What actually damages a marble benchtop.

Marble is durable enough for a working kitchen. It is also softer and more reactive than granite, quartz or porcelain, and it lets you know. The four sources of damage, in the order they usually happen.

Acid: the etch

Lemon, lime, vinegar, wine, tomato, soft drink, fruit juice, salad dressing, and most bathroom and kitchen sprays. Anything acidic reacts with the calcium carbonate and dissolves a microscopic layer of the polished surface. What is left is a dull, pale, slightly rough mark that people call a stain and is not one. Nothing has gone into the stone; the surface has been changed.

The test: an etch is lighter and duller than the stone around it, and often the exact shape of a glass base or a spill. A stain is darker. Wiping an etch quickly stops it getting worse. It does not restore the surface, and no sealer prevents it, because the sealer is inside the stone and the acid is reacting with the face. An etch comes out by honing the affected area and polishing it back to match, which is most of what a benchtop restoration is.

Grit and drag: the scratch

Knives, cookware, ceramic plates, appliance feet, and anything with grit under it, dragged rather than lifted. Fine scratches are hard to see in daylight and easy to see under a pendant light or across a dark stone, and they reduce the depth of the polish over a wide area before any single one is obvious.

Boards for cutting, felt under the things that live on the bench, and lifting rather than sliding. Scratches, like etches, are corrected by honing and polishing.

Oil and colour: the stain

A stain is a substance that has gone into the pores: cooking oil, red wine, turmeric, coffee, cosmetics, hair dye, ink, rust from a tin left wet. Whether marble stains easily depends on the stone, the finish, the state of the sealer and how long the spill sat there. Water alone rarely stains sealed marble, but mineral-rich water and soap residue leave rings around taps and dispensers, and standing water that darkens the stone is telling you the sealer has worn.

A stain is drawn out with a poultice matched to what went in, where it can be drawn out at all. Scrubbing spreads it and scratches the finish. Some old stains, and some that went in under a coating, do not come out fully, and it is better to know that before the work than after.

Heat and impact: the chip and the crack

Marble handles a warm room and does not handle a pan straight from the flame. Direct heat dulls the finish and can open a crack along an existing fissure, more so on a thin top or near a seam. Trivets near the cooktop and the coffee machine. Chips come from impact at exposed edges, which is why they cluster at the sink cut-out and the island corners. Small chips are filled with a matched material and refinished; a crack is assessed first, because a filled crack over movement reopens.

Time: the cumulative one

The most expensive damage is the slow kind. No single spill or wrong cleaner ruins a benchtop, but a year of a multipurpose spray, spills left to sit, a worn sealer and a well-meaning go with a polishing kit leaves a top that is dull, etched, scratched and uneven all at once. Honed marble hides the etching better than polished; it does not stain or scratch any less.

What comes out in place

Etching, scratching, dullness and most stains: honing, polishing, poultice and sealing on the bench, in the kitchen, in one visit for most tops. Chips: filled and refinished. Cracks: assessed, and stabilised where they can be.

Keeping it there is not complicated. A neutral stone cleaner, spills wiped when they happen, boards and trivets, felt under the fruit bowl, and a few drops of water on the bench every so often: if they bead, the sealer is working, and if they soak in and darken the stone, it is time to reseal.