Woodrow Wilson Middle School: BRILLIANT Terrazzo

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Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Terre Haute was built in 1926 as a middle school and still serves that purpose today.

It looks like a museum from the outside. In 2020, we were invited to restore the terrazzo on the first of three floors. Three grades, one on each floor. Carpet nightmare!

We started by removing carpet placed over the original terrazzo in 1983. I have never seen so much glue used to place carpet. The carpet ran up the walls as well.

We did a grind on the floor, patched and repaired areas, placed some new terrazzo, all before polishing to a high gloss finish.

The place smells much better as you can imagine. Yahoo! The tough part was figuring out what to do with the wall space above the original terrazzo cove and the vinyl base.

Stainless steel! With the school mascot of Warriors represented by a Middle Ages knight, we choose to use a stainless steel band, the same material we used for all of the threshold transitions.

This selection made the job unique.

We ran out of terrazzo in the newer hall to the addition. We found a short run of original dark concrete for back of the house and the new concrete from 1983 beyond where the building originally stopped. Between these areas we placed terrazzo where foundations with walls had been.

After grinding and repairing the concrete we placed our toughest coating over it.

Concrete is maintained so much easier with a seal coating rather than a high polish.

This project was a huge success! We have since completed the second level and are working on the third level.