Jon O’Berry of Crystal Lake was having some work done on his house when he asked the contractor about fixing a squeaky floor. Turns out that little squeak would cost him big. The contractor would have to move furniture, tear up carpeting, screw down the flooring, re-lay the carpet and relocate the furniture.
O’Berry thought there must be an easier way, and he decided to sleep on the problem. The solution came to him in a dream a few weeks later, a dream so vivid that O’Berry remembers the date it occurred: Feb. 7, 1993. Within five months, O’Berry had sold his mail coupon advertising business, contacted a patent attorney and created Squeeeeek No More, an ingenious product that stops floor squeaks.
Five years later, his product is available through 22 home improvement catalogs, in hundreds of home improvement and hardware stores across the United States and Canada, and on QVC, the home shopping television network.
“We expect to sell about 150,000 units this year,” O’Berry said from the floor of his shop in a building in the Tonyan Industrial Park at the south edge of McHenry. “Squeaky floors are the No. 1 reason for call-backs of new-home builders, and they are the second-most-asked question of home repairers. Our system works great and is so simple that anyone with a power drill can use it.”
Squeeeeek No More consists of special screws, a special drill bit and a device that resembles a metal football kicking tee. Using the Squeeeeek No More kit, a person can repair a squeak in a matter of minutes, without needing to pull up carpeting or other flooring surfaces. Kits typically sell for $20 to $25.
Tom Baum, a homeowner from Lexington, Ky., recently tried Squeeeeek No More and was so impressed with the results he sent a letter to O’Berry praising the product.
“I’m not the kind of guy who writes letters of glowing appreciation, but Squeeeeek No More did such fine job, I wanted to let them know how well it worked,” Baum said. “It was so easy, anybody could do it. I wish I had thought of it.”
Baum said his house was built 12 years ago, and almost from the moment he moved in, it had squeaky floors. He tried several fixes over the years, but nothing worked.
Finally, earlier this year, he decided to sell his house. His real estate agent noticed the squeaky floors and suggested fixing them. He said the local Home Depot store had something that might work.
Baum went to the store, described the problem with his floors and was steered to Squeeeeek No More.
“It did a fantastic job, just fantastic,” Baum said. “I thought I was going to have to tear up carpeting and flooring, which would have been tremendously expensive. In the one month I had the house on the market, 60 people went through it, most of them before I fixed the floors. After I fixed the floors, that’s when the house sold.”
Squeeeeek No More uses thin 3-inch screws that are scored to break off 3/64ths of an inch below the top of the flooring. The special drill bit and metal device that come with the kit ensure that the screws get driven straight into the flooring and then snapped off below the surface. The screws pull the flooring tight, eliminating the squeak. Because the screw heads come off after the screws are driven into the flooring, the repair is nearly invisible. A little putty over the hole in vinyl or wood flooring can make it virtually invisible.
A special coating on the screws enables them to be driven through carpets without damaging the fibers. And because the score on the screws enables them to be broken off just beneath the top of the flooring upon which the carpet rests, a person will never feel the screw.
The morning after O’Berry had the dream that gave him the idea, he scurried to the Crystal Lake Public Library and started researching flooring and squeaky floors.
“There are thousands of articles on how to fix floors, because they are such a common problem” O’Berry said. “I’ve probably read nearly every article on the subject, going back to the 1940s.”
The most common fix — driving wood shims between the tops of the floor joists and the bottom of the subflooring — works, but only temporarily, according to O’Berry’s research. That’s because the shims raise the subflooring off the joists upon which it is supposed to rest. Temperature and humidity changes cause the wood to shrink or swell, eventually leading to more squeaks and the need for additional shimming.
“Nails can work loose,” O’Berry said. “A squeak is usually subflooring rubbing on a nail. Screws hold better than nails. Squeeeeek No More refastens the flooring to stop that rubbing. That’s why it’s better than shimming.”
In March, O’Berry demonstrated his product on QVC’s “Big Time” show, hosted by Phyllis George and featuring innovative products from small American companies. According to QVC spokeswoman Debby Fireman, 1,300 Squeeeeek No More kits were sold in 6 minutes, 30 seconds. Because of that strong response, O’Berry was invited back to appear on “Big Time” in May. Another 720 kits sold in 10 minutes, 30 seconds.
That second strong response convinced QVC to feature Squeeeeek No More every few weeks, Fireman said.
The product landed on QVC in the first place because Scott Ellis, a buyer for the “Big Time” show, had a house with squeaky floors.
“I had a big problem with squeaky floors on the second floor of my house,” Ellis said. “It was an annoyance that had been there for years. I just lived with it. Then I tried Squeeeeek No More. I drove the screws right through the carpet. The squeaks went away, and there is no trace of the repair. It’s ingenious.”
Ellis realized that Squeeeeek No More met all the criteria he uses in searching for products to put on “Big Time”: innovative, useful, easily demonstrated and American-made.
O’Berry patented the design and farmed out the manufacturing to three companies. Serv-All Die and Tool Co. in Crystal Lake makes the device that guides the screw so it is driven straight and to the proper depth. Companies in Arkansas and Kentucky make the special bits and screws.
The items are assembled and packaged at Pioneer Center, a workshop for the mentally and physically disabled that is also located in the Tonyan Industrial Park. O’Berry then ships the packages. Many Home Depot, Menards, Ace Hardware and Tru-Serv hardware stores now carry the product.
O’Berry oversees manufacturing. His son Patrick, 35, of Lindenhurst is in charge of marketing. And his daughter Betsy, 37, handles accounting from her home in Minnesota, where she is a certified public accountant.
Patrick O’Berry recently developed a new product called Counter Snap, for screwing down outdoor decks. It works on the same principle as Squeeeeek No More: Screws that fasten down the decking to the joists below are broken off below the wood surface. After the wood gets wet, it swells to cover the tops of the screws, making the screws invisible.
“It gives a great look to the decks,” Patrick O’Berry said. “People kept stubbing their toes on nail heads that popped up out of the decking. We were clowning around and came up with this idea.”
The product is so new — it’s in only a few stores and catalogs — that the O’Berrys say it is too early to gauge consumer response. But if the response is similar to that for Squeeeeek No More, the company has a bright future.
“We lost money the first year and have made money every year since,” O’Berry said. “That’s pretty amazing, when you think about it. Not many companies start making money their second year. But we have only three employees: my son, my daughter and myself. So that’s probably had something to do with it.”
So has the fact that nearly every home that has wood floors has or will have a squeaky floor.
“I actually expected things to go faster than they have, because floors are such a problem,” O’Berry said. “But we’re doing well. We even sell a lot of kits to new-home builders, because they’re learning how quickly they can fix a floor with our product.”
