Alafaya Cleaning and Home Services

A landscaper since age 17, Tom Hill applies decades of experience at Hoffner Nursery, his landscaping company and greenery emporium, as he beautifies homes and businesses alike. Hoffner’s services run the gamut from garden design to outdoor-fireplace installation to sculpting shrubs into the shape of Swamp Thing. Professional lighting services allow homeowners to make full use of their lawns at night, whereas paving helps make yard areas more accessible. Additionally, Hoffner Nursery stockpiles many lovely and useful greens, such as rose bushes and mint.

Owner Maria Cruz attributes the success of her business to her dependable team, about whom she says, "I would trust them with a set of keys to my own house . . . I trust them wholeheartedly."

It would be hard not to, as the foreman of her carpet-cleaning crew, Joe, brings 10 years of experience to his work, and her housecleaning field supervisor, Patricia, brings more than 20 years. "I just could not do this without them," she emphasizes, citing Joe's talent for extracting red candle wax from a light-blue berber carpet, and Patricia's dedication to the checklist Maria created to ensure consistency in cleaning sessions.

Both cleaning teams are licensed, bonded, and insured, as well as thoroughly background checked to ensure that no one has a second job as a mud wrestler. The carpet cleaners purge dirt and debris from carpets with a steam-extraction system and stay well-versed in chemical concoctions to remove extra-tough stains. The housecleaners arrive at homes armed with commercial-grade supplies that will sanitize every surface they touch, plus eco-friendly products if the client desires. The cleaning checklist can be customized to satisfy individual requests.

Since 2006, the technicians at Everblue Pool Services have turned pools from green to clean using chemicals and tidying techniques. From resurrecting broken pipes to fetching sunken sea-monkey tridents, their biweekly visits ensure safe and spotless swimming waters.

Cee 2 Cee’s team of technicians keeps yards well groomed, perfuming area homes with the welcoming aroma of freshly cut grass. Armed with upwards of 15 years of experience, the crew deploys a fleet of ride-on and self-propelled mowers to trim overgrown greens, before resolving neighborhood border disputes via sidewalk edging and zip trimming services. Along with doling out buzz cuts to unruly yards, Cee 2 Cee’s team further beautifies home exteriors thanks to services such as shrub trimming, general mulching, small tree pruning, and mani-pedis for hardworking garden gnomes.

The licensed pest-control technicians from Florida Pest & Lawn shoo away a wide range of critters such as termites, bedbugs, ants, or rodents from inside and outside homes. The pest-control team takes its orders from Richie Kidwell, an industry veteran who learned from his father Fred, also a pest-control specialist, that bugs require more stern evacuation measures than a polite cough or a cease-and-desist letter. On each visit, a team member makes sure that no bug slips through cracks by performing treatments on both the interior and exterior of the home, inspecting and spraying popular pest hangouts such as around appliances, bathroom fixtures, windows, and garbage cans. To ensure that colonies don’t return, the technician also sprays a six-foot barrier around the home’s exterior, which effectively keeps all but 6’1” bugs at bay.

In addition to their pest banishing specialty, the team trims and cares for lawns and shrubs to keep yards healthy and verdant, wielding environmentally friendly products to fertilize plants or snuff out unwanted weeds.

From the recesses of the secret Caribama hideout, the bring-bring of a phone call raises the hand of Angel M. Rodriguez, a fearless contractor with a background in aerospace engineering and professional work with the U.S. Navy and Air Force. "No job is too big," he says and pushes the big red button. The ground rumbles, the gates lift, and his cadre of highly trained fixer-uppers swoops in and restores order to all facets of household catastrophe. While mending the roof, a skilled technician can repair a bent gutter or save a frightened tree limb from the evil meowing of a stuck kitten. Drains unclog and electrical wires cease malfunction. If time remains after raking leaves or removing a felled branch, homeowners can request a tech's meticulous re-glazing services to overhaul a vintage bathtub or an especially meaningful donut.