Hardwood flooring and carpet resources
Below are some products that I highly recommend to my customers. I thought it would be helpful to gather them all in one place. Feel free to bookmark this page as it may come in handy. I intend to add more products and services to this page over time.
Disclosure: Please note that some of the below links are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission, if you decide to purchase them. Please note that these are products I know/use and recommend to my customers. I recommend them as they are good products. I am in the flooring business to help my customers and that is how I earn my living, not by the small commissions earned on these products.
Many of the products can be bought direct and shipped via Amazon.com
Floor maintenance and cleaning products
Floor maintenance and cleaning products
Bona Hardwood Cleaning products
Bona is the most recommended cleaning product by hardwood professionals. It’s perfect for hardwood flooring (any type – pre-finished, site finished, solid, engineered), cork, bamboo and laminate.We recommend this to our customers. It’s residue free and helps protect your hardwood investment. And, of course it’s safe for family, pets and the environment. You can buy these on Amazon.com via below links.
Bona Hardwood flooring kit
This is the Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner Starter kit
with Bona mop, microfiber dusting pad, microfiber clean pad and 32oz cleaner. (See below for refills). This is the starter kit.
Bona Hardwood Floor Care Ki...Shop on Amazon
Bona Hardwood cleaner
This is the Bona 32oz cleaner
. Most customers use this size/form on a regular basis.
Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner...Shop on Amazon
Bona Hardwood cleaner Refill
This is the Bona 128oz refill. You can use this in conjunction with your original 32oz cleaner (if you keep the bottle).
Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner...Shop on Amazon
Felt Pads
The Felt Pads
can make a big difference and they are especially important for chairs that move the most. I advise my customers to buy 
Floor registers and grilles/vent covers
Once you have your new hardwood floors or refinished your old hardwood floors, one of the first things you’ll notice are those old, dirty and unattractive floor registers on the floor. Not to worry as it’s easy to make a change – either add wood floor registers or metal ones.
You can either do wood registers or metal, pending your preference.
Here are some options you can purchase on Amazon. Wood and Metal Floor Registers
You can also read a bit more about Hardwood and Metal registers here.
You can find other hardwood flooring accessories including doggie socks, chair roller protectors, anti-fatigue mats and area rug pads here.
Vacuums
Vacuuming frequently is probably the most important step in caring and maintaining your carpet. Besides the obvious cleanliness factor, walking on dirty carpets allows the dirt particles to penetrate below the top surface and that can damage the fibers and cause you to replace your carpet more frequently. For light traffic areas, vacuum twice per week, for heavy traffic areas, you should consider once every 1 to 2 days.
We recommend the Oreck Magnesium LW100 as this is an excellent carpet cleaner and carries the Carpet Rug Institute Seal of Approval. It is also approved for super soft carpets including Shaw’s Caress line. You can get the Oreck vacuum here: Oreck Magnesium Bagged Upright Vacuum, LW100
Polyurethane
While I do not recommend attempting to Sand and Refinish your hardwood floors yourself (as I have seen countless disasters), I do feel comfortable in recommending polyurethane so that you (or hopefully) your installer uses top quality products. This will help with the outcome and longevity of your floors. But, remember, if you don’t have a great installer and top notch equipment, the job will never come out well.
Water borne polyurethane – Bona Traffic HD
When it comes to water borne poly, there is no dispute, Bona Traffic HD is the best in the market place. It looks great, dries quickly, and doesn’t amberize. It’s perfect if you’re staining your floors gray, or white, or just going for a natural super clean look. It costs more than Bona Mega, but it’s worth it as it looks better, lasts longer and amberizes less. This is the only product we use with gray or white washed floors.
Oil based polyurethane – Fabulon
When it comes to oil based poly, we typically use Fabulon. It comes in different finishes, but most of our customers prefer the satin finish. Fabulon Professional Floor Finish Heavy Duty Super Satin – Quart
. To learn more about oil based vs water borne poly, check out this article. To learn more about hardwood finishes check this article on hardwood sheens.
Flooring
FastFloors.com
If you live outside of Westchester County/Fairfield County, feel free to use my special link to Fast Floors to order your flooring and have them shipped directly to you. In particular, I recommend the following brands: Somerset, Armstrong, US Floors and Coretec Plus
Hardwood, Cork, Bamboo Flooring Up-to 70% Off! www.fastfloors.com
Complementary Purchases – Furniture, Area Rugs, Paint
Wayfair.com provides a variety of furniture, vanities, fixtures, pillows and other items that will help you add the finishing touches to your room. They ship directly to you and often have some good sales.
Wayfair-Wayfair believes that options for your home can come from just about anywhere, so we carry over 5,000 brands of products like furniture, lighting, cookware, and everything in between.
The Paint store.com has paint and painting supplies (brushes, rollers, and paint primers such as Kilz, tapes for masking. This is perfect for the Do-it-Yourselfer.
ThePaintStore.com
Marketing resources
Website hosting – Hostgator
My website does incredibly well, and for those of you who are wondering, Hostgator does my hosting. They have done a great job on keeping my site and up and running, even with the heavy traffic loads. They have solved many issues for me quickly (most of which I created myself LOL). They have 24/7 service.
HostGator has made WordPress a breeze! Optimized WP Packages for as low as $9.95 a month!
Website – Theme – Genesis Framework“>Genesis Framework
If you are new wordpress, you’ll quickly learn that you need a theme. A theme is allows you to customize your site and make it look pretty. It helps it function better and organizes everything. I highly recommend the Genesis Framework“>Genesis Framework. It’s probably the most popular and best supported theme out there. And, it’s rather easy to use.
Restaurant.com – a great way to way to reward your customers
I love restaurant.com because it’s a simple way to reward my customers and business partners with a “thank you” when they refer other customers to me. It’s very cost efficient…you can buy a $25 gift card for $10 or a $50 card for $20. And, you can do it all from your computer…no need to print envelopes or use stamps. It’s also great because they have participating restaurants in each town, so I don’t need to guess what type of food they like or find different places in different towns. Sign up below.
$25 Restaurant Certificates for $10
CRM – ActiveCampaign – Customer Relationship Management tool
I should have done this years ago! But, I’m so glad that I finally took the plunge and invested in a CRM program. If you have a customers and if you are looking to improve your close rate and/or looking for more repeat/referral business, this is a MUST HAVE. This program allows you to stay in touch with your customers and provide timed campaigns to them pending on where they are in the purchase cycle. You can trigger actions based on when you met, what they’ve clicked, after they’ve bought. The possibilities are endless.
And, best of all, it’s so cost efficient. I had done some digging on this before I took the plunge, so I knew that some of the programs were expensive. ActiveCampaign.com is the most efficient one I’ve found. If you have less that 500 contacts, it’s just $10 per month…and it is so easy to get more than $10 business in return. And, if you buy for the year, you save 15%. Within 2 weeks of using this, I saw an increase in my close rate and a shortened time frame on decisions. Oh, and you can test this for FREE for 2 weeks.
Click here for your free trial of ActiveCampaign.
Hootsuite.com – an easy way to schedule your social media shares
I’ve been using Hootsuite since 2009 and I wish I had found it sooner. It allows me to schedule my social media shares to facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and Google + all the same time. I often use it so schedule in batches (4 months at a time), so it saves me a lot of time and always ensures I have an update each day of the week. It allows me to easily create short links and to track my effectiveness. The dashboard is super helpful too, so you can see who has retweeted you or messaged you and you can reply right back. They have a free version and a paid version. You can try the paid version free for 30 days.
Click here for yourHootsuite Pro Free Trial
Selz.com – An easy and inexpensive way to sell items online
I’m a huge fan of Selz.com. I use this site to sell my ebooks – some are paid, some are free. You can sell physical or digital products on here. I like it because it’s low risk. Not only do they have free 2 week trial, but you can also choose a monthly free plan and then just pay a small fee for items when they are bought. This is great for when you’re starting out and not sure whether or how many people will buy your items. So, it’s really risk free.
Debbie Gartner is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. At no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission, if you decide to purchase them. I am in the flooring business to help my customers, and that is how I earn my living, not by the small commissions earned on these products.
Hardwood flooring and carpet resources
