These days most marble countertops are polished with machine polishers. These machines have small diamonds that remove the surface layer of the marble and leave the remaining stone intact. The advantage of using machines for marble kitchen countertops is that it is much faster and less laborious process. It usually takes about an hour to polish the surface using a machine.



Homeowners need to remember to reseal the surface of the marble countertop once it has been polished. Since marble is a natural stone that is very porous in nature it gets easily stained. By applying a layer of protective coating on the surface of the countertop, homeowners can protect their investment.

Machine polishes have been used to polish and provide sheen to the surface of slab countertops only over the past forty years. Before that, the marble countertops were polished by hand. This was a laborious and time consuming process.

Earlier, marble countertop polishing was considered a separate semi-skilled trade. Polishers spent their entire day rubbing the marble to produce the sheen on its surface. Often, it would take a team of polishers to work on a slab countertop and even then it would take a week to get the stone completely polished.

When marble countertops were hand polished, each slab would be propped upright against a bench with the edge to be polished uppermost. The polishing was done using various grades of carborrundum stone blocks. The process usually continued till six different grits of Carborrandum blocks were used.