The Floor PRO Community Celebrates Its 13th Anniversary Welcome To Our 13-13-13 Giveaway! The Floor Pro Community, founded in May, 2006, provides unmatched peer support to our fellow flooring professionals and offers expert advice and guidance to consumers & do-it-yourselfers around the world. To celebrate this lucky milestone, we have collaborated with popular vendors of…
Flooring professionals need their hands for just about all the work tasks they do and we all need healthy hands to perform daily activities. Hand safety is very important. Hand injuries are painful as well as disabling, and can easily require you to take time off work. Fixing and healing hands is often a difficult and lengthy process. Treat your hands like the valuable assets they are: make it your priority to protect them. Unfortunately, not enough flooring professionals, or workers in general, are heeding this advice. (more…)
TJ Scimone is founder and CEO of Slice, Inc., maker of unique and safer cutting tools. All tools feature patent-pending finger-friendly® ceramic blades and ergonomic handles. Slice hosts a Workplace Safety Blog to provide resources and information about safety at work for employees and management.
Over the past number of years, there has been some consumer confusion and concern about rumored radon or radiation levels occurring in natural granites used for residential countertops, floor tiles, etc. The origins of this concern are advertisements published by manufacturers of competing materials. Levels of radiation from granitic products, while technically measurable, are in fact, just small fractional values of established thresholds for environmental safety. The reader is encouraged to study the information contained within this pamphlet to further understand how these levels are quantified and to appreciate the relative insignificance of any radiation attributable to natural stone surfaces. (more…)
These products, commonly referred to as “slab densifiers,” are just different types of silicoid densifiers added to the concrete mix before the pour that have been on the market for over thirty years. They are finding new markets because of all the issues surrounding concrete moisture and moisture sensitive floor coverings.
Essentially they work exactly the same as the silicoids that are entrained into the concrete prior to its placement such as (more…)
Chuck started in the floor covering industry in 1995, working in the warehouse and worked his way up to Commercial Sales Manager for Kaough Distributing Co. Chuck has always believed, if you want to understand floor covering, ask a flooring installer. He spent the first 4-5 years of his career loaning himself out to installers and doing a lot of listening. Chuck continues to listen, but he also enjoys sharing that knowledge with other pros and the consumer & DIY members of The Floor Pro Community.
Maybe you’ve seen the damaging results of someone else’s efforts to remove baseboards from the wall. Or those craters on the face of the base when the nails have been pulled out? Who would have thought you’d ruin the board if you pulled a nail out the same way you put it in?
Now, far be it for me to think this article will be some great teaching instrument for the already accomplished flooring professional. It’s not aimed at pros because they already know this stuff. This is for the new helper, or maybe the homeowner, do-it-yourselfer and home improvement wannabe. It’s for anyone who has slapped their forehead when they realized it’s gonna take more than just a little bit of new base to cover the damages you caused when trying to remove baseboards with brute force. (more…)
Jim McClain grew up in rural Plumas County, CA. After a short, but exciting stint in the US Army, where he dodged work in Germany and incoming rounds in Vietnam, he settled back into country living and took a part-time job as an installer’s helper to work his way through college. He fell in love with the business and turned it into a career. Retiring from sales & installations in 2006, he still carries on his love affair with the industry through the use of a computer, a digital camera and a little space in “teh Ether”.
Walking around with no socks is one of summer’s simple pleasures. However, it can be hard to work up the courage to whip those socks off if your bare feet risk coming into contact with an icy cold surface, or worse, an uncomfortable material. If you want to free all 10 of your little piggies from their stockings all year round, you may want to consider investing in a more comfortable floor. Without further ado, here are our top choices for the most comfortable flooring materials available today. (more…)
Industry standards are established by consensus and provides rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results. Standards are developed by technical experts who work together to meet a common marketplace need.
The term “voluntary consensus standard” describes a document developed through a process where all views and objections are considered and where affected parties (including government, consumers and business) have reached substantial agreement on its contents. This is the type of standard developed by the Institute for Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC). (more…)
Greg Brooks has advanced complex ideas, policies and technical issues to the press, the public, elected officials and stakeholder groups for nearly 30 years. He is principal of West Third Group and leads all engagements.
I understand that things change and technology gives us wonderful tools for us to gain knowledge and insight, but I would caution that it does have its limits and drawbacks. I want to share my opinion and insight on buying floor coverings from Internet retailers.
Stop and ask yourself this question: “Why did I come to The Floor Pro website?” I would guess it’s avail yourself of the expert knowledge you needed or wanted so that you don’t have problems with your new flooring purchase. While you’re getting that knowledge here for free (Thank you Jim for this great site!), the people providing that information are sharing with you the fruits of our experience & knowledge because we simply love the floorcovering industry and helping people. BUT, we all work and derive our living from the industry and if we cannot sell our goods and services we wouldn’t be here.
The Internet retailer guys have seriously hurt independent local retailers over the last 15-20 years, and while it’s only my opinion, (more…)
Chuck started in the floor covering industry in 1995, working in the warehouse and worked his way up to Commercial Sales Manager for Kaough Distributing Co. Chuck has always believed, if you want to understand floor covering, ask a flooring installer. He spent the first 4-5 years of his career loaning himself out to installers and doing a lot of listening. Chuck continues to listen, but he also enjoys sharing that knowledge with other pros and the consumer & DIY members of The Floor Pro Community.
Parquet flooring had found itself on the rise in popularity recently, but what exactly is causing the increase of interest?
The style of parquet flooring dates back to the 16th century and can be found in many Edwardian houses in England. The typical style of parquet flooring comes from the combination of oblong shapes that fit together to form geometric shapes, the most common style is called herringbone. However, parquet found itself put on the sideline once carpeted floors were introduced in the 1930’s, as carpets proved to be a more comfortable and cheaper alternative. Since then, wood floors have majorly developed and progressed proving to be a stronger, if not better, choice than carpet. (more…)
Morgan Mitchell, grew up in Amersham, just outside of London, before moving to Leeds to attend university in 2013. Graduating in 2016 with a first class degree in media, she stayed in Leeds to pursue a career in marketing. Morgan has recently joined the Luxury Flooring and Furnishings marketing team where she is a regular contributor to blog posts, social media and helps to maintain the Luxury Flooring website content.
Over two years, a majority of countries have issued related environmental protection regulations to restrict volatile organic solvents. Concrete floor coatings features, such as waterborne, solvent free and high solids will inevitably be the development trend for the epoxy flooring industry.
Chinese industrial floor coatings or paints currently produced are either solvent based or solvent free coatings, with the former causing harm to human health and pollution of the environment during production and its application in construction. The solvent-free epoxy flooring coating contains a active diluent. Typically, self-leveling application techniques will be used with 1-5mm coatings for solvent free epoxy flooring finishes. (more…)