome. We have experience from having faced this challenge so many times.”
Marble used in kitchens presents ongoing challenges for Wiley and the affected homeowners.
“Since day one, when I started doing restoration, I’ve been confronted with the issue of people having marble in their kitchens,” he said.
“That was 15 years ago, and people are still putting marble slabs in their kitchens.”
Wiley can repair the damage when acidic substances such as lemon juice or vinegar eat away at the marble, but the big question is how to prevent further incidents, he said.
“We can refinish it, we can make it look like new —sometimes better than new— but I can’t do anything to keep the etching from happening again immediately.”
Solving this problem has occupied Wiley for much of the past 16 years.
“There isn’t any penetrating sealer that can stop the etching from happening,” he said.
“We’ve been trying for years to come up for some kind of solution. We’ve gone down many roads.”
Wiley believes he’s getting closer to a solution. He is currently testing an approach, which he calls an old world finish self-care system, in two kitchens.
“What I finally realized is the only solution is to come up with a type of finish that they can actually buff out etching themselves and maintain the counter with hand pads.”
Another challenge is the use of different materials, such as granite and limestone, in close proximity in countertops and other items.
“When this stuff wears down having dissimilar materials in the same area is challenging from a refinishing standpoint, because you can’t use the same (treatment),” Wiley said.
One example Wiley gave was work done on a black granite lobby floor, which incorporated different materials. “If it was all polished granite, we would have done it by bringing in big machines,” he said.
“Because you can’t do that, it has to be done by hand. We basically polished every single tile individually like we would do on a countertop.”
Running a small business and getting to offer his individual, personal attention to each project has meant a great deal to Wiley.
“I certainly enjoy that I can do this business on my own and make good money,” he said.
“Because the thing that frustrated me when I was running crews was trying to get other people to work the ways I felt they needed to, to get things done right.”
Doing the work himself is a source of contentment for Wiley.
“I like doing the hands-on,” he said.
“The least stressful time is when I’m actually doing the physical work.”
Visit www.wileysmarble.com for more information on Wiley’s Marble Restoration.