Grave Cleaning & Headstone Restoration in Nashville

Cleaning Limestone and Removing Red Clay in Nashville

Nashville sits on a bed of limestone. It is the same stone used for thousands of older markers in the City Cemetery and Mount Olivet. This rock is soft. It drinks water. In our humid summers, that moisture stays inside the stone and feeds heavy black algae. You see it everywhere: white angels and tablets turned completely black. This isn't just dirt sitting on the surface. It is living growth that eats into the carving.

The ground is the other problem. Middle Tennessee soil is heavy clay. When it rains, that red mud splashes up against the base of the monuments. It soaks deep into the pores. You can't just hose it off. The iron in the clay dyes the stone deep orange. Families searching for headstone cleaning services near me call us to kill that black algae and to pull the red clay stains out of the stone.

Killing Black Algae on Limestone

Limestone is fragile. If you hit it with a pressure washer, you blow the inscription right off the face. You turn the stone into gravel. Scrubbing with a wire brush creates scratches that just trap more dirt later.

We clean it by killing the growth. We use a biocide that soaks deep into the stone. It attacks the roots of the algae and lichen. The black stain turns brown and dies. We rinse it away with low pressure. The stone gets white again because the infestation is gone, not because we scraped a layer off.

Extracting Red Clay Stains

The red clay in Davidson County acts like a dye. It soaks right into the base of the headstone. Scrubbing the surface does nothing because the orange color is buried deep in the pores.

We use a chemical paste to suck it out. We cover the stain with a poultice. It pulls the iron stain out of the stone pores. We wash it off, and the orange ring is gone.

Leveling Stones in Shifting Soil

We get enough freeze and thaw cycles here to mess up foundations. The ground heaves in February and shrinks in July. Stones start tipping. If a monument leans too far, it snaps its own base or falls over.

We fix this by digging. We hoist the stone and remove the bad soil. We replace it with crushed, angular gravel. We pack it tight. Gravel locks together and drains water, so the frost doesn't push the stone around as much. We reset the monument on this solid pad so it stands straight.

Cleaning Urban Grime and Exhaust

With all the building happening downtown, the air is thick with grit. It settles on the monuments. Rain turns that dust into a thick paste that bakes onto the stone. It fills the carved letters so you can't read the name.

We spray a cleaner that breaks the bond holding the dirt. It loosens the gunk so we can brush it out of the lettering. It cleans the stone without scratching the polish. Once we rinse the sludge away, the inscription is sharp and readable again.

Restoring Bronze Markers

The humidity here rots the protective coating on bronze markers. Once that seal breaks, the metal turns green and chalky. It looks neglected.

We strip the dead coating and the corrosion down to bare metal. We sand the lettering to make it pop against the background. We heat the bronze until it is bone dry. Then we spray a new industrial sealer. This keeps the humidity out and stops the metal from turning green.

Repairing Mower Scuffs

Landscapers run tight to the stones. We see black rubber marks on the corners and chipped edges where the mower deck hit the granite.

We wipe the rubber marks off with a solvent that melts the tire residue. For chips, we use diamond files. We grind the sharp, broken edge into a smooth bevel. It looks finished and stops the mower from catching that same jagged spot again.

Service Costs in Nashville

We don't need to meet you at the cemetery to give you a quote. We have fixed pricing for all our services, from algae removal to leveling. Check our subscription builder to see the exact cost for your plot.