As many of you have read in some of my earlier posts, I am strongly in favor of "niche" businesses - those that offer a service not commonly found in the industry, but which have a strong appeal to well qualified prospects. Carpet cleaning using natural products is one of these.
Another niche business, which is a nice "fit" with natural carpet cleaning, is wood floor refinishing using another natural product - tung oil. All you need to do (assuming you don't want to buy and learn how to use floor sanding equipment) is find a good floor refinisher in your area who will do your floor sanding for you. Mine charges me $1.00 per sq. ft., but there are many who will work for less. Then you just apply the tung oil. It's the easiest stuff in the world to work with. Put it on with a lambswool applicator, and it soaks right into the newly sanded wood. No problems with uneven drying. Then go back a day later, and put down a 2nd coat. Some of it will soak in, and some will begin to build up (bond) to the original coat. Just wipe off any that might form a puddle in a hollow of the floor. Then, after one or two more days, go back and put down the 3rd and final coat. Voila! A beatiful, stylish wood floor with a real "WOW" factor. While there a bottom-feeding floor refinishers available on Craigslist locally doing sanding AND three coats of polyurethane for as little as .85/sq. ft., I charge $2.25 for my tung oil refinishing. To learn more about tung oil, go to the website I have set up specially to educate potential customers about it: www.oiledwoodfloors.com.
I did wood floor recoating (no sanding involved) for several years. Having to pass on many floors people called me about, when I found them to be beyond recoating, I decided to look for a sander/refinisher to do the jobs where full sanding was required, on a referral fee basis, which evolved into a "wholesale" price basis. Then I decided to have him do all the actual work, the full sanding AND the recoat jobs. This limits my time, and adds a nice income stream to my primary business, for not a lot of work. If you do a Google search under "tung oil" Boston, you'll probably see my Craigslist posting appear.
