Terrazzo Restoration in Carrollwood

Carrollwood’s original streets around Lake Carroll were built between 1959 and 1970, right in the middle of the Florida terrazzo years, and a good share of those houses still have the floor. Restoring it typically runs $5 to $9 per square foot for the grind, hone and polish, $2 to $3 per square foot to take up carpet and glue, $4 to $6 for tile and thinset, and $75 to $250 per patch. Send us a closet-corner photo and we will tell you what we see.

How Carrollwood came to be

Carrollwood was founded in 1959, planned by Matt Jetton and built by his company, Sun State Homes. Jetton bought 310 acres of Ingram Fruit Company orange groves on the west side of Lake Carroll and laid out curving streets instead of a grid, along with a shopping center, a recreation center and a community beach. The National Association of Home Builders named it U.S. Subdivision of the Year in 1961, and Parents magazine gave it a Best Homes for Families award in 1962. From 1959 through 1970, more than 900 homes went up around the lake. Carrollwood Elementary opened in 1963.

In the mid-1960s the same developer started Carrollwood Village on about 1,900 acres west of Dale Mabry Highway, and the community spread west through the 1970s and 1980s. That later growth is mostly too new for terrazzo.

What the county records show

The Hillsborough County Property Appraiser lists an Interior Flooring value for each house. Here is what came back on the Carrollwood streets we pulled:

The six 1972 houses in Unit 27 listing no terrazzo fit the countywide pattern: in our full pull of 1,103 records, the latest terrazzo listing was a 1970 house and none of the 595 houses built in 1973 or later had it. The mid-century houses that do not list terrazzo mostly list carpet or tile. That line shows what the appraiser has on file, not what is under it, so check a closet corner. Our property-record guide shows how.

What Carrollwood floors tend to need

Carrollwood houses have changed hands for sixty years, and each owner left a layer:

• Tile in kitchens, baths and entries, often set straight onto the terrazzo. Taking it off typically runs $4 to $6 per square foot and leaves pits and thinset ridges to fill and grind. See pits after tile removal.
• Carpet in bedrooms and living rooms, with tack-strip holes and rust dots around the edges.
• A gap where a wall came out. If a previous owner opened the kitchen to the family room, the terrazzo was poured around the original walls. That leaves a strip of bare slab to fill. The wall gap page explains how we match it.
• Older coatings on floors that were never covered, now yellow along the walls.

A typical Carrollwood job

Take a 1961 house with about 1,200 square feet of terrazzo under carpet, average glue and three cracks to fill. At the published ranges: grind and polish $6,000 to $10,800, carpet and glue removal $2,400 to $3,600, three patches $225 to $750, for a typical total of about $8,600 to $15,200 before the tack-strip perimeters, which are priced per room once we see them. The pricing page lays out the same arithmetic, and the floor cost estimator will run it for your size and covering.

Getting a number

Send a photo of a closet corner with the carpet folded back, a close shot of the worst spot with a coin beside it, and the rough square footage. If you know which unit or street you are on, mention it. We also work in Forest Hills and Town ‘n’ Country, and the full job is described on the restoration page.