About terrazzo, and about us

Where terrazzo comes from

Terrazzo started with Italian marble workers, who took scraps and chips of marble home and pressed them into their terraces. It began with them pressing the scraps into clay, and over the years the choice matrix shifted to cement. Chips of marble, or glass set in cement and ground smooth: the idea hasn't changed much since.

By the mid-20th century, terrazzo was the material of choice for airports, schools and public buildings, because nothing else lasted as long or looked as good doing it.

Terrazzo in Sarasota

Terrazzo in Sarasota homes took off in the mid-fifties. Architects of the Sarasota School of Architecture ran it through their houses and out to the glass, and builders across the county poured it into the bungalows and ranch homes of every new neighborhood. Long before that, it was installed in businesses. Many of the stores along Main Street downtown have terrazzo floors. Most have been covered with carpet, tile or vinyl, and some owners have started taking those off to bring the terrazzo back.

Most people around Sarasota understand that a properly restored terrazzo floor is the focal point of a home. If a visitor has never seen diamond-polished terrazzo, the first question is usually, "What is it?"

You might have it and not know

Many neighborhoods around Sarasota have terrazzo flooring hiding under something else. The first clue is usually your front step. If that's terrazzo, it almost definitely runs throughout the house.

We're often asked whether tile can be removed and the floor restored. It can. We remove thousands of square feet of tile every year and restore the terrazzo underneath. If another company didn't want to restore your floor because of tile, give us a call. We always recommend letting us do the tile removal, pull the tack strip and cut the nails, because doing it right saves the floor a lot of damage.

How we restore it

No matter what flooring you have on top, we can usually remove it and restore your terrazzo. We use an all-dry diamond grinding, honing and polishing method with HEPA dust collection. We never use topical sealers. When we polish a floor it shines like glass without chemicals or coatings on top, and since no coating or finish is as hard as your terrazzo, there's no soft layer on top to scratch.

Most topical sealers show widespread scratches within six months. Our diamond-polished floors last about ten years in normal use, and a repolish at that point takes fewer steps than the first restoration. During honing we apply a densifier to harden the cement, and at the end a penetrating sealer that guards against oil- and water-based stains as well as acid etching, protecting the floor from the inside rather than from on top. We chose that sealer after rigorous testing, and since switching to it, calls about etching have become rare.

Around Sarasota, we've restored homes in Indian Beach/Sapphire Shores, South Gate, Gulf Gate and the Bay Shore area, as well as on all the beaches.

Who we are

Terrazzo Sarasota has been restoring floors since 2006. For most of those years it was part of SafeDry, where James Martin managed the job sites, restored the terrazzo and matched the patchwork. If SafeDry did your floor, James was probably the person you dealt with from the day work started until it was finished.

When SafeDry closed, James's company picked up where SafeDry left off. Today, Terrazzo Sarasota's services are provided by Terrazzo Artisans, and the phone number is the same one you'd have called years ago.

Services provided by Terrazzo Artisans. Visit terrazzoartisans.com