How to clean and restore terrazzo tiles?

Photo Russell Scott

The tile guy found this terrazzo under the old linoleum and it’s a glue mess. I have researched and any chemical is bad so I have cleaned one area with dish soap water and finally yes the metal scraper as plastic scraper had no effect.

??Sand it and polish it (might have to lightly use wire brush sander attachment first though). Also check the mastic does not contain asbestos before you sand it the old lino and mastic/glue in alot of my house does. The bedrooms where the mastic/glue did not have asbestos we had to sand it off in the end. My hubby works in mining and construction and even the heaviest solvents and heat guns would not get it off in our case.

??I would call a stone refinishing company, they will have it polished up in a day. Do you have more terrazzo hiding? If you really want to remove the mastic yourself, use single edge razor blades or wallpaper blades- neither will hurt the terrazzo.

??We had the same issue in our kitchen. We had a stone company redo the entire house

??We had terrazzo and had an industrial janitorial Service clean it – many buildings have this flooring. Got it clean and shiny!

??We found terrazzo in our entry way and it was under linoleum as well. It looked just as bad as this. We had a terrazzo restoration company fix it and it now looks new!

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