Plenty of buildings around the Square were something else first, and what is under the current finish may be older than the business standing on it. That changes the conversation. There is a fair version of stripping vs burnishing Marietta, and it applies to a plain vinyl tile corridor. It is the wrong question entirely for original terrazzo, quarry tile or a historic surface that was never meant to carry a coating. Ask it anyway and somebody eventually pours a stripper on a floor that cannot be replaced. Identify the material first. The method follows from what the floor is, not from what the last vendor happened to own.

Old floors punish the wrong machine

Vinyl composition tile is forgiving. It expects a coating, it expects that coating to be removed sometimes, and it tolerates the process.

Terrazzo, quarry tile and original masonry expect none of that. Strong stripper, aggressive pads and standing water can etch, stain or open up a surface that took decades to settle.

Where stripping vs burnishing Marietta stops being the right question

Once the floor is not a finish floor, both options fall away. Terrazzo is generally maintained by cleaning, honing and polishing the stone itself, with sealers chosen for that material.

Quarry tile in a back-of-house area is different again. It is usually about grout, degreasing and slip resistance, and shine is not the objective anywhere in that room.

Historic material earns a test patch

Converted buildings near the Earl Smith Strand and in the Kennesaw Avenue historic district often have three eras of flooring inside one footprint. Nobody should be guessing at any of them.

National Park Service preservation briefs cover the care of historic building materials in detail, and the theme running through them is patience. Test in a small hidden area, evaluate, then proceed. That order costs one extra visit and prevents an unfixable result.

Most floor work is sold as a rate and delivered by whoever was free, which is how a one-size method arrives at a building that needed three. We walk the property first, identify each surface, and write a separate line for each one.

Most commercial cleaning gets sold on price per square foot, then quietly handed to whoever was cheapest and free that night. That’s why quality slides after month two — the scope was never real to begin with. We build yours from an actual walkthrough of your actual building, on your actual hours. Then we send the same crew who learned it. Boring? Completely. It’s also the only thing that makes month five look like month one.

DBS Cleaning Services Group

Distance changes how we schedule, not how we work

Marietta is our longest drive, roughly forty minutes from Norcross, and we run it with a dedicated Cobb crew carrying a capped number of accounts. Same people, every visit.

For floor work that matters more than usual. A night that runs long on Cobb Parkway or out by Wellstar Kennestone cannot be rescued by sending someone unfamiliar, so we would rather cap the load than stretch it.

Frequently asked questions