I mentioned in my last post that we were on a time crunch to get the major house demolition done before we could have our floors refinished. The timeline went like this: We closed on the house on a Thursday, demolished stuff on Friday-Sunday, and had the floors refinished from Tuesday-Friday of that following week. So within one week’s time, a significant amount of work had been accomplished including having the flooring throughout the entire house (bathrooms included) completely re-done and ready for us to live on, theoretically. Sounds pretty swift, right? Oh if only it had been that simple. Let me back up a bit.

Why Terrazzo? Why not?
One of the biggest reasons we purchased this home was because it had terrazzo flooring. A lot of houses that we had looked at already had tile (which we hate) and we knew that ripping up tile would be no easy task nor would we be willing to live with it. (I don’t think we had too many non-negotiables, but tile flooring was definitely one of them.) It was already a plus that this house didn’t have ANY tile to contend with and not only that, a very viable and even desirable flooring existed just underneath those nasty carpets. I began researching the costs to restore terrazzo and all my research was leading me to believe that this would be a cost effective way for us to get brand new floors in our house. Our very first choice was hardwood flooring but in doing the math, those number seemed to add up to a much larger sum when we considered that we would be paying for not only the wood itself but also the installation. We weren’t necessarily eyeing budget-friendly hardwood flooring either, so at the time, it seemed that the only wise and affordable decision was to go forward with having the terrazzo restored. We figured it would probably save us $3-$4 per square foot which meant that was more money we could put towards the many other projects we had planned. I shouldn’t forget to mention that the turnaround time for terrazzo restoration was going to be, get this, A FEW DAYS!! Say what?!?! That almost sealed the deal completely right there! Having been through one hardwood flooring installation already, we knew it would likely take a couple of weeks until we would be able to move in and that was simply time we did not have. We felt fairly confident about the decision, so I booked the job before we had even closed on the house! I mean, just look at these gorgeous inspiration images from Pinterest that had convinced me that terrazzo was gonna be siiiiick. (I don’t know why I Just said that.)

The Reality of Terrazzo Floors Under 1960’s Carpet
Before we bought the house, not much of the terrazzo was visible, except for the kitchen and bathroom areas so its condition was completely unknown. We pulled back corners of carpeting where we could but it didn’t tell us the full story at all, as we would later find out. Once we were able to get all of the carpets ripped out we began to see that the terrazzo that had been suffocating under that unimaginably hideous carpet was in bad, bad, BAD condition. Like, really really bad. Like so bad that the terrazzo expert himself said in effect “Maybe you shouldn’t do this.” As it turned out, the type of padding that was used for the carpeting was the kind that your terrazzo restoration guy is hoping and praying you don’t have (read: the worst kind) and it had done irreparable damage to the floors underneath. Cue the head-spinning, please.

Kinda nasty, right? You’ll just have to trust me when I say that these pictures don’t really convey the half of it. I mean, it’s one thing to see with yours eyes that things look bad, but when the experts are telling you that your floors are probably better off not being restored in the first place, well that just threw us over the edge. That first weekend of construction had us working extremely hard not only physically but mentally as we carefully thought, weighed, prayed and stressed over the decision we needed to make. One of the things that helped us the most was when my mom emailed a prayer that she had for us that was full of encouragement and scripture. It almost instantaneously changed my outlook going forward! I know God used her to bring us peace about our decision and we felt confident that we were making the right one.

Check back tomorrow for part 2 of our terrazzo restoration project.