Scenario one: A couple wants to renovate the kitchen of their aging home. Their plan includes the works: new cabinets, floors, countertops, and appliances. They take their wish list to a local home store and find out the cabinets and the flooring alone are going to eat up most of their budget.
Scenario two: A seller wants to spruce up his kitchen so his house will look nicer, and therefore be more appealing to a buyer, but he doesn’t want to invest in a complete renovation.
Scenario three: The owners of a business want to modernize their work environment by updating the wood surfaces, but they can’t shut down for any length of time. Rather, they need someone who can do the work during off hours and not interrupt the flow of operations during the day.
In all three cases, a call to Brandon Snodgrass and John Cook would be in order. Using special products and processes, they can renew wood cabinets and floors without the dust, inconvenience and noxious fumes associated with traditional refinishing methods - at a fraction of the cost and often within a single day.
Snodgrass and Cook aren’t the Siegfried and Roy of the remodeling set; rather these two perform a special brand of magic with a wood renewal process called N-Hance.
“The products and processes N-Hance has developed and put in place allow us to provide a dramatic before-and-after without having to go the traditional route,” says Snodgrass, the co-owner of the Greater Chattanooga area N-Hance franchise. “When floors and cabinets are sanded and refinished the old fashioned way, curing takes several days.”
N-Hance reduces the wait to nearly zero using an ultraviolet wood refinishing process called Lightspeed. It’s not really magic, just clever technology.
“Lightspeed allows us to apply our finish and then cure it instantly just like the UV light in a dentist’s office cures a filling,” Snodgrass says. “So we can be in and out the same day depending on the size of the project. Or if you own a business, we can come in at night and hopefully complete the project by the next morning.”
N-Hance works on any interior wood surface, meaning bathroom vanities, molding, and railings are fair game as well. And Snodgrass and Cook can do more than just refinish wood; they can change its color or even give it an opaque appearance. What’s more, Cook claims they can do this for less than what traditional methods would cost.
“We’re about a fifth of the price of refacing or replacing cabinets,” he says.
N-Hance can be an economical boon for a seller trying to bring up the integrity of his home, says Cook. “If you’re selling your home, clean floors and cabinets give a better impression than scuffs and dirt.”
Snodgrass says the best part of any job is the look on the faces of his clients when they see the finished results: “People generally say, ‘Wow,’ when they see the difference N-Hance has made.”
To prepare to deliver N-Hance to their customers, Snodgrass and Cook trained for two weeks at the company’s headquarters in Logan, Utah. Their instruction included not only learning how to use the company’s products and processes but also how to talk with customers.
“We don’t bog people down with product information,” Snodgrass says. “We just set the right expectations for what we can do and make sure we understand what the customer wants.”
Snodgrass, 28, and Cook, 27, met and became friends in high school in Atlanta, then stayed in touch as they attended separate colleges and explored other careers. Although Snodgrass’s background is in labor-intensive work such as construction, he attended the University of Alabama and later found work as a corporate recruiter. Sitting at a desk “wasn’t doing it for [him].”
“I wanted to get out of the office, so I started looking at my options and stumbled on N-Hance. After a lot of due diligence, I decided it was the path I wanted to pursue,” he says.
Snodgrass brought in Cook, who had landed a job as an accountant for a pharmacy benefits manager after graduating from SMU.
“I was an anthropology major in school, which doesn’t put you on a track for anything you might want to do,” he says, laughing. “But Brandon and I had been tossing around ideas for opening our own business and working for ourselves - for doing something progressive rather than sitting at a desk earning a paycheck. When Brandon brought N-Hance to the table, everything fell into place.”
Although the two men hope to be busy as they begin offering N-Hance’s products and services in Chattanooga and beyond, they plan to enjoy life in the Scenic City as well. Snodgrass, who spent time in a small town in Montana after college, says Chattanooga feels “just right.”
“After living in Montana, Atlanta was too big. I love being back in the mountains and having access to outdoor activities,” he says.
Cook echoes his friend’s comments about size and praises the diversity of the local community. “In Atlanta, you can get lost in the fold of ten different communities. Chattanooga is a more tightly knit community, and it has so much to offer.”
To contact N-Hance locally, call (423) 602-8014. For more information about
N-Hance, visit www.nhance.com.