FloorTalk – for all the latest flooring fashions

Bathroom Blogfest ‘08

As part of Bathroom Blogfest ‘08, today’s post is quick tips for cleaning bathroom floors. It might not sound glamorous, but it is very important to clean your floors properly. Not doing so can cause permanent damage or cause your warranty to be voided!

Today’s selection: Tile

• It’s important to sweep a tile floor regularly. Dirt can adhere to the surface of tile, particularly styles with a textured surface. Regular sweeping loosens and removes most of this dirt. Vacuum attachments are useful to collect dirt along edges or in between tiles.

• Use walk-off mats at all exterior entrances. This helps to minimize and contain dirt being tracked in at entryways.

• Remember to shake the mats often to remove the dirt. If the dirt is not removed, it will be tracked back in and may scratch the floors. This reduces the amount of dirt being tracked across the tile floor, and reduces the wear to the finished surface. Also, be aware that black rubber mats can stain floors.

• Ceramic tile floors should be damp-mopped regularly using the manufacturer’s recommended grout and tile cleaners. For heavier soil, you can spot clean the floor with a sponge or clean cloth using the recommended cleaners. Rinse well and wipe dry for more shine.

• Textured tiles may require mild scrubbing with a soft brush or electric polisher/scrubber. After cleaning with a mild detergent rinse thoroughly with clean, warm water to help remove any leftover residue. If needed, wipe dry with a clean towel to remove any film.

• For soft water situations you may need to use an all-purpose cleaner. Apply to the floor, let stand for 3 – 5 minutes, lightly scrub with a sponge, rinse well and you’re home free – dirt free too.

• Use cleaning products available from your local grocery store or flooring retailer for heavier cleaning tasks. Products are available that can be used to remove soap scum, hard water deposits, and mildew stains. (more…)

This post is part of Bathroom Blogfest ‘08 where we talk about bathrooms – cleaning up those forgotten spaces around us. Today’s focus for Floor Talk is Eco-Friendly bathroom products and water saving tips for the bathroom.

Kohler’s tips on water saving:

When it comes to saving water in the bathroom, a few small steps can make a big difference. Consider these tips for reducing your water consumption every day.

• Turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth, and rinse out the sink when you’re finished.
• Capture shower/bath water while waiting for water to change temperatures: This excess water can be used for watering plants.
• Don’t wait for the water to get hot before filling the tub for a bath. Put in the plug and adjust the water temperature as the tub fills.
• Do not use the toilet as a garbage can: Only flush the toilet when disposing of sanitary waste.
• Turn off the water while shaving: Fill the bottom of the sink with a few inches of water to rinse your razor.

Kohler conservation products:

Install High-Efficiency Toilets

KOHLER® HETs that flush 1.28 gallons or less, when compared to a 3.5-gallon toilet, can save homeowners up to 22,000 gallons of water per fixture per year.

Bathroom Blogfest ‘08 – Cleaning Up Forgotten Spaces Around Us

Since 2006, a group of women bloggers focused on the customer experience has reserved one week each year to discuss a most important location – the ladies room. Because everyone needs them, restrooms are universally necessary, making them a hugely important – and often forgotten – part of the customer experience in retail locations.

Today, I will be focusing on areas of a bathroom that can be tiled. Tile is such a wonderful way to make a statement in a bathroom whether it be in a home or a commercial application. There are more areas than the floor that can be decorated with tile!

When tiling floors, don’t forget that you can use patterns to jazz up the floor. Tiles don’t have to be laid straight. They can be laid on the diagonal, dots can be added, mosaics can be used, different tiles can be used to outline areas to create an area rug look. There are just a few examples.

Wall tile often gets overlooked, often because you are so exhausted after making the decision on the floor tile. There are many areas on the walls that can be tiled to add design, punch or drama to your room. Basically, the bathroom is one room that can be tiled from floor to ceiling and everything in between.

Areas that can be tiled on the walls:

• Wainscoting – wainscoting can be used to protect the walls from water or from damage, but it can also be used as a decorative element. Tile can be installed below the chair rail, higher up to eye level or all the way up to the ceiling.
• Showers – showers can be tiled from the shower floor to just above the shower head all the way up to the ceiling. The ceiling can also be tiled! Shower tile can be integrated into the tub tile or the tile wainscoting.
• Tub Surrounds – tile can be installed on the three walls around a tub creating a feeling much like a shower. Tub surrounds are great places to add decorative tile, listellos, glass or mosaics for an added decorative element. This wall tile can also be integrated into tile wainscoting.
• Bathtubs – bathtubs can receive tile in several places: the top (called the deck), the front where it meets the floor and the splash (like a kitchen backsplash)
• Mirror Frames – depending on your mirror in your bathroom you can use mosaic tiles, glass tiles or listellos to outline your mirror frame creating a picture framed look. This can be especially helpful when trying to tie in several tiles used in the room.
• Sink splashes – tile on sink splashes can be decorative or functional. They can be useful in keeping water from getting behind the faucet on the wall or they can be another way to tie in other tiles in the room.
• Countertops – one thing to keep in mind while shopping for tile for the countertops is a way to finish off the front of the countertops. Some tile lines have tiles for the front of the counter that match, others do not. In this case something else, like wood, would have to be made to finish off the front of the countertop so that the raw edge from the tile does not show.

When tiling more areas in a bathroom than the floor, you can use the same tile throughout if the size accomodates. You can use the same tile in different sizes. You can use several different, coordinating tiles. If you choose to use the same tile in the same size or the same tile in different sizes, remember that you can add accent pieces like listellos, glass tiles, decorative painted tiles or mosaics into your design scheme.

Wear-Dated Among Bathroom BlogFesters

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Trying to sell a home in todays market is tougher than ever. Home staging is a proven method to selling homes more quickly. With the state of the economy, it may be hard to justify spending the money on a home stager. Below are some hints and tips to help you stage your own home.

First, make a good impression at the front door. Keep the entrance to your home neat and inviting. Make sure the mat is in good condition, the door hardware finish is not worn, the plants have been watered, etc.

Once the potential buyer gets through the front door, continue the good impression by making sure to rid your home of clutter and unnecessary items. It is a good idea to remove most of the personal items like family pictures or  kids school drawings from the fridge. You want the potential buyer to feel like they are in a home environment, but not so overwhelmed with knick-knacks that they can’t see the structure of the home. Removing your personal items will help them be able to visualize their things in the home.

Remember that less is more. Think of when you see a model home. Only the basics and necessities made the cut. Remove any unnecessary furniture items, pieces of artwork or collectibles. The goal is for each room to be open and inviting and not too distracting.

If you have a junk room or room without a purpose, while the house is on the market try to make this room have a purpose. Organize the room so that a potential buyer can visualize that same room for their purpose. Let’s not neglect the garage either. A cluttered garage says that it is not large enough to hold the necessary items. This will translate to the new buyer. Try not to pile everything you remove from the cluttered interior into the garage. Renting a storage space for a few months may be worth the cost.

When the house is being shown, open all of the blinds and window treatments as well as overhead lights and lamps. The brighter the house seems, the more appealing it will be.

It can be very difficult, but try to remove emotion from this process and think of what you would need to see in order to visualize your personal items in a home.  Often when you think you have de-cluttered enough – you can stand to go one more round and de-clutter again!

For more tips from HGTV on staging your home, click here.

My question to each of the vendors was “What is your most popular product or what are you seeing as current trends?”

Here’s what I found:

Cabinetry - Colors like cherry nutmeg with onyx or coffee glazes, truffle and chestnut

Hardwood - Hand distressed boards

Tile - Neutral tiles with decorative accents

Walls – large scale and oversized patterns and texture

New vs. Replacement vs. Refurbish – Instead of spending the money or the expense on the environment, people are looking to refurbish rather than replace

Colors - warm and rich, darker finishes especially with floors and cabinetry

Personalization – a lot of the vendors commented on people wanting something unique and different such as wall coatings and tile

It was refreshing to see all of the color and custom products currently on the market. The vendors were all very enthusiastic despite the state of the economy!

Living in Denver, this was my first opportunity to attend the Colorado Home Decorating and Remodeling Show. There I met Jozette and Michael Griffin who are professional wall art contractors for a company called iF Walls Could Talk. They have a whole new take on reduce, reuse and recycle. Their specialty is faux finishes for walls, cabinets, furniture, floors and countertops. Other services they offer are wall glazing and plastering, stenciling and European finishes, murals, metallic paint and patinas, faux tin ceiling tiles, consultations and training classes.

The goal is for you to be able to change products like cabinets, countertops, floors, etc in your home while not having to remove the existing product that will end up in a landfill or not able to be recycled. They use decorative concrete to accomplish this. This versatile medium can be applied over laminate, tile, subflooring, shower surrounds, garages, existing slab patios, ceramic sinks, sidewalks and more – interior or exterior!

The product is very durable yet can be customized to fit any design scheme.

If you have a product in your home that is tired, worn, dated or was just a poor choice from the start you can remedy the problem without the expense on the environment or your checkbook. At the same time, you can have a completely custom design that is unique to you and your home.

Another company at the show called Architectural Laser Designs also had something unique to offer. They offer the ability to take any image and place it onto ceramic tile. This application can be used on floors, walls, murals or whatever your desire is to create. They also offer custom mosaic designs, custom mosaic pool designs, custom mosaic blends from glass or porcelain. In addition to ceramic tile, they offer a series called Laser Glass to create a glass wallpaper with detailed designs repeated throughout. The designs etch in shades of gray with 20 background color choices on 4″ and 6″ tiles. You can choose designs from their collections or create something custom of your own. For another look, they offer natural stone etchings. Any picture, design or work of art can be etched into granite, marble or slate tiles. The can etch murals, borders, photos, custom artwork, logos or designs into your choice of natural stone.

At Safecoat®, protecting personal health has always been the companies first priority. That’s why for over 25 years they’ve been working to develop the safest, highest quality and least toxic paints and building products. Today AFM safecoat is the leading provider of environmentally responsible, sustainable and non-polluting paints, stains, wood finishes, sealers and related green building products.

The Safecoat® difference is their products don’t just advertise that they are “No VOC’s”, they take steps that go much further to protect your health. How do they do this?  In addition to meeting the highest standards of environmental responsibility, they also eliminate toxic ingredients such as solvents, heavy metals, chemical residuals, formaldehyde and other harmful preservatives. A “safe coat” is actually created for products from wood to metal to concrete, carpets, and much more to reduce toxic emissions into the air you breathe.

One of the products in the AFM Safecoat®  line is The Ayurveda Essesnce Color System.

The Ayurveda Essence color system consists of 108 carefully chosen colors in 3 groups of 36 creating a very distinctive pallet. To keep the format simple, they created three micro palettes that correspond to the three major constitutional types of East Indian medicine: vata, pitta, and kapha. The colors are separated energetically. That means whether the colors are hot or cold, warm or cool, calming or stimulating, uplifting or grounding, moist or dry, etc. For example, deeper, darker colors suggestive of moisture can create balance.

For each micro palette, the starting place on the color wheel was chosen for the strongest balancing effect: violet for the vata palette, green for the pitta palette, red for the kapha palette. Each palette is skewed accordingly to maximize balance. Vata is balanced by earthy colors that subdue hot and cold, pitta is balanced by cooling, complex colors, and kapha is balanced by stimulating and warming colors.

Click here to see examples of the color system. Its colors are striking and well balanced.

Safecoat® offers other products such as : paints and primers, stains and sealers, clear finishes, natural penetrating oil, natural oil wax finishes, natural thinners and cleaners and carpet care.

For a dealer in your area – click here.

It was only a matter of time before bamboo was used for other building materials than flooring. New to the market are bamboo cabinets and countertops.

Some features of bamboo countertops and cabinets:

• Bamboo is currently a popular choice due to its green properties and eco-friendliness
• Same durability as bamboo flooring – built to high standards of craftsmanship
• Cost effective
• Bamboo is a grass and not wood, it regenerates quickly
• Variety of colors offered
• Unique and original look your friends and neighbors are unlikely to have
• Offer more options for modern, contemporary and transitional styles
• Contributes to a healthier indoor air quality

Before you make a decision about what cabinets or countertops to choose, consider bamboo if it fits your design style. These can be a unique alternative that you can enjoy for years to come!

For more posts on bamboo – click here.

 Coventry, UK, Oct. 9, 2008–Resilient flooring manufacturer Amtico International has supplied flooring for the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, according to the Birmingham Post.
Eon Productions, the production company behind the Bond blockbusters, commissioned Amtico to provide flooring for sets used in the latest thriller, which goes on worldwide release next month.
The company was asked to provide 120 square meters of flooring from one of its stone-effect products to recreate the look of a marble floor for a scene filmed in an Italian art gallery.
The film’s supervising art director, Chris Lowe said: “The floor was pre-laid by a flooring contractor off site, then carried on set over the course of a day. The floor was struck for the main set on 007 stage and then re-laid for the re-shoots.
“I have to say, we noted at the time that we were very relieved that we chose to use Amtico flooring, as other flooring methods would never have lasted the duration of the shoot. It stood up remarkably well and we were delighted by the results.”