Glass, metal and stone restoration on a 28-story Atlanta tower

1100 Peachtree is a 28-story octagonal office tower in Midtown Atlanta. Its facade is an unusually demanding mix: precast stone, granite and marble, metal accents, and expansive architectural glass across every elevation.

Years of mineral staining

The building had been washed for years with tap water and dish soap. That combination leaves mineral deposits behind rather than removing them, and the staining had spread across three different materials at once: the window glass, the anodized aluminum frames, and the precast and natural stone. Each one needed a different chemistry. Cleaning them all the same way was what caused the problem in the first place.

The glass

Technicians restored the windows with Glass ReSurfacer Final Polish, which removes the corrosion and etching that mineral deposits leave in the glass surface itself. Once the glass was clear, Glass Defender was applied as an invisible coating to keep new staining and minor scratching off it.

The frames

The anodized aluminum carried soap scum and early corrosion. Metal ReSurfacer removed both without stripping the anodized finish, which is the part most general-purpose cleaners get wrong. Metal Protector MD went on afterward as the barrier layer.

The stone

The precast was cleaned with a combination of Stone Restore HD and Stone Restore CB2. The granite and marble needed the gentler Stone Restore PS to come back stain-free. Every stone surface then received Leach Stop, which blocks the mineral leaching and water penetration that had been feeding the staining for years.

How it held up

The work was completed in 2007. Seventeen years later the facade is still clear, still protected, and has not needed redoing. That is the number worth paying attention to: not how good it looked the week the crew left, but how it looked after seventeen Atlanta summers.