Bradenton tile and surfaces, from the showroom that is in it

The neighbourhoods we work in most

Downtown Bradenton and the Riverwalk, the Village of the Arts, West Bradenton and Palma Sola, Bayshore Gardens, Braden River, Whitfield, Tallevast, West Samoset, South Bradenton, and out to the fishing village at Cortez.

The housing stock

Bradenton's core is older than Lakewood Ranch and newer than downtown Sarasota — a lot of concrete-block ranch houses from the 1950s through the 1970s, many of them with original terrazzo, many with additions that were built on slabs poured at a different time and to a different level than the original.

That last point is the practical one. A house that has been added to twice has two or three slabs of different ages meeting at doorways, and they do not move together. Where they meet, a tiled floor needs a movement joint rather than a continuous run of grout, and skipping that is the usual cause of a cracked line running exactly where the addition starts.

Riverfront and Palma Sola

Anything near the Manatee River or out toward Palma Sola Bay is close enough to salt air that metal is the weak point rather than the tile. Transition strips, drains, fixings and exposed trim should be stainless or a proper coastal-grade finish. It is a small cost at the time and a visible one three years later.

Come to the floor

We are open Monday to Friday, and Saturday by appointment. The showroom carries full slabs rather than sample chips, which is the only way to judge a book-matched porcelain or a heavily veined stone — a three-inch sample of a dramatic slab tells you almost nothing about what the wall will look like.

From the yard here the crews reach Anna Maria Island in twenty minutes and Lakewood Ranch in about the same the other way — each has a page of its own for what the work looks like there.