According to the picture in March '07 ICS magazine page 36 under Low Moisture Carpet cleaning revolution, Thats what Dave Gelinas 1-800-Marbleguy uses for carpet cleaning, his trusty Cimex Marble grinder with weights, man that must have been one dirty carpet! Hey Dave , is that an extra days training at your Stone restoration Class? Maybe an added bonus?

Sorry Craig, I looked for that issue, even went on line, couldn't find anything. ??? Let me in on it?

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

Sorry Dave the article starts on page 36 of the March 07 ICS mag, the picture is on page 38. They are talking about encapsulation cleaning, and your Cimex marble machine with weights is in the picture. I thought it was humorous.

Yeah, I saw that too and got a chuckle out of it! BTW it seems that every mfg. is jumping on the encap bandwagon - there are encap ads all over the place in that magazine...


Joe

If someone could scan it & send it or send me a link if one exists I’d love to see it. I would have to agree with you Craig, a picture like that would be hilarious. You’re actually saying they’re encaping with a weighted Cimex? In oh so many ways that sounds like a bad idea.

On a side note and I don’t want to highjack the thread, but if anybody has any questions about the up coming stone restoration class feel free to post them here. The class is about half full and there has been a very good response.

If you were wondering about stone and just not sure yet if that’s something you want to do let me share with you how I spent parts of my last two weeks. Thursday a week and a half ago I get a call from someone that sends me a fair amount of CC work. He says he has a hotel that has to be re-cleaned that night that he’s taking away from an existing HWE guy and wants me to look at it, NOW. The problem is I already had a cc job scheduled to do for him Thurs PM of about 7K sq ft on the other side of town and at the same time this job had to start. I spent 2.5 hours walking this hotel w/ him and figuring out how I was going to pull this job off. By 4:00 I had all of my basis covered to do this 20+K sq ft job consisting of lobbies, main hallways, conference & ball rooms as well as a lounge and restaurant too. The next day, DAY being the operative word, we had to go back and do 12 floors of hallways; all the while contending with housekeeping carts, maintenance men and hotel guests – about another 14K sq ft. Because of all of the congestion and traffic it took two men and one Cimex from 10:30 AM Fri to 7:00 PM to clean those hallways. Not to mention the 3 Techs and 1 water boy/furniture mover the night before. All for about $2,700.00 for about 38 man hours worth of work.

Then compare that to the stone job we did three days of last week and Monday of next week. We flattened a small portion of this floor, resurfaced better than half of it and powder polished and sealed all of it as well as serviced some flooring on the second floor of the house. Wed – Fri, 3 men, Mon. 2 men; all told about somewhere around 35 man hours for just a wee bit over $14,000.00. The reason I’m giving you all these numbers is so we have some point of reference. Now when you look at these two jobs, neither of which I would consider “normal jobs” for my company but oddly enough surprisingly similar in labor and investment of equipment requirements, its pretty clear which job was more profitable. About $70.00 per man hour verse about $400.00. Now I want to reiterate something, this does not happen everyday for my company (But I sure like it when it does). We normally only average about $240.00 or so a man hour. At this rate maybe March will beat out January; we’ll have to wait and see.

There is an enormous opportunity in stone care and restoration. The job I referenced above came by way of someone from the East coast of FL that was called in as a consultant on a job that was already done by another company. The householder was still unhappy with the builder that had this other company do the floor and it was recommended that they contact us to fix this problem. After a year of dealing with his floor the homeowner was pretty unhappy and a little gun-shy of anyone else working in his home. By the time we got to powder polishing Friday at about 1:30 the homeowner was smiling from ear to ear.

What was the outcome from this job? The homeowner is developing a multi million dollars resort and spa, Friday after he was smiling ear to ear I asked him “So, who’s going to be taking care of the stone floors in your new resort?” In a very definite tone he said I would be. The builder is very happy with what we have done for them and the flooring store is doing back flips about the work we did for them. Oh yah, the next store neighbor also owns a flooring store and is also very interested in what we can do to help them out as well. Also the wife’s boss already has someone coming to look at his house in two weeks to do some stone work; he also wants me to take a look at it.

Whether you guys are able to make it to the class or not, please don’t ever hesitate to ask any questions you might have about stone. I’ll gladly help you out anyway I can. I’ve already mentioned this to some of the attendees, but if you can make it to the class, there is actually going to be some additional benefits that I’m still putting together. I am very excited, I know it’s gonna “Rock”! (See, that’s one more thing you’ll get to enjoy at the stone class; my corny humor.)

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

whoever, but it appears that someone doesn't pay attention to detail. Someone should've known that the picture used was for hard floor work (specifically stone) and not carpet cleaning. It appears a picture was selected that was not appropriate. If you'll look at Jasper's article (who is very well respected I know), in the first picture of the guy cleaning the carpet, there is a toy under the window. In the second picture, the toy is gone. Not to slight 'em by any means and I could do no better. I just love to note stuff like that. You know, like in a movie where a guy is holding a cigarette that is almost gone and two seconds later it appears to have just been lit. Great trivia type stuff. People sometimes get in a hurry and just select a photo; heck, I've done it when putting together a proposal or something. It's just fun to notice the "errors"!

David

I am interested in stone classes, what can you tell me about it

Steve Frasier
Drew and Steve's Floor Care
www.drewandsteve.net

Good morning Steve,

It’s five till six and I’m headed over to Orlando to finish up that job. I’ll post tonight when I get back to the office. I hope you all have a great week, talk to you soon.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

Hi Steve,

Thanks for asking about the Basic Stone Restoration Class. I’m sorry but actually the name is a little miss leading. There is not going to be too much about the class that you could consider “basic”. As an example every bit of what we just did on that restoration job will be covered in the class, and then some. We will be covering “Lippage Removal”, that’s when you go onto a floor that has never been cut with diamonds (or done badly as was the case with the floor we just did) and make the floor completely smooth from one tile to the other. This is really the most extreme thing you’re ever going to do to a floor. The job we did and the floor we’ll be doing in the class is travertine. By far that is the most common type of stone flooring you’ll be running across out in the field. Does it respond differently than a true marble or granite; yes to a degree? But all of the same principles apply. As you do stone restoration, as with carpet cleaning and any other type of job we might do, you’ll continue to learn different little things but by in large the things you’ll learn in this class will take you a very long way.

So we’ll learn about grinding stone, we’ll learn about filling it and making repairs, we’ll learn about scratch and chip repair as well as something that is fairly difficult called Face Polishing of granite. I just had someone call me from N.C. that has someone very capable in their shop yet they have two kitchens that their guy can’t polish out and bring back to a factory polish. That type of stuff is cake for most of my technicians. I had a new guy on a job a few months ago and showed him how to go about making repairs on natural stone. A few weeks later we were doing a job for a builder and there was broken piece of stone. Someone had whacked the corner of a countertop pretty hard and broken the entire corner completely off. I asked the two guys that I had with me on that job that day who wanted to attempt this repair and my new guy offered. It took him less than twenty minutes and the repair was nearly perfect. There was one slight thing I would have done differently but not only was the builder happy with the repair but even the very critical home owner was as well. Those types of repairs will also be explained and demonstrated as well as you’ll also have a chance to try them if you’d like to.

What about protecting the surroundings, how do you do that? It will be covered. How about how to handle clients and appeal to the things their looking for? All of that will be covered as well. If you haven’t gotten a chance to look at this post, take a look; it outlines a lot of what will be in the class. http://www.network54.com/Forum/228309/thread/1173581857/Corrected+info+on+the+Basic+Stone+Restoration+Class
There is also a few other “bonus” things that will be at the class as well, I’m just wrapping them all up now. This class is going to be great, Steve if you can some how make it I know you wont regret it by far. I hope I get to meet you in person. For those that are thinking about coming don’t wait too long the class is filing up. Call Brenda today and get the facts and figures from her. The office number is 727-896-0004, give us a call and we’ll help you out anyway we can.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy