"ralph" wrote

I have an Florida house built in the 1940's with Terrazo flooring but
has been covered with carpet. I am looking a taking off the carpet and
polishing the terrazzo. My question is, Home depot has the following

Lovely stuff when treated right.

piece of equipment that I can rent. Can it be used to polish the
flooring and why type of pads do you recommend to use?

First off, you do not want a sander. Start instead with a floor buffer with
those round brushes of sort of hard hair looking stuff.

Terrazo is very hard to damage the coating of (unless you sand it off) so I
think it's likely you can get the glue off then just polish with a buffing
pad.

Depending on what you find in the way of 'glue' (if any, might just be dirt)
you can use some pretty harsh chemicals on terrazo as long as you dont add
anything that will scratch it (like Comet type cleansers).

If it's already been scratched, dont panic. They can repolish it or put a
new layer of whatever the heck the stuff was on ours back in Florida. You
can also just wax it up nice.

I remember once a year, Mom used to bleach ours. She'd open all the
windows, put on her really ratty clothes and rubber boots, then just pour
straight bleach on'em g. Then we'd vacate the house and go grocery
shopping or something (Mom would swap clothes in the laundry room at the
foot of the garage) for a few hours, then come back and mop it all up.