Hi, I am branching out on my own in the business, I have access to pretty much every tool needed for the business.

I am receiving my business cards today, setting up the website so I can go tomorrow to all the apartment complexes around me that have hardwood flooring.

The thing is, many of them have laminate or vinyl flooring.. What services can I offer them other than repair?

I have recoated and refinished many floors, but I have no experience doing anything to vinyl.

Can I even offer cleaning and buffing for vinyl using the IFT and scrubber combo, then buff with white pad?

Thanks

Deep cleaning hardwood floors is a great niche to get into nowadays, but not apartment buildings. And it helps to be in a higher income area.

Thanks for your input Ken,

If you don't mind sharing, why not apartment buildings? I was thinking in terms of dealing with the property management for whenever they fix up a unit during vacancy.

With the people I'm working with now, we deal with an apartment complex and we do on average 1 to 2 refinishing or repair jobs for them a month

Apartments would work. I was thinking more into higher income having been around the block and knowing who pays what.

Not sure you want to be scrubbing vinyl, you could lose the sheen/gloss. People put polishes and waxes on then so do a test spot in a closet. You could possibly do a strip and wax but many are no wax vinyl. Follow manufacturers instructions.

For Vinyl there is only one service in my opinion - REMOVAL lol

Offer removal and reinstall of some good looking laminate. Its still price conscious and can make a big difference in an older apartment or condo. Most rental property owners are looking for the bare minimum they can get away with. We do this mostly for basement apartments/rental townhouses however.

I called armstrong to recommend something to "rejuvenate" vinyl floors, they recommended something called "armstrong new beginnings" and "armstrong shinekeeper"

It's just that the only experience I have with vinyl is just installation.. I figured if I'm going to be approaching high-income apartments and real estate agents, I'd like to add servicing vinyl and laminate to the list..

I did some research for laminate as well, I am still not certain on that but I heard about a product called Wood Solv

Thanks guys

You're not going to find much of that in high end...maybe LVT. Stone and hardwood is where the money is at. What area of the world are you working in? You know what's really going to be in demand the next decade is all these different styles of hardwood.

Whether not not we'll see these floors ripped out in the next ten years isn't known. Will people still be okay with keeping "hand-scraped hardwoods" around? I'll venture a guess 19 3/4 out of 20 guys wouldn't want to try and refinish one without sanding it completely flat.

I recall Stephen also thought that was a good niche to get into few years back and there is equipment for it.

Clarke Floor Abrader

http://www.clarkeus.com/~/media/Product ... -FA-8.ashx

Thanks for the reply Ken, I am in North Texas. I see what you mean, I need to focus my efforts where there's a future.

I have 2 clarke rectangle random orbit buffers and one from cleanfreak
1 clarke EZ-8
1 clarke 7r edger
a bunch of palm sanders
an Oreck small round buffer
I also have the clarke machine with the 3 round sandpapers at the bottom like the lagler trio, I haven't had much success with that tho

I am going to buy a 175 rpm buffer in the future and maybe a Lindhaus LW30 PRO for the cleaning jobs

I also have enough tools for installation.