Grave Cleaning & Headstone Restoration in Lafayette

Cleaning Tomb Mold and Clay in the Hub City

In Lafayette, we take All Saints' Day seriously. Families want their plots looking good. But the weather in Acadiana makes that hard. The humidity hangs in the air and turns the white above-ground tombs black with mildew. You scrub it off one year, and it is back the next.

We also deal with the ground itself. The soil here is heavy "gumbo clay." The water has nowhere to go. It sits on top of the ground for days. That standing water soaks the base of the markers and cakes them in red mud. We also see issues you don't get in other states: crawfish and fire ants building nests under the slabs, loosening the dirt until the heavy stone starts to tip over. Families searching for headstone cleaning services near me call us to whiten up those family tombs or to fix the ground after the pests have torn it up.

Black Mildew on White Tombs

Go to St. John's Cathedral Cemetery, and you see rows of white tombs. But look closer, and many are covered in black streaks. The damp air feeds a hard black algae that clings to the plaster and marble.

You can't just pressure wash these. The plaster on these old tombs is fragile. A pressure washer is too rough. It will strip the white finish right off and ruin the brickwork underneath. We use a slow-acting cleaner instead. It dissolves the mildew so we can just rinse it away without damaging the finish.

Gumbo Mud Stains

Lafayette clay is like cement. It splashes up in the rain and dries hard. The iron in the dirt sinks into the stone pores, leaving a deep orange rust stain that regular soap can't move.

We wash the mud off, but often an orange shadow remains. We treat that with a specialized paste that pulls the discoloration out of the rock. It cleans up the base so the stone looks new again.

Crawfish and Fire Ants

It sounds strange to people not from here, but crawfish are a problem in cemeteries. In the wet months, they build those mud chimneys. They dig tunnels right under the concrete slabs. Fire ants do the same thing. They move so much dirt that the headstone loses support and starts to lean.

We have to flatten the mounds and fill the voids. We pack gravel and sand back under the slab to make it solid again. We stabilize the ground so the marker stops moving.

Cleaning Ceramic Photos

Many tombs in Cajun Country have those porcelain photos (cameos) of the deceased. The sun bakes dirt and pollen right onto the surface. Eventually, the image gets so hazy you can hardly recognize the person.

We treat these like jewelry. We polish them by hand to strip away that film. We have to be extremely gentle because the old glue gets brittle, and we don't want to pop the photo off the stone while we are working.

Service Costs in Lafayette

Whitewashing a large family tomb is a big project. Resetting a slab undermined by crawfish takes labor and materials. I need to see the plot to give you a fair number. We have an online tool that helps. You choose the cemetery, upload a photo, and we send you a clear price.