If your have never heard of Marty Dunagan, you should definitely look her up. Director of the private, non-profit, learning center, Marty’s Center, Marty was the former Miss Chattanooga and Miss Tennessee USA and was born profoundly deaf. She attended school as a child in Chattanooga, where she received early intervention and intensive speech-language therapy. Due to her early access to speech-language therapy, she was able to attend regular school programs and even graduated from UTK with a BS in Deaf Education and from UTC with a MS in Educational Supervision and Administration. On top of these accomplishments, and many more, she has made it her life’s mission to help other young children who may be hearing or speech impaired, gain the skills and knowledge needed to overcome the struggles many hearing and speech impaired children face.

Recently, Marty was able to move the Marty’s Center Facilities to a stand alone building close by her original facilities. When she contacted us for a quote on refinishing the Terrazzo Floors in her new center, we were thrilled. Not only that we would get to be a part of such an awesome project, but also because she recognized the beautiful flooring present in her new facilities even after years of abuse.

Terrazzo is a composite material, poured in place or precast, which is used for floor and wall treatments. You can visually identify terrazzo as the stone floor that has chips of natural stone, quartz or glass sprinkled throughout a cement or epoxy binder. Installing Terrazzo is fairly expensive but was often used in Chattanooga during the 1920’s and 1930’s. It can often be found in Banks, Hospitals, Educational Facilities, and more. Through the decades, however, many Terrazzo Floors have been covered by several layers of lower quality flooring types. Years of damage and abuse often leaves the Terrazzo looking nearly unidentifiable and has often been confused with plain concrete. This is often a terrible mistake as it is usually much more cost efficient to restore terrazzo flooring rather than covering it.

Once Marty had identified her flooring as Terrazzo, Chattanooga Floor Care and Sanitizing was able to come in and polish the Terrazzo back to it’s former glory for much less than it would to install new flooring on top of it. Due to Terrazzo’s ability to withstand heavy foot traffic and damage, low maintenance costs, and longevity of the flooring, Marty’s Place will be able to enjoy this beautiful flooring for a long time to come.