What drink has done this to my fireplace?

[TreesWelliesKnees]

Adult DS had a small gathering of his usually thoughtful, lovely friends last night. This morning I have discovered this on my dark marble mantelpiece. It looks bleached! Any ideas on what might have caused it? As far as I can tell from the recycling bin they were drinking Pepsi, vodka, wine...

What are my options for dealing with it? I'm frankly not attached to the dark marble so if I find out what it is I'm tempted to do it all over!

That looks really good. It's especially pleasing when you've put the effort in yourself.

Following now for future updates!

I think you're doing a wonderful job OP and it looks superb!

I love this thread!

OP it looks marvellous. Congratulations on the work!

It's looking great, thanks for updating!

Wow that’s fantastic, bit of a result there.

personlly though I’d give it all a coat of black matt stove paint. Save the effort and will look the same.

Oh, that is so tempting for the underneath... But I feel I owe it to the fireplace to do it properly. Daft, I know.

Definitely not, good on you. And you will feel proud after.

Looking brilliant!! Can we see a photo of the whole thing? Once you feel it’s ready for its close up of course!

I'll come back with the full ta-da but it might be a few days - it's hard work!

It is looking great and WD40 is amazing stuff for slate. Looking forward to the updates. Thanks for sharing. Agree with others this has been a great thread.

I love stumbling across a thread I hadn't seen before so that I get to the "ta-da!" bit all in one go. Amazing work OP, can't wait to see it!

Looks fab!

Oooh this is exciting! Looking forward to the full reveal! Good luck OP.

I think, if I may be so bold, that what you'll end up with will be much better than the original. And, it will all be your own hard work. Very satisfying.

Yep, anything acidic. Fruit juice, fizzy etc.

Just clicked on this thread today and from the first picture I was going to comment that it looked like paint effect!

Beautiful result.

It's was the same, original slate painted in a marble effect so we stripped it back and it is lovely.

Enjoy your lovely new fireplace.

This is such a lovely thread to have stumbled across on a Sunday morning. It's looking great Trees, well done.
When you've finished it'll look like this (pic below). You could also get some slate oil (Amazon do it) to 'feed' it then use your WD40 and buff it to a shine.

LOVE this thread and the transformation!
More please MN's.

So... here it is! I'd like to say it's truly finished, but there is some touching up to do - little marks where I think I'll have to use some black paint. Also the wall behind the mantelpiece needs a bit of a touch up - it did not occur to me to use masking tape! The white lines were gold and are scored in - I'm not quite sure what to do with them. I'm pretty pleased with the result and am telling myself that it doesn't matter that it's not quite perfect. It's old and it has a story (about feckless 19 year olds and cans of lemonade)!

This was it before.

It looks amazing and so much smarter and stylish than before. Apologies if that's rude.

The current finished version looks much better than the marble effect version. Would some gold leaf in the indented lines look good do you think?

Love it , wow.