Terrazzo repair and hole filling

The three things we fill

Very little of what we repair means anything is wrong with the terrazzo itself. Usually it's just the accumulated damage of decades of flooring and home maintenance.

• Damage from old flooring: tack strip and nail holes, gouges from tile removal, and anchors
• Trenching cut through the slab for plumbing or electrical work, usually closed back up with gray cement
• Holes drilled for termite treatment or for door hardware
• Older repairs done with cement, grout, or bondo that never matched the floor.

Matching

A patch is matched two ways: the marble aggregate has to match the size and mix already in your floor, and the resin around it has to match the matrix color. We carry over 70 varieties and sizes of aggregate to match from, so you get the closest match possible.

Color matching happens in broad spectrum, high CRI light whenever possible, which in practice means indirect natural light. Matching under work lights or a shop mix increases the risk that the accuracy of the match changes with changing lighting.

Holes are usually not filled during the main grind. They get filled after the first stage of honing and then brought up to meet the rest of the floor. This allows us to get the best possible match while still blending the patches in with the floor on a microscopic scale.

Tack strip: cutting beats filling

Carpet tack strip is nailed into the floor, and how the strip comes up decides how much repair you are paying for. Done properly, the nails are cut rather than pulled, and the floor is left with little to fill. Done with a pry bar, an average three bedroom house comes out with a few hundred holes around the perimeter and a fresh spall at a good number of them.

We offer tack strip removal with the nails cut, and it is the better outcome no matter who does the work.

Volume and difficulty both matter

A few hundred small holes in open field is a known quantity. A trench across the living room and kitchen floor, a spall at a doorway saddle, or a repair sitting where the light rakes across it are harder, riskier work, and the price reflects that as much as it reflects the count.