Whilst we have now settled on the three marbles which we are going to use for our foyer, I did some research on Terrazzo, just to see whether this would be a good option for the stairs and foyer. As it turns out, the cost of the cement preparation and marble chips, and then the copious grinding and polishing makes it about the same a marble tiles. Hence, we settled on the marble below:
Beige marble (background) for the floor, with the medium tone and dark tone marble for inlaid work around the borders and in the circular compass tesselation in the middle. The gold-leaf glass tiles provide nice highlights to the marble (and I'm sure we can incorporate then somewhere).
Terrazzo is a product that can be used on walkways, patios, floors, and counter-tops. It is actually more a process than a product. It is made by layering concrete then sandy cement, then scattering a dense covering of selected chips of marble / stone / glass / shells etc on top of the cement. Once it has dried well, the surface is progressively ground down and then polished to achieve the finished effect.
This is an eco-friendly option as one can recycle the stone chips or glass, and there is no carbon cost to importing granite or marble as everything is created on-site.
Above photo from DMI Tile and marble IncMore examples of Terrazzo floors...
Above photo from the NTMA websiteFor a good article on how Terrazzo is made, visit This Old House here
