If you have terrazzo floors from way ‘back in the day’, then you know that they can handle years of foot traffic and general abuse without cracking or wearing away. Is restoring terrazzo a doable thing?
After a long time, these floors can look …tired, to say the least. Worn, soiled, dull, and just plain old looking. Maybe the floor has paint drips on it from previous years remodeling, scratches from dragging heavy items on it and stains and spills that you can’t clean out no matter what you or your cleaning company tries. Because of this, you might look at a floor like that and wonder if the terrazzo can ever be revived again.
Answer: In almost every case, restoring terrazzo is a viable option. In other words, we can refinish it and it will look fabulous all over again!
Terrazzo is somewhat of a hybrid material. It’s composed of chips of marble embedded in either concrete (the old way) or epoxy (the newer way). In any event, we can diamond hone and polish the marble – we do it all the time. As a matter of fact, we also diamond hone and polish concrete floors all the time. In brief, restoring terrazzo is doable as long as you use a contractor who knows marble polishing and concrete polishing.
An example was an old downtown Boston office building at 10 Milk Street, in Post Office Square with terrazzo floors in the elevator lobby and main hallway of an upper floor. The building was from 1903, and the original terrazzo was showing its age. The General Contractor called us in while getting the space ready for a new company to move in on one of the upper floors.
When Restoring Terrazzo, Every Project Has Its Challenges…
A few problems right from the start:
1. Some of the terrazzo had been covered over by thinset cement and ceramic tile on top. Tile was gone already, but thinset cement is very hard to scrape off without damaging the terrazzo
2. Over the years, painters had dropped tons of paint drips and splatters all over the surface – no drop cloths for these ‘craftsmen’!
3. They had obviously dragged large heavy objects like appliances across the floor, leaving heavy scratches that aren’t always possible to grind out.
4. Grout had corroded in multiple areas, requiring regrouting for a finished look.
5. The construction schedule was a bit behind, so in order to get done on time, we really needed to do this job at night so the construction company could have a full crew working each day with no delay.
6. Oh, and by the way, there was no real running water, so we had to buy bottled water and bring gallons of it up the elevator to wash the floor! (Hey, it’s probably the only floor in town that can claim ‘washed in natural Poland Spring Water’!)
The before and after photos are above. If you click on each photo, you’ll get a larger screen view so you can see more detail.
We worked nights only, scraped old thinset off, honed the floor, gently removed about 4,932 paint spots (!), regrouted the joints and polished it up to a good shine, ready for business, on time, without causing any delay in the construction schedule and with no extra charges.
If you’re considering restoring a terrazzo floor or just covering it over with a different floorcovering, why not give us a call or fill out the form to get a quote on refinishing it instead? From a sustainability perspective, your building may even be helping to reduce/re-use and recycle. And you might save a lot of money and time and retain the original look of your property.
If you’d like to get a quote, you can call or text us at 617-221-4002 or simply fill out the form below.
Our contact information:
Act One – Marble and Tile
15 Main Street # 138
Watertown MA 02472-4403
617-221-4002 Text or Call
