Grave Cleaning & Headstone Restoration in Fort Wayne

Battling Moisture at the Three Rivers

Fort Wayne is wet. We sit at the junction of three rivers, and the ground stays saturated. That moisture is the enemy of stone.

Walk through Lindenwood or the Catholic Cemetery. You will see gray granite turned green by algae and moss. The damp air feeds this growth. Families searching for headstone cleaning services near me often think the stone is ruined. It isn't. It is just buried under biological grime. We strip that layer off and get the memorial back to looking respectful.

River Silt and Flood Residue

The water table here is high. In spring, the lower sections of older cemeteries flood. The water eventually recedes, but the mud stays.

This river silt dries into a hard, gray crust. It fills in the lettering like cement. Taking a steel blade to it is a mistake. You’ll scratch the polish long before you chip that mud loose. We saturate the crust with water. Once it softens up, we pick the mud out of the letters using bamboo skewers. Bamboo gets the dirt out, but it is too soft to scratch the polish.

Sinking in Indiana Clay

The heavy clay soil in Allen County moves constantly. Wet clay freezes in winter and pushes upward. In spring, it turns into soup.

Heavy monuments sink deep into the soft ground. We also see stones tipped over by the frost heave. You can't just prop them up. For proper tombstone repair and restoration, we fix the foundation. We dig out the mud and replace it with a pad of crushed angular gravel. This drains the water. If the ground under the stone stays dry, the monument stays level.

Industrial Soot Removal

Decades of factory smoke turned our historic cemeteries black. That soot didn't just blow away. It bonded to the limestone and granite.

Rain won't wash this carbon crust off. It hides the natural stone color completely. We use a chemical poultice to remove it. The paste sits on the stone and draws the black grime out of the pores. We rinse it off, revealing the white limestone that has been hidden since the factory days.

Lichen on Rough Granite

Many monuments here have rough, "rock pitch" edges. That uneven texture traps dirt and spores.

Lichen takes hold in those crevices. Its roots eat into the stone crystals. Scrape it off dry, and you chip the granite. We kill it first. We soak the stone in a biological cleaner. The lichen releases its grip, and we wash it away without damaging the jagged rock face.

Hard Water Haze

Cemeteries run sprinklers all summer. Our well water is hard—loaded with minerals.

Sprinklers hit the hot stone. The water disappears, but the calcium stays. Year after year, this builds a white scale that clouds the polish and covers the lettering. We use a buffered acidic cleaner to dissolve the calcium. We neutralize the acid quickly to save the polish, but the white haze is gone.

Cleaning Soft Limestone

The old tablets in Concordia and Parker Cemetery are dissolving. They are made of soft limestone.

Acid rain eats the surface, and mildew turns it black. This is delicate work. A pressure washer will destroy these stones. We use soft brushes and a gentle biocide. We kill the rot without scrubbing away the fragile surface.

Bronze Plaque Restoration

Bronze veteran markers turn chalky green in our humidity. The corrosion eats the surface detail.

We restore them by hand. We strip the old lacquer and clean the metal down to the bare surface. We heat the bronze to dry it out completely. Then we seal it with a new clear coat. The rich gold color returns, and the text becomes legible again.

Service Costs in Fort Wayne

Prices vary. Resetting a large tablet takes more labor than washing a flat marker. We check the grave site to give you an accurate quote.