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Floors in Florida · Mar 3, 19:13

Rocking horse on maple pergo floor.

Most south florida homes are built as slab-on-ground, greatly limiting flooring options. Laying traditional wood flooring requires shimming up a centimeter or two above the slab, then laying a subfloor and the finish floor. This raises the surface of the floor at least two inches above the slab. If A house was designed for this originally, it’s fine, but it’s a nightmare in refinishing work.

Pergo and its imitators are ideal for making slab floors warm and comfortable without rugs. Even with moisture barrier and padding, the laminate floor surface is only about a centimeter above the slab, easily bridging to tiled or carpeted floors.

Terrazzo is coming back into style in florida. It’s an amalgam of marble chips and concrete binder, polished mirror smooth. Terrazzo was laid by artisans, in many beautiful color mixtures.

It was inexpensive to install up ‘till the 70’s when labor costs and changing fashions led to wall-to-wall carpets and linoleum in cheap construction, or large floor tile or cut stone in more expensive homes.

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Comment

  1. Yah terrazzo! Hated it when I lived in a sleazy Miami garden apartment in the 70’s. But it was always cool underfoot. If you put a waterbed right on terrazzo you could freeze to death at noon in august.

    (just testing comments)
    — taryn    Apr 14, 00:52    #

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