Posts Tagged ‘hardwood floor professional’

Why I still love this career

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Some days in the world of a “floor guy” are exhausting and frustrating. Some days you are working in houses so dirty that they could be condemned and other days you end up getting stain all over your new shirt. The freedom that has accompanied starting this business years ago always makes it worth it. The hours are flexible and the appreciation of a job well done when you hear it from a customer makes the occasional long day all worth it.

The whole company (Destry, Andrew, and I) have been working for a couple of months on a large project for a church in our neighborhood. The chancel portion of the church received all brand new floors and also we installed two large radius african mahogany nosings around the flooring.

One of the characteristics of working with wood is that you never know what will happen next. The two radius nosings were built from a series of rough stock boards. The boards were planed and then cut into strips and glued together to form a curved piece. Afterwards, we still have to router, plane, and sand the product a lot in order to create the final product. In the case of this project the final sanding revealed that there were voids in some of the strips . They appeared as dark spots and were out of character relative to the grain of the wood. Simply using filler just wouldn’t work. We even used the recommendation of someone else of using dust and glue without any success.

The real thing that keeps us going in this field is when a project demands resourcefulness and creativity to solve a problem. In the end I suggested that we open the gap in the nosing and we custom created grain matched wood slivers. We glued them in and sanded them and the problem disappeared.

That’s the point of this blog. Every day we have to think with two sides of our brain in order to run an efficient high quality hardwood floor company. Whether we are working in a historic house in Portland with fir flooring or a church, we always have to think of solutions that make problems go away and look elegant. I never found that in my last career. I’m glad to be a “floor guy”.

african mahogany radius nosing

african mahogany radius nosing

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Posted in Hardwood floor Portland | 1 Comment »

Craigslist, it’s not just for used goods anymore

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

Craigslist is a well used internet site and is definitely a great way to get rid of used furniture and old scrap metal. The odd thing to me is that people will actually go there and choose a contractor to work in their house and do a project. Craigslist doesn’t do a really great job of policing the users and their integrity. Besides being a haven for scammers, and shady contractors, it now is a resource for murderers as you can read here. With all that said why would anyone trust a Craigslist contractor to complete a quality project? It’s a big risk. Don’t believe me, then let’s just look:

This ad says “All floors installed fast and fair!”. Craigslist finally required all contractors to list a license number recently. When you look into this guy’s ad you will see he is unlicensed. Why does that matter? Let’s say that you decide it’s time to save $200 bucks and hire this guy. Day one he starts and walks into your house and starts sanding the floors. Day three comes along and he has just finished sanding and staining your floors. You have to leave the house because you can’t be there and walk on the floor. He decides to leave his sanding dust and used stain rags in a trashbag in your two car garage. You left for the night and your house is secured and Mercedes is parked away safely in the second bay. While in your hotel room you get a phone call at 2am and your neighbor is explaining how your roof and house are up in flames. Think I’m joking, then just read this. A few days go by and after it’s all said and done you realized that you will have to foot the bill to rebuild your house. Why? you find out that this guy is unlicensed and has no insurance to rebuild your house. You find out your policy doesn’t cover unlicensed contractors working in your home. In the end the $200 savings costs you $250,000 or more because of a lapse in judgment.

Consumers please consider the following thought:

Don’t ask what something costs before considering what it is worth from all angles.

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Posted in Hardwood floor refinish, Uncategorized, hardwood floor | No Comments »

Lowest price=Lowest Common Denominator

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

I had a thesis advisor who did a lot to help me avoid one of the common pitfalls that happens to people. He always referred to it as the “lowest common denominator” as a suggestion that people would rather be a minimalist in their ways than really try to achieve the most that they could in every endeavor.

The problem  that consumers don’t realize is that all contractors pay roughly the same cost for materials, unless they are stealing material, which I doubt. Therefore, to have a lower cost the contractor must have a lower labor cost.

To have a lower labor cost either jobs must happen faster or employees must be paid less. HERE are the pitfalls of such a model.

1) Faster jobs-If you want attention to detail on your project, then forget it if the job is a production job that has to be done quickly.

2) Low paid employees- Underpaid employees really don’t want to do the best job, end of story.

Here is my challenge:

If you know the name of a licensed hardwood floor company in Portland, Oregon that is “cheap” and always a low bidder, and has legal employees covered by workers compensation then please give me their name. I want to know their model and secret if their work looks good. I will donate a free premium Glitsa tack mop and cleaning kit once I see the job and you can convince me that their work is really a quality product if I know what finish they used on the floor.

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Posted in Hardwood floor Portland, floor refinishing portland oregon, portland hardwood professional | 1 Comment »

The importance of a team

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

About a week ago our company was really buried with one project in particular. We had a goal of completing the project for the general contractor by a certain date. By about 2 o’clock that day it was apparent we were a little off schedule. Another project was also at a critical time for completion. I could sense some frustration on one of my employees regarding the progress.

I had planned to be away from the project the remainder of the day for estimating. I made a decision at that point in time to put my work clothes back on and pitch in a hand. Once I arrived and everyone rallied together the mood really picked up steam. It became apparent that we would meet our goal. We all laughed and worked diligently until 7:30pm.

While this may seem like an irrelevant blog to the field of hardwood floors in general, it is a window of insight to the inner workings of our company. I have the greatest employees who always rally and pull through for me. There is real unity in our company and is the keel that guides our craftsmanship.

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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Experience, wisdom, and the whole nine yards

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

I began to think about what defines a quality contractor the other day and it led me to start thinking about how you define quality. I would say that quality is obtained when you determine exactly what the client wants in a product or service and afterwards you deliver the equivalent amount of service.

This is where wisdom and experience come in because without a combination of these two you really wouldn’t be able to deliver quality. I often hear a lot of “experienced” “floor guys” talk about how long they have been in the business. You’ll hear companies talk about how between the two or three owners they have over 40 years of experience. That’s nice but if you never educate yourself as a contractor then you really only have one year of experience repeated 40 times.

True professionals are judged on multiple facets in my opinion. A professional is someone who is constantly seeking to improve their service by continuing education, adopting newer and more efficient tools and methods, and shares their knowledge with others for the good of the industry. Additionally I would suggest that a true professional wakes up everyday with a passion to do their job and has an empathy towards the vision of the homeowner and their expectation of service.

Well, well, well this leads us to a rarely mentioned word in the blue collar world called wisdom. Everytime you hear the word wise you probably think about some old man in a rocking chair with a head of grey hair talking about his experiences in life. I would say experience is a component of wisdom but not the whole enchilada. An acuity for the details of a process as related to your past experiences would somewhat make you wise in my book. The only caveat is that the person engaged in this process must be guided in a way so that their observation for detail is governed by honesty and genuine empathy for the customer.

I know this blog may seem somewhat esoteric, but when I look forward to every new day in becoming a more wise hardwood flooring professional I have to think about what rules I adhere to in aiming for continued success. If you find yourself a reader of this blog, then I would like for you to know more about the person behind the company than what I do for a living.

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Posted in experience, hardwood floor | 2 Comments »

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