Homes and Gardens
August 10th, 2010 at 07:08am
Under Homes and Gardens
In helping clients decide on hardwood flooring, I start by comparing wood to other kinds of flooring. Assuming the room is suitable for wood in the first place, other possibilities include carpeting, resilient flooring (vinyl sheet and tile) and ceramic tile. Marble is also a choice, but it’s very similar to ceramic tile so I lump them together.
First of all, let’s consider durability. With reasonable care, wood flooring will outlast carpet and vinyl several times over. True, it may need refinishing once, twice or even three times during its life, but at minimum, a wood floor ought to last 20 years. It’s not uncommon to find perfectly serviceable 100-year-old hardwood floors.
High-quality carpeting is tough stuff, too, but depending on the foot traffic, it begins to look threadbare after 20 years and may deteriorate a lot sooner than that. Even cheap replacement carpeting will cost more than a refinishing job on a hardwood floor. Ceramic tile is probably more durable than wood, but a hard object dropped on a tile floor will break a tile, calling for a tricky repair. A dropped object will probably make a repairable dent in a hardwood floor but, with any luck, what you dropped on it won’t break.
Day-to-day care of a wood floor involves sweeping or damp mopping. Unlike carpeting, which acts like a giant rag, wood won’t collect molds and mildew or absorb dust. This delights anyone with allergies. It takes longer to vacuum a carpet than hard surface flooring, and vacuuming never does a thorough job. Even professional cleaning removes only a fraction of the dirt, mold and fungus growing there. Depending on the material and color, tile floors can be very difficult to keep tidy. Some require periodic treatments with sealer to keep them clean.
On the down side, some wood floors require occasional waxing, stripping and rewaxing and, of course, eventual sanding and refinishing. Some new flooring products are delivered prefinished with very durable, baked-on finishes. Some of these don’t need waxing, but because they’re not sanded after installation, they inevitably have “overwood,” or minor thickness or height variations between pieces. A common way of disguising overwood is with chamfers or eased edges on each piece of flooring. Unfortunately, these create gaps between boards into which hard-to-remove dust and debris can lodge.
Although not as fire resistant and water resistant as tile, solid wood requires an extremely high temperature to burn. Should a wood floor ignite, it won’t give off toxic fumes, like burning carpet or resilient flooring. Most modern finishes, particularly the Swedish finish I prefer, protect wood floors against damage from liquid water.
As for square-foot cost, wood costs more than carpeting or resilient flooring but is cheaper than tile. This depends, of course, on the style of flooring, the species of wood and the room where the installation will be done. Some wood floors, parquet over 3/4 inch.,. plywood sheathing, for example, will require underlayment, which adds to the cost. You have to factor finishing into the cost of hardwood flooring, too, unless you’re using prefinished flooring.
By Kym
April 18th, 2010 at 02:34pm
Under Homes and Gardens
Unless you’re very unlucky, it won’t rain in your living room. Your outdoor living area, on the other hand, will have to cope with the odd downpour.
But look on it as a challenge. Our weather gives you a unique opportunity to work through and with the seasons to create a very special setting. You may want to match the surrounding seasons or defy them, but either choice provides options for fresh and original outdoor living room designs.
Rain, wind and snow will all tend to spoil the look of a well-designed space. If you want the area to be presentable and as attractive to visitors as possible then you will need to clean perhaps as often as you intend to use the space. This is especially important before social gatherings. You do not want all your hard work and living room design ideas to be undone because you neglected to sweep the patio.
Take your surroundings into account. If you can include them in your decorations from time to time so much the better. Centerpieces that include multi-colored leaves and flowers from your garden are beautiful and make your guests feel closer to their natural surroundings. Drawing inspiration from your surroundings always helps to create a design plan that moves seamlessly from your indoor living space to the great outdoors. Your design scheme need not be a static one. You can change it with the seasons, for special occasions, or merely on a whim.
Changing the decorative additions for special occasions can help to create the proper feeling of either comfort or elegance. You could use candles, different types of lights, and even streamers depending on what the situation calls for. Your outdoor living space has a great deal of versatility, and all it will take to go from a relaxing setting for two to the venue for an elegant party for a whole group is a few simple adjustments. It does not take a complete overhaul to change an outdoor space. It only takes a few minor touches that were well chosen.
Transforming any interior design living room or outdoor living area is the very essence of design. The only difference with redesigning your outdoor living space is that you can easily alter it on a regular basis without a giant effort on your part. Keep it clean, draw inspiration from your surroundings, and change it whenever you wish so that your outdoor living room will express your personality, your ideas and your life every time you get out and enjoy it.
By Kym
March 5th, 2010 at 12:46pm
Under Homes and Gardens
With wealth and security inevitably come a profusion of styles and an irresistible temptation to go over the top: a broad statement, but one borne out by history. In the twentieth century we have to look back no further than to the 1980s to see evidence of this. If we retreat even further - to the mid-nineteenth century - we find perhaps an even finer example - I’m talking of Victorian interior design ideas.
Victoria was on the British throne, her empire was churning along quite nicely and the rewards of the industrial revolution were being appreciated by a rapidly growing middle class. In the ‘workshop of the world’, as England was then known, fortunes were being made through trade with the colonies. Add to this newly found wealth and security, a monarch with strong feelings about home and family, and you have all the back-ground ingredients of Victorian style.
With all attention on the home, it was obvious that this was where an individual’s status could best be demonstrated to the world at large. The message was loud and clear: ‘I have arrived, I have substance and I espouse family values’ (sounds familiar?). A great surge in building and urban development ensued, much of which constitutes the English housing stock of today.
The penchant for classical styles was declining, but without any strong, new, directional fashion surfacing, the only way to look was back and to reviving previously popular interior and living room design ideas (this too has its parallel in the 1980s when shabby-chic country-house eclecticism became all the rage). Gothic, Elizabethan, oriental, Scottish baronial, Egyptian and rococo - these were among the many styles that the Victorians mixed somewhat indiscriminately. When interpreting Victorian style today, you have the choice of jumbling these various furnishing styles within one room or perhaps of concentrating on just one theme in each individual space.
Industrialization had arrived and furniture was produced en masse (but, alas, not always to the highest standard). At least this meant that furnishings cost less and were therefore available to a wider public and in greater abundance. It should be no surprise, then, that house dwellers of the time overdosed on exuberance. The Victorian home is typified by the cluttering of furnishings, layer upon layer. Why stop at one pair of curtains at a window when these can be accompanied by blinds and net drapes too? Every imaginable item was draped, trimmed and bedecked; every inch of floor space crammed with furniture and every table spilt over with memorabilia.
While the dictates of today’s decorators may be ‘Less is more’ or ‘If in doubt, leave it out’, the byword of their Victorian equivalents was ‘More is marvelous’!
Although at the beginning of this long-enduring period (1837-1901) schemes tended to be relatively light in feel, by the turn of the century they had become altogether more somber. Window treatments were designed to restrict light, the decorator’s palette took on deeper tones, furnishings became bulkier and dark woodwork dominated living room designs. Artificial lighting, despite the arrival of oil lamps followed by gas lamps, did little to brighten interiors. This all sounds rather dull until you remember that the Victorians would dress their rooms according to the season.
Come spring, many of the heavier elements would be replaced or covered by lighter-weight materials in paler colors; then the winter scheme would be re-imposed in the autumn. We adopt this arrangement for our personal clothing, so why not for our rooms?
In Victorian times there was a preciseness that we perhaps lack today with our flexible casual lifestyles. Each room had its definitive purpose and style of decoration. Libraries, drawing rooms and dining rooms tended towards the sumptuous, while upstairs was generally given a lighter, more feminine touch.
By Kym
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