Buenos dias amigos

'G'day' and 'have a nice day!'

Since the launch of the new Cover My Furniture website, there has been a flurry of enquiries from across the world. Great fun to see forums in America talking 'Cover my....'

The forums can be a bit of a mixed blessing however. When you pop up on free and give away forums, there is a flurry of interest from people who like to order free things, like swatches, just to receive stuff in the post.

The best forums for Cover My Furniture are the home interest, design and renovation forums. In America there are lots of very active forums in this area, but not so much here in the U.K. it seems. If anyone can prove me wrong on this then thanks in advance.

No doubt about it - that networking, social media and recommendation are just as important as advertising, particularly to an international audience.

So here's a subject for discussion.

Lot's of companies are out there at the moment saying - hey we're really green. Mucho jumping on the bandwagon me thinks. But then I look at what we're doing here at Cover My Furniture and well I have to admit it - that bandwagon looks awfully attractive.

Keeping the furniture you've got saves space in the landfill holes and the energy and materials needed to make the new furniture you buy. Refresh not renew!

So have we got a genuine case here for calling ourselves 'green' and do we really believe it when we say it?

For the population here in the U.K. I would say that yes, most people would like to act in an environmentally conscious way. How many of us are prepared to put our money where our mouth is and act in an environmentally conscious way? Quite a few - according to a new survey from Nielson called packaging and the environment, almost half of us would give up packaging for greener options.

But for businesses....call me sceptical but I think there is many a case made for being a green company, simply to sell more product. Discuss.

Unique, breakthrough concept in covering Leather Furniture goes online

Leather furniture has dominated the new-furniture market now for the last eight years, accounting for up to 60% of sales. Understandably, some of it is starting to look a little worn and tired. The upshot is that householders put up with the worn-out look - or throw their suites onto landfill. Now, thanks to covermyfurniture.com, an ingenious new alternative is released this week - chenille loose covers that offer a designer look and a sumptuous feel.

Loose covers for leather furniture have always been notoriously difficult to fit - most fabrics slip too much once fitted. However, after extensive research, covermyfurniture.com has located a new range of wonderful chenille fabrics. Their weight and texture make them highly suitable for covering leather sofas and chairs.

Research has shown that people might want to change their leather furniture for a number of reasons. They believe that, apart from looking worn over time, it becomes sticky in the summer and cold in the winter. Perhaps they simply want to breathe new life into their slightly tired-looking sofa. Or they might just fancy a new look.

Whatever the motive, thanks to covermyfurniture.com, the result is a complete transformation of leather furniture and a cutting-edge look at a fraction of the price of buying a new suite.

“This is really a unique, groundbreaking product,” says covermyfurniture.com Online Media Manager Simon Blackburn. “Not only can it transform old or damaged leather suites, but it can protect it, too - from pets, children, wine and food. Even better, we’ve made it really easy to buy it online, with a simple, five-stage buying process that you can see on our website.”

That process simply involves choosing from a wide range of new, fashionable fabrics online, with the ability to zoom in to see detail or even order a swatch.

Householders can then order online and leave only a small deposit. Next, they send some photographs of their furniture for visual reference (covermyfurniture.com can even supply a free camera), and receive a personalised measurement chart, made specially for their furniture. From there, they send back the dimensions and wait for their beautiful covers to arrive. Simple Cushion Covers and Throws can be bought direct online.

“It’s a very 21st-century solution to an old problem,” says Simon. “The half-leather, half-fabric style is very trendy, very ‘designer’, at the minute, so this is a highly cost-effective way of achieving that look.”

Eco Friendly Furniture Refinishing

Author: Shelly Cruz
Eco friendly furniture refinishing helps to reduce our demands on the environment by preserving furniture created long ago, and prevents cutting down and wasting trees growing today. It also helps us to improve our homes with updated fine quality pieces of furniture that might otherwise be overlooked, and clog our waste dumps and landfills. Fine, old trees were cut down in decades or centuries past, and utilized in the production of furniture that is eventually in need of maintenance, not discarding. Old furniture finishes, especially twentieth century finishes including lacquer, turn dark, translucent, and finally semi-opaque, hiding the beauty of the wood beneath. An old finish is then susceptible to whitish heat and humidity marks, becomes brittle and scratches easily. If a new, natural wood finish strikes you as unappealing, then a vibrant, more contemporary colored lacquer finish may be applied instead. Perhaps a glossy bright yellow, orange, or blue is more what you have in mind for your old, tired looking Danish modern furniture ?

If you prefer a natural wood finish, keep in mind that beauty is skin deep, the damages are just to the finish, and you will start over when the finish is removed. If the old finish is removed using Eco friendly furniture refinishing techniques, then a new finish applied, the furniture can display the original beauty of the wood when it was created, with an antique patina that is irreplaceable. The quality and species of wood available and used then was generally better than what is available today.

Whether colored lacquer or natural wood finish is more attractive to you, there is little comparison between craftsmanship of yesterday with today’s shoddy manufacturing. Old furniture you find that was made more than twenty years ago, will outlast just about anything made today.

Eco friendly furniture refinishing is about more than just preserving old furniture, and not wasting resources to produce new flake board, melamine, laminate, or MDF and their waste products in the production of new furniture. Critical to Eco friendly furniture refinishing involves the use of less toxic strippers and removers to take off the old finish, prior to applying a new finish. Over the past fifteen years or so, removers have been developed to strip off old finishes, that are not lye based, or methylene chloride based. These modern, environmentally improved furniture removers include N Methyl-2 Pyrrolidone, or NMP, and other enzymatic removers that facilitate the removal of finishes without such toxic or ozone damaging chemicals as the older generation of furniture finish removers. Other Eco friendly furniture refinishing removers include the use of ceramic or quartz emitter infrared lamps to remove paint and heavily built up finishes, leaving no toxic remover waste or organic solvent to evaporate into the atmosphere at all.

Living on our planet today, we have a responsibility to tomorrows’ generations. Preserving our heritage and the environment is something all can appreciate. The vintage antique, or designer furniture we admire from the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s, including Eames, mid century modern, space age, op art or pop art is often available in local thrift shops, or from eBay, from yard sales, or flea markets. Often, you need look no further than in your own homes to find candidates for refinishing. Open your imagination to wider refinishing possibilities for such handsomely designed furniture, and you will be helping yourself, our society, and the environment for a brighter tomorrow.

About the Author:

Olek Lejbzon & Co. takes care of all your furniture refinishing , restoration and re upholstery needs ranging from a single kitchen chair requiring re caning to refinishing, reupholstering, and repairing all of the furniture. For more information please visit: Eco Friendly Furniture Refinishing

Feng Shui Tips For The Bedroom

Feng Shui Tips for the Bedroom, By Kartar Diamond

While each bedroom is truly unique, and can be analised based on more specific criteria, there are some general tips which can help most people, most of the time. The premise of feng shui, is to create balance and positive energy, and to cater to the function of the room when possible. In other words, what may be appropriate for a bedroom is not necessarily appropriate for other rooms.

1. Avoid sleeping under large, heavy exposed beams. They can cause downward pressure and a chaotic flow of energy in the bedroom, eventually undermining health and triggering specific problems associated with body areas that are directly under the beam.

2.Avoid placing a bed in direct alignment with the entrance to the room. This means, DIRECT alignment, as if your entire body could be taken out of the room feet first, without bending the body. This direct alignment can also cause health problems over time.

3. Avoid having large mirrors, like mirrored closet doors, in the bedroom. Although they are extremely popular and common, a large mirror in a bedroom can bounce the energy around a room--to the extent that people can have their sound sleep interrupted.

4.Avoid sleeping with your head very close to a low window. This is simply draining. We lose most of our body heat from the head and feet.

5.Avoid having a TV or computer in a bedroom. Some people have few options for where to place these items, but they emit an electrical field which is not good to sleep close to.

6.Avoid a sloped ceiling. Once again, they can bounce the energy around the room and are not considered as stable as flat ceilings. The bedroom is for sleeping and re-charging yourself, not for adding more to your stress.

7.Close the bathroom door if the toilet is aligned directly with the bed. Feng Shui masters have been tracking the effects of sleeping too close to toilets for many decades now. It is not "ancient" feng shui since modern plumbing did not exist until relatively recently. Yet, documentation has shown that people are healthier if they sleep further away from the bathroom.

8.Unless you know specifically what your bedroom needs in the way of colors, then just stick to safe colors such as the lightest pastels or white. Every bedroom is truly unique and bold colors will emulate the elements. As an example, if you paint your bedroom walls Hunter Green, that resonates some of the Wood element. If you paint the walls blue, that vibrates some of the water element. There is nothing inherently good or bad about any color, but color will effect occupants differently depending on the "chi" in the room. As an example in extremes: lots of red color in the right place could enhance income and enhance fertility, but red color in a bedroom that should NOT have it, could only cause sickness, accidents or arguments.

9. No heavy lighting fixtures overhead or near the headboard of the bed. This is just plain dangerous and it also creates an oppressive feeling to have anything heavy looming near your head (even if you are asleep.)

10. Try to sleep in one of your best personal directions, based on your birth year. For instance, a woman born in 1951 sleeps best with her head to the westerly directions, such as west, northwest or southwest. Whereas a man born in 1951 sleeps better in the 'easterly' directions, which are east, southeast, north and south. To find out what your best sleeping directions are, plus a lot more, you can get Kartar Diamond's informative feng shui book at www.FengShuiForSkeptics.com You can also email Kartar with your birth date for a quick answer.

Why buy made to measure curtains?

If you are unfamiliar with what exactly makes a made to measure curtain (or any other custom-made fabric product for your home) so different from shop bought ready mades, this article might be useful to read before you start the custom design process.

The following are some of the most important advantages:

See it to believe it. We all know the old saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words." Unfortunately, with made to measure curtains, that saying doesn't quite apply. Many of the factors that make a made to measure curtain so extra special can't be seen in a picture. Custom curtains, for example, are fully lined, making them fuller and heavier. They weigh about 2 - 2.5 pounds per panel on average, whereas the same size, unlined ready made curtain weighs less than a pound. Of course, there are some ready made curtains that are lined. Unfortunately, most are lined with cotton percale fabric, which is a thin sheeting fabric with a low thread count. While it may help to block out the sun and prevent fading to some extent, it does little to add fullness to a drapery.

Lining makes the difference. Made to measure curtains are lined with a thicker polycotton fabric that blocks the sun in the best way possible (up to SPF 50). The polyester component in the lining gives a drapery more strength and fullness. Lining is especially useful in rooms that experience more moisture and evaporative fumes. That's because cotton captures and releases these fumes much easier, making lined window treatments a must in busy kitchens and bathrooms. As you see, the ideal lining is made of both cotton and polyester.

Tailored to your needs. Made to measure curtains are made especially for your room the way you'd like. Ready made curtains are designed to please the majority of consumers. These include curtains that are made with solid, neutral colors and standard sizes. If you need to dress a very wide nursery window in pink and brown toile fabric, you will have a hard time finding the perfect window treatment that you want. Decorator fabrics come in a wide range of colors, prints, and sizes, giving you endless custom options that most shop bought curtains don't offer.

A wise investment. On average, people who purchased made to measure curtains keep them on their windows for seven years. Ready made curtains are changed every one to two years. The quality of made to measure curtains is better, but going after the look that you really want instead of the look that is available will also keep you happy with your room for many years longer. Many of our clients tell us what a relief it is to finally see a made to measure curtain on their windows. Unique window treatments are not easy to find if you're looking for a specific look to fit your room. Most consumers start designing their rooms with matching furniture, pictures, walls, and little accents, only to see their designs come to a screeching halt when they realize that they can't find a matching curtain.

There are many more reasons why made to measure is better than ready made, but the most important one of them is simply value. made to measure curtains pay for themselves throughout all the years that they gracefully cover your windows.