How's that for a Marky-Markety title? And I didn't even have to use killer, epic, awesome, leverage or hurry! Sometimes I am so ...adequate!

There are a few reasons why I'm posting a link collection rather than my own, new piece. First the negative - I'm swamped with photo editing for our Room Scene Designer, still in beta. That's why our last post on flooring for guest bedrooms came from our new friend Stephanie Staszko. She offered us a guest post, and I quite liked it. It's not a topic of which I would have thought, and she gave great advice. I still have a few installments in the Warranties series to finish, and we're working on some new videos, but I'm not going to pretend that the blog hasn't slowed down. Sorry, if you're a regular, and we'll be back up to speed in 2013.

The good reason is that there are plenty of smart, helpful people out there writing things I think you'll find worthwhile. Lists like this can sort the wheat from the chaff, as... well, no one today ever actually says. I hope to do that with these. Today, the subject is winter, and what it can do to or reveal in your floor and home.

Check these out!

ChicagolandPro, occasional commenters on my posts, started their own blog this summer with some great, helpful posts right off the bat. Their most recent article offers valuable tips on taking care of your hardwood floors in the winter months. We covered winter weather and floor damage last year as well,

and our posts complement each other. Mine was for floors in general, while theirs deals with hardwood, so they have more specific tips for hardwood owners.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="275" caption="What a great picture. Says it all. Nice work, Armstrong!"] [/caption]

Comments in their post refer to maintaining humidity levels and the unwisdom of using steam cleaners on hardwood floors. The bloggers at Armstrong Flooring go over each of those topics in some detail (those used to be links in the previous sentence, but the posts have now disappeared! [late 2015]). We think about high humidity in the steamy summer seasons, but aridity in winter can be just as bad, especially with hardwood. And you should never, never, ever use a steam cleaner on hardwood or laminate flooring. Unless you're about to rip the flooring up for good, and you want to make sure that no one who finds the discarded planks will ever be able to ever use them as flooring again. Steam cleaners destroy wood and laminate floors.

Hardwood Floors Magazine has a detailed (though still concise) article on noisy flooring, particularly of the Engineered Hardwood variety. It addresses how it might have happened, how to fix it, and how to prevent it in future installations. Good stuff. Now this *may* be the source which requires you to sign up before you can read their posts. If so, it's free, and well worth doing.

Finally, Adam Verwymeren (whose fantastic name I really want to hear pronounced aloud sometime) goes over big home issues beyond just flooring. His focus is on preparation for a sale, but the advice can just as well apply to a regular (quarterly, biannual) inspection you might do, or have done, for early detection or even prevention of these issues.

I hope you like these tips, though I really hope you don't actually need most of them! That said, irregardless, the bottom line is that at the end of the day, all things being equal we're looking forward to ramping up our cutting edge, world class, killer blog with unbelievable content providing you bulletproof tips on state-of-the-art, rad, wicked topics. It's gonna be sick!

'Cos that's hot.

Buzzword, David Blog Guru-Ninja, rockstar Flooring Master maven, Eggman Premier Solutions Concepts

  P.S. - ''Word.''