The neighbourhoods we work in most
Downtown and the Rosemary District, Laurel Park, Southside Village, Arlington Park, Gillespie Park, Indian Beach and Sapphire Shores, Bird Key, Lido Key, St. Armands, The Meadows, Palmer Ranch, and out along Siesta Drive toward the key.
Terrazzo, and the decision people get wrong
A great many Sarasota houses built between about 1950 and 1975 have original poured terrazzo under whatever went on top of it in the 1990s. Homeowners often plan to tile straight over it and then find out what is underneath.
That is worth stopping for. Original terrazzo is a genuinely good floor — dense, cool, and impossible to buy new at the price of restoring it. If it is sound, we will usually tell you to grind and polish it rather than sell you a tile job on top of it. If it is cracked through, or it has been broken up by plumbing runs, covering it is the sensible answer.
Downtown condos and the sound rule
If you are in a downtown or Gulf-front building, the association almost certainly has a rule about hard flooring over an occupied unit, and it will be written as a minimum impact-insulation rating. Practically, that means a rated acoustic underlayment under any tile or plank, and it means the underlayment is part of the quote rather than an upgrade.
Get the association's written requirement before anybody prices the job. We ask for it as a matter of course, because a floor that has to come up because nobody read the rules is the most expensive mistake in this market.
Choosing tile for a bayfront Sarasota home
Golden Gate Point, St. Armands, Bird Key, Lido Shores and Harbor Acres are all inside the City of Sarasota, and on the water the job is one of two kinds. In the 34236 ZIP code, which takes in Golden Gate Point and the keys across the causeway, 8,086 of 11,823 homes are in buildings of ten units or more, by the Census Bureau's 2020–2024 survey. For most owners there, the condominium's sound rule above decides the floor before the tile does.
Harbor Acres and Lido Shores are neighbourhoods of houses, and for an older house the question is how low it sits. Where the lowest floor is below the flood elevation, the City's 50% rule counts tiling, and bathroom tile and fixtures, as part of a renovation's cost, measured against the value of the building alone, without the lot. Reach half of it and the house has to be brought up to the flood rules for new construction, which can mean raising it. Price a whole-house floor and the bathrooms with that number in hand.
Below that elevation, in a ground-level entry or a room under a raised house, the finish has to resist flood damage. FEMA's list accepts ceramic and porcelain tile laid in mortar and turns down engineered wood, laminate and carpet; tile stuck down with an organic adhesive fails too.
From the showroom on 14th Street West it is about eight miles down the Tamiami Trail to Harbor Acres or Bird Key, and nine and a half to Lido Shores: close enough to look at the full slabs before choosing.
Slabs
Most of the city is slab on grade. Older slabs move more than new ones and are rarely flat to the tolerance large-format panels want, so the levelling is usually the real line item on a renovation here rather than the tile.
If what brought you here was the other kind of slab — porcelain slabs for shower walls, the sheets up to five feet by ten that go up in two pieces — that is its own subject, and setting them is work for large-format porcelain installers, a large part of what our crews do in this city.
The same crews and the same schedule cover Siesta Key across the bridges and Longboat Key up the Gulf — the island pages say what changes once the tile has to cross a drawbridge.
How far the showroom is from your part of Sarasota
The showroom is at 6823 14th Street West in Bradenton, and most of Sarasota is a short run down the Tamiami Trail from it: about six miles to downtown and nine to St. Armands Circle. University Park is about ten miles east along University Parkway and The Meadows about eleven. Palmer Ranch, at the south end, is the far one at about sixteen; the bayfront distances are in the section above.
Plan on two visits. The first narrows the choice; the second is to look at the actual boxes or sheets from the batch that will be installed, because shade varies from one production run to the next, before anything is ordered. From most of the city that second trip is a short drive rather than a day out.
What is on the floor in Bradenton
The main building is the tile studio: porcelain tile standing upright at full size, in the wood, stone, marble and concrete looks, from 12 × 24 up; stone and mosaic for showers, niches and floors that fall to a drain; and built kitchen and wet-room vignettes, so a wall can be judged where it meets a floor.
The large-format porcelain panels are racked upright in sheets up to five feet by ten, because a vein that looks quiet on a chip can look busy across a whole wall. Next door, in the second building on the lot, the Riva gallery holds Riva Spain engineered hardwood as full-length planks, with chevron and herringbone laid out on the floor.
Bring your plans, leave with samples
A first visit goes further with the drawings or a few photographs of the room, and the measurements if you have them. The likely choices get laid out at full size, side by side with grout and trim colours, and you take samples home to see in your own light, which in a west-facing Sarasota room at four in the afternoon is not the light of a showroom.
The showroom keeps weekday hours, Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 5, and Saturdays are by appointment. Call (941) 253-0400 before you come in if you would like an hour set aside for your project.
