Frederick M. Hueston, PhD

I was listening to the Old Geezers and Liars club at my favorite greasy spoon when my phone vibrated on the lunch counter, jolting me awake and nearly making me dump my coffee in my lap.

“Stone Detective, here. Can I help you?” The voice on the other end sounded desperate. She told me she was the manager of a local hotel and that they had a slate lobby floor that had some type of coating on it, and no one they called could take it off. She said the coating was dark and ugly, and she had a major inspection coming up next month. 

This certainly sounded like a case for me. I gulped down my cup of jo, hopped in the ole Woody and headed across town.

I pulled up to the front entrance and was greeted by a tall, blonde lady smoking one of those long, skinny cigars. She was very attractive, but it looked kind of odd for a lady to be smoking a smelly stogie. She threw the cigar on the ground and ran right over to me. Not sure how she knew it was me, but she looked like she was about to cry.

“Oh, Mr. Stone Detective, I need to get this stuff off the floor. I hope you can help,” she said in a sexy, alto-register voice. Must have been those cigars that gave her the smoky, vibrant voice.

She led me into the lobby and what I saw was one of the most horrific floor jobs I had seen in my entire career — and this old stone detective has been around a while. The floor was black, and there was so much dirt embedded in the coating, they could have turned the lobby into a dirt race track.

I told her that I would have to perform some tests on it, to figure out what it would take to remove it. She glared and me, rolled her baby blues and said that she had six different companies in there testing and they couldn’t even budge it. I told her that I knew “a little bit about stone,” and could more than likely find something to take it off.

She said OK and asked when I could perform the tests. I told her in a few days. She stormed off and said, “Well, OK, then.”

The next few days I spent gathering up all the chemicals I needed to try and fix this mess. I called her and arranged to go there that night.

I roped off a small area and started my tests. I first tried a standard stripper and, not to my surprise, it did nothing. I then tried several solvents, and it hardly reacted. My final test was a product that was a safe stripper. This usually works, but it takes a long dwell time — and I do mean long! We are not talking minutes here, but hours. I decided I would wait about two hours.

As I as waiting, one of the maintenance guys came up to me and started talking— and boy did he sing like a canary. He told me that they put all kinds of finishes on that floor.

I asked him if he knew which ones. Well, Lady Luck was with me that night, because he said he still had all the empty cans in the back room.

I asked him if I could see them and he said, “Sure thing, follow me.”

We went into a small closet and he showed me container after container of all kinds of floor finishes. I read each label, and each one was your standard floor finish, which should easily come up with standard floor strippers. 

And then he brought out a metal can and I about had a hemorrhage, right there, on the spot. 

It was an epoxy paint, and if you know anything about epoxy, it does not come off easily.

OK, long story short, it took about four hours of dwell time but it all came off.

I was able to show some great results to the tall, husky-voiced blonde the next morning and I swear she practically jumped in my arms and said, “My hero!” At least that’s what I told my buddies at the greasy spoon the next day.

Oh, well, rescuing damsels in distress is all in the line of duty, and who’s to say that I didn’t save the day?

The Stone Detective is a fictional character created by Dr. Frederick M. Hueston, PhD, written to be entertaining and educational. Dr. Fred has written over 33 books on stone and tile installations, fabrication and restoration and also serves as an expert for many legal cases across the world. You can send your email comments to him at fhueston@stoneforensics.com.