Terrazzo Restoration in Temple Terrace

Temple Terrace’s terrazzo is in the block houses built after World War II, a generation after the 1920s Mediterranean Revival town and well before the city’s 1980s annexations. Restoring one of those floors typically runs $5 to $9 per square foot for the grind, hone and polish, $2 to $3 per square foot for carpet and glue removal, $4 to $6 for tile, and $75 to $250 per patch. Send a closet-corner photo and we will tell you what you have.

Two towns in one

Temple Terrace was incorporated in 1925 and planned as one of the first golf course communities in the country, with Mediterranean Revival houses by architects M. Leo Elliott and Dwight James Baum around the Temple Terrace Golf and Country Club. That first town predates the terrazzo years.

The second Temple Terrace came after the war. Building picked up again after World War II, and the city has a fine collection of mid-century modern homes and buildings, at least two of them designed by architect Frank Albert DePasquale. Alongside the architect-designed houses came block ranch houses on ordinary lots, and that is where the terrazzo is. The city then roughly doubled in size through annexations between 1984 and 1987, and the new subdivisions built in that period are too new for terrazzo.

What the county records show

The Hillsborough County Property Appraiser lists an Interior Flooring value for each house. On the Temple Terrace streets we pulled, Druid Hills Road and Riverhills Drive among them:

Two things stand out. The terrazzo listings run from 1956 to 1967 and bunch up in 1959 and 1960. And the later units, built from the mid-1960s into 1972, listed none, which matches the countywide pull: the latest terrazzo listing in all 1,103 records was a 1970 house. Some of the Riverhills Drive houses are wood frame (12 of the 59 we pulled there), and a wood-frame house from the same years is much less likely to have terrazzo than a block one. Our property-record guide shows how to read your own record.

The river

The Hillsborough River runs through the east and south of the city. During Milton in October 2024, the National Weather Service recorded record crests on the river, 38.16 feet at Morris Bridge and 17.14 feet near Zephyrhills at Hillsborough River State Park. The Southwest Florida Water Management District impounded floodwaters in its 16,000-acre Hillsborough Flood Detention Area and diverted them through to McKay Bay, which it said protects Temple Terrace and Tampa from river flooding. Two weeks earlier, Helene’s heaviest Hillsborough rain, 4.55 inches, fell near Temple Terrace.

What that means for floors is simple: any terrazzo that did take water, from the river, the rain or runoff, should be rinsed, dried and moisture-checked before it is sealed. The flood-damaged terrazzo page has the order. Temple Terrace is its own city, so building questions go to the City of Temple Terrace rather than the county.

What Temple Terrace floors tend to need

• Carpet, tack strip and glue in living rooms and bedrooms. The rust dots tend to grind out; the holes get filled. See tack-strip holes.
• Old coatings on floors that were never covered, which can carry decades of wax or acrylic. See dull, etched spots for what wax and vinegar leave behind.
• Cracks along divider strips where the slab has moved over sixty years on this rolling ground. Cracks along divider strips explains which ones to patch.
• Matching unusual chip blends in architect-designed houses, which can take a sample board before patching.

Getting a number

Send a closet-corner photo, a close shot of the worst spot with a coin beside it, and the square footage. Mention whether the house is block or frame if you know. You get a range from the pricing page and a plain answer about what will grind out and what will only fade. The full sequence is on the restoration page, and we also cover nearby Forest Hills and Brandon.