I’m posting the comment for him since he requested that I omit part of his comment – and I certainly want to honor his wishes after all the information he’s shared with us!

If you want to contact me outside of blogger, please feel free to email me at txblond at gmail dot com (edited to throw off spammers…)

Thanks very much for your GREAT advice. There is definitely no one else online giving any sort of information like this because we’ve looked a few times when we were just thinking over our list of projects. Most people tell you not to even think about repairing terrazzo yourself so I’m quite happy to see that we may indeed be able to make something nicer out of it.

I do think it’s cement of some sort that they’ve used to fill in the cracks – a crime in and of itself!

Hopefully when we get to start on this project you’ll still be around and perhaps we can pick your brain again!

Thanks again for all the input!! You’re fantastic!

MY diagnose…from far away.
-first i call your attention, to the crack that starts at the door where the shoes are and comes around the red color of the star. The reason the crack has followed the red color and made that circular contour is that due to the difference in the mortar for the white stones of the border, and the red terrazzo, the contour acted like an expansion joint, and the crack merely followed. This means that the cracks you got are mostly because the “job” was made by a “shoemaker” instead of a real professional.

your floor is missing the expansion joints all around that allow the terrazzo to work. White Portland cement reacts for up to 50 years after being cast, and all tho the first 28 days are the most important the fact is that contractions and expansions WILL happen over time.

Solution- Repair the cracks and create expansion joints around the walls, this basically means making a cut into the terrazzo,(i think 3mm should be enough) all around the room to separate the terrazzo from the walls so as to make the terrazzo “free” from the house
The cut will then be filled with silicone, (black would go well with the colors)

On further inspection of the photos i also see that the terrazzo was poorly polished at the time of casting, which leads to all subsequent polishing to default as consequence.

Solution- Rent a wet polisher(after repairs are finished and enough time for drying allowed) and do a first coarse polish with a 100 stone, then move up to a 300 stone, 600/800/1200 and it will look like the all thing is a single stone just cut from the finest bedrock in paradise.

as for fixing the cracks…
i need you to drill a hole in a crack not too big but enough for you to be able to measure how thick is the terrazzo. As for the aggregates i do not think you can buy them locally, but i will have a look to see if i got some look alike stones, that yellow is difficult… you need just a few kilos, like 5 or so…
when you drill the hole to measure the terrazzo i also need you to check “what” is it that is filling the crack, it looks like Grey cement, maybe Portland, that will have off course to be removed. I think you can do the joints yourself, but I’m not sure about the cracks….it depends if you settle for a repair that will look good but will show a different shade where the cracks were, or if you want a professional to do it for you. should you choose that i can probably ask a few people i know if they can refer you to a good and cheap company near you. I don’t know anyone near you, in Munchen, Hamburg but not near you i’m afraid.

well i hope it helps…now i go watch DR house.

The terrazzo appears to be in the entire bathroom floor. It at least goes several feet in to the bathroom because took out a built in cabinet when we moved the bathroom door and there was no tile in the bottom, just a nasty piece of carpet. And there is another door in the bathroom which leads down to our basement and you can see a bit of terrazzo there as well. We can’t be certain if the terrazzo extends throughout the entire bathroom, though, without starting to take up the tile.

I’m sure the terrazzo will be quite beautiful when it’s polished. When we mop in there it already brings out a lot more of the orange and red colors in there and it looks much nicer. In this post you can see all the various colors: http://ournewfarm.blogspot.com/2007/09/our-terrazzo-entry-hall.html

i like your idea of having it with flowers and candles specially if you have people coming over that will for sure add a certain atmosphere.
but the comfort for a bath…hmmm.

do you mean that the terrazzo goes to the door or that it actually goes inside?

i think you will be pleasantly surprised once you have that terrazzo polished and shining

maybe you can try instead of removing all the tiles just some strategically placed mosaic combined with the green tiles and the shape i think it would work

The terrazzo from the entry way actually extends all the way into this bathroom as far as we can tell…now wouldn’t that have been quite the combo in there?

But yeah, that’s not too high on our list of priorities. The green makes it kinda fun and it’s a million times better in there without the wall tiles…

To be honest, when we did the kitchen we were sort of in a rough spot. We could have gone with a MUCH more expensive kitchen, spending 2-3 times what we spent with IKEA, and still would have had trouble finding something in the style we wanted. IKEA happened to have one of the only farmhouse-style kitchens we liked and we’ve had one before which held up pretty well so we went for it.

We will absolutely NEVER assemble one again ourselves. That was definitely a nightmare. The instructions could have been in Braille as far as we were concerned. We have quite a few pieces of IKEA furniture in our place and consider ourselves to be quite handy with them…but that was terrible. We basically didn’t have much choice though in the end…we needed to get the kitchen done so we could start moving in…and since IKEA screwed up so many other aspects of the order, we were just happy to get everything together finally. But no, definitely never planning to assemble a kitchen again – EVER!

anyway, it’s sunny where i live, close to Osnabruck, all tho it was snowing yesterday.

Well to answer your question, i’m living through other people renovations but it’s on the cards to buy some old house an renovate it myself, i guess you could say that I did quiet a few before, and I love extreme renovations.

I am sorry but i had to laugh, when i saw the Italian counter tops on your Ikea kitchen, I would never would have come up with that, you actually added class to Ikea furniture, my hat is off to you.
And you really got to be either crazy or totally desperate to attempt something as drastic as to mount an Ikea kitchen by yourselves .
I can build almost anything, but last time i tried an Ikea kitchen cupboard i almost ended up in the funny farm. It was like building a Space Shutle with instructions in an obscure Chinese dialect.

It’s quite cold and rainy here this morning (was even snowing earlier!) but I will try to post a new photo sometime in the next few weeks and we can discuss further if you’d be so kind as to keep up with us!

Your fiance doesn’t want to move to Portugal?!? Terrible. But you’re a champ for giving up all that to come here! And of course for sharing your knowledge with us!!!

Are you working on a house yourself or just living through others who are crazy and doing renovations themselves?

Speak with you soon
Tiffany