Thick Wool Persian Rug Motifs

Posted on March 6, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

The best thick wool Persian rug motifs are the ones from Iran, which usually have the motifs traditional to the village or the region where they are woven, and usually bear the name of the town or district of the regional weavers.

The Top Persian Wool Area Rugs and Their Motifs

The Heriz is a famous region and carpet style that is thick wool Persian rug with a unique geometric motif. Another is the rather modern looking jagged edge motif of the Kazak rugs woven in Azerbaijan. The most classic and usually considered of very fine quality are the Hariz designs that are also used in the famous Tabriz carpets.

The next motif that is used in thick wool Persian rug weaves is the Mehraban area rugs that have a traditional Hamadan style characterized by floral motifs and often medallions. These are best known as carpets or area rugs that are used as long hallway runners because of the high quality wool that is used and the coarser weave that is very durable for high traffic areas.

If you’ve heard of the Bakhtiari area rugs, then you may already know that they are famous for being very natural and may be woven into Hamadan styles and motifs, however, they are more delicate due to the manner in which they are woven. If you like the floral and medallion motifs of the Hamadan, you may also like the Karadja wool area rugs and these are also great for entryway runners or small area rugs. Since they are a corsere weave as well, they are not made into really large rugs.

The other most popular and well loved motifs used for thick wool Persian rug designs are the Herati, Boteh, Mina-Khani, Gul, Shah Abbasi and the Rosette. Perhaps the most well-known is the Boteh since it is all about flower designs and cluster leaves and what some people believe to be a teardrop or paisley motif. Gul designs are very common but they are not necessarily floral or easy to define since they often represent tribal emblems. Herati wool area rugs have the most elaborate motifs that can include floral designs surrounded by diamonds and vine-like leaves and curling shapes. Similar in some ways to the Herati is the Shah Abbasi used in Tabriz wool area rugs, often curved lines, vines, flowers and extremely complicated intertwined designs that may include both floral motifs and animal figures.

The names of the places where wool area rugs are made and the names of the top quality thick wool Persian rug carpet designs are one and the same. Find the towns and you will find the motifs, like Abadeh, Herat, Nain, Tabriz, Shiraz or Zabol.

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Vessel Sink Faucets

Posted on March 5, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

When decorating your bathroom, a crucial point is to make sure all your choices go well together and matches the overall feel you are targeting. An individual item might look spectacular, but if it doesn’t fit with your other choices, the final result of your remodeling will suffer. The whole is larger than the sum of the individual parts. With that in mind, let’s look at considerations when choosing a faucet for your vessel sink.

Faucets for Ceramic Sinks

Ceramic vessel sinks are generally the easiest to fit in your bathroom. Some might feel, however, that they are also the least interesting option.

Since the vessel sink is a modern design, it would be recommended to also choose a somewhat modern style for the faucet. Polished chrome vessel sink faucets, in non-traditional shapes, is an attractive option.

Faucets for Copper Sinks

When decorating, you are constantly balancing making everything match with keeping things interesting. Copper is a somewhat old-fashioned material, it is classic and elegant. So, if you have such a sink, what should you look for in the faucet?

Successful combinations tend to go for an old-fashioned look of the faucet. Opt for a dark metal faucet that is fairly matte. If you choose one that is too shiny and modern looking, it will not mix well with the sink. Keeping the room interesting, and adding some contrasts, can be done through the surrounding items, such as the tiles, mirror, and lights.

Constantly Evolving Designs

The design of sinks and faucets is constantly evolving. Some might find it frustrating, others will feel it is what keep things interesting. As long as you look at the room as a whole, settle on an overall theme and color scheme, and listen to the advice of professionals, finding the right faucet and sink should be possible.

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How to Clean Hardwood Floors

Posted on March 4, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

Hardwood floors, when maintained and cleaned properly, can be a beautiful addition to any home. Taking a pro-active approach to keeping hardwood floors beautiful is essential in saving money and time. Knowing how to clean hardwood floors is critical in proper maintenance and care.

Basic Maintenance
Understanding basic maintenance is key to understanding how to clean hardwood floors. When hardwood floors are properly maintained, the more time and labor intensive cleaning tasks can be avoided.

Hardwood floors should be swept and/or vacuumed regularly. Vacuuming should be done with a soft-bristled brush, in order to avoid scratches and dents in the hardwood.

Care should be taken to clean up any and all moisture from the hardwood floor immediately. Water left standing on the hardwood floor can warp the wood and/or distort the finish of the wood. When mopping a hardwood floor, an almost-dry mop should be used to minimize the amount of water that comes into contact with the hardwood floor.

Consideration should be given to covering high-traffic areas on the hardwood floor. Carpet runners, with non-skid rubber backs, and/or plastic floor mats (near entrances) can help to protect these high-traffic areas. Removal of shoes, avoidance of dragging furniture and other heavy objects, and use of furniture pads also help to protect hardwood floors and eliminate the need for extensive cleaning and repair.

Cleaning Tools
When thinking about how to clean hardwood floors, consideration must be given to the tools that are used to clean the hardwood floors. The use of proper tools is important for proper cleaning.

A good quality broom is essential for proper cleaning of hardwood floors. Floors should be swept regularly – daily in high-traffic areas – to clean dust and dirt from the hardwood floors.

A vacuum with a soft-bristled brush is essential for picking up the dirt and dust between planks. Vacuuming should take place weekly, or more often in high traffic areas.

A micro-fiber or terry cloth dust mop is helpful when buffing a hardwood floor. Used alone, or with a professional wood cleaning product, the mop will remove stains and leave the hardwood floors looking brilliant.

Deep Cleaning
While proper maintenance is important, understanding how and when to deep clean and repair the hardwood floor is part of knowing how to clean a hardwood floor. Over time, the finish and surface of the hardwood floor will need to be screened (or sanded, if the finish is seriously deteriorated) and re-coated with new polyurethane.

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Solar Covers for your Inground Swimming Pool

Posted on March 3, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

Solar pool covers are a great and affordable way to help make your pool more energy efficient. Every these days are trying to be environmentally friendly and what better way than to start in your own back yard with your swimming pool. This sturdy layer of plastic or vinyl sits directly on top of the water, preventing water loss from evaporation and also help to both warm, and maintain the water temperature of your pool. While the rate of evaporation depends on various factors such as temperature, humidity and wind speed at the surface, a solar pool cover helps negate these factors, saving your money and energy in maintaining your pool.

In addition to protecting against evaporation, solar pool covers also help keep your pool clean. An average sized swimming pool that is covered by a solar pool cover when not in uses is shown to consume a significantly lower amount of chemical such as chlorine or pH adjusters than one simply left out to the elements. Solar covers protect your pool water from exposure to an excess amount of UV rays which denature the effect of various chemicals required for pool maintenance. Solar pool covers also help keep your water crystal clear. The vinyl or plastic cover acts as a barrier between dirt, debris and insects, saving you time and energy on cleaning and maintenance.

Solar pool covers come in a variety of forms, shapes and even sizes. The most common is the bubble form. Bubble solar covers represent the type of bubble wrap used in packaging and shipping, but are made from a higher quality, UV resistant plastic. Bubble covers are often the most affordable type of solar cover. Another form is the vinyl cover. Vinyl covers are usually thicker and also usually last longer than the bubble variety.

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Scrapbook Rooms Floor Plans

Posted on March 2, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

When coming up with a floor plan to make a scrapbook room in our basement for my wife, I found that I have had to run off several copies of the space, plain with nothing added. Sort of like a template. Then I can play with this template and a pencil and see what kind of ideas I can come up with. The best source for scrapbook rooms floor plans and ideas I’ve found is online. Of course, it helps to have a basic idea of design and construction under your belt. Here are a few tips to help you out.

Measure the room that will become the scrapbook space. Draw the shape of the room on a large piece of paper using a pencil and a ruler. Make the drawing to scale is the best way to go so that you won’t make any mistakes with buying furniture that fits the space later on.

Draw in any windows or doors that are in the space; Also, if there are any particular parts of the room that will be staying, draw them in as well. Our space will be using an existing counter top and sink so this is drawn in to our diagram. As well, be sure and mark on any electrical outlets. This will help with furniture placement later on.

Next go over your scrapbooking room design with a black marker. Photocopy it and reproduce several copies. I gave a couple to my wife as well so that she could play around with the layout.

The next thing you’ll need to do is measure any furniture pieces that will be going into the room. Then draw them (to scale) onto a separate piece of paper and reproduce them on a photocopier. Cut the furniture pieces out and place them on your original floor plan.

By doing the above steps you can play around with your floor plan and work out exactly where particular pieces of furniture will be placed in the scrapbook room. If you get really adventurous, you should try making a little diorama or 3D model of the scrapbook room! This sounds like a scrapbook project actually. Maybe that is better left to my wife!

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Selecting Waterbed Sheets

Posted on March 2, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

If you are thinking of purchasing a waterbed or perhaps you have a waterbed, you should know that not all sheets are created equal. When it comes to waterbeds you will find that you need special sheets purpose made to suit your water bed type, that you can get all manner of fabrics and that buying waterbed sheets can, because of their special nature, be a little difficult.

Most people would think that any standard sheets would fit a waterbed. In terms of size, most standard sheets are compatible, the problem usually comes to light half way through the night when your standard sheets slip off the vinyl mattress or entangle you. This problem can be infuriating when you are tired and need your sleep so to get round the issue you can buy purpose made waterbed sheets.

Generally you can get three types, the elasticated sheet, the pocketed sheet and the pole sheet. Elasticated sheets are ideal for soft side waterbeds. These beds look like normal beds except the mattress is water filled. Elasticated sheets have a band of elastic around the sides to keep the sheet on the bed. They look exactly like standard fitted sheets.

Alternatively you can get pocketed sheets. These are sheets with corner pockets stitched into the linen. These sheets are generally multi purpose when it comes to waterbeds and can be used with either a softside or hardside waterbed. The mattress is tucked into the corner pockets and this prevents the sheet slipping of the bed.

If you own a hardside waterbed you could opt for a pole sheet set. A hardside waterbed is a bed where the mattress sits down within the frame. These sheets come with a sleeve running the length of the bed that allows you to fit a pole through the sheet, you can then tuck the sheet and pole down the side of the bed between frame and mattress and the pole will anchor the sheet in place.

You will often find that there is little difference in price between these three sheet types. The greatest factor on price, other than the size of the bed, is the type of fabric the sheets are made from. The cheapest option on waterbed sheets tend to be poly cotton mix sheets. These are hard wearing giving years of service but are said to be less comfortable than flannel sheets which tend to be priced higher.

With both fabrics the higher the thread count the more comfortable and less stiff the sheet will be but higher thread counts are more expensive. If you are looking for discount waterbed sheets then think volume. Buying sets is often cheaper than individual sheets. Sets can be bought easily from amazon or most online waterbed suppliers. Delivery prices tend to be affordable meaning you can get great bargains over the net rather than having to trip out to Walmart to get the best price. Internet shopping for waterbed sheets will also give you the biggest range of style and color options.

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Lighting Up Your World

Posted on March 1, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

One of the most important aspects in decorating ones home office or apartment is the lighting. Specifically outside wall lights which enable you to have extra security on your premises as well as offer a bit of beauty to whatever it is that you are trying to light.

When you decide that you are going to embark on the lighting of your home or apartment the first thing your going to want to do is have a plan and a budget. Nothing can be worse than setting out on a path at one point, and later finding out that you messed something up, or that you do not have enough money to finish the project. Your best bet at this stage is to literally get out a pen and piece of paper to list/draw what types of lights you are interested in, as well as where you think they should be put.

Once you have it all planned out, the next step will be to head over to the nearest home improvement store and check out the cost of the lights and fixtures that you are interested in purchasing. This will help smooth out your budget and give you a much better picture of what is and is not possible.

Installing the lights should be left up to a professional in most cases however if you are the diy type, then you may want to give it a shot, but do so after serious research and at your own risk. Most people understand and incorporate the idea of outside christmas lights. While they are important, it is even more important to have your home lit up throughout the rest of the year as well.

Whether your goal is security, beauty or both, be sure to formulate a plan, stick to the plan, and follow through on the entire process.

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High End Bathroom Accessories

Posted on February 28, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

After a high end bathroom remodel it is important that you put the icing on the cake(so to speak), with choosing the proper bathroom accessories.  Many people spend multiple thousands of dollars making everything just perfect in their bathroom, then go to the local Home Depot and purchase off the shelf accessories that just are not unique or high end enough to go in the modern bathroom remodel.

With the drastic cuts in today’s economy things have changes, the big box stores shelf space is at a premium and with remodeling and house sales down the big stores like Lowes and Home Depot are not carrying anywhere near the amount of products they usually carry.

Fixture Universe is one of the most respected online retailer that carries many high end, unique bathroom accessories and bathroom accessory sets, if you are only looking for fairly standard accessory sets then you can check out Amazon.com.  They also have fairly reasonable prices as well.  You can also do a Google shopping search to make sure you are getting the best price on the item you are looking to purchase.

Toilet Seats

You should have more than just a plain toilet seat, they make many types of novelty toilet seats as well as high end ones that have automatic close and slow close mechanisms.  If you have an elongated toilet, like most high end bathrooms have make sure you look at elongated toilet seats.

Towel Holders

Higher end towel holders are never plastic, they are generally metal or made from a ceramic. They simply look better and hold up better.

Robe Hooks

Robe hooks need to match the rest of your bath accessories, generally they go on the back of the bathroom door so when the door is open nobody sees them. They are not the most important accessory in your bathroom.

Toilet Paper Holders

Toilet paper holders should be bought in a kit that match your towel holders and bathroom shower curtain.

Bathroom Scales

See through bathroom scales are most popular now, you can find a large selection on Amazon.com

Shower Curtain Rings

These are often forgotten pieces of a high end bathroom, they should have the same finish as the rest of your accessories and have some type of design to them.

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The Advantages Of Window Blinds

Posted on February 28, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

Many people are starting to come around to the idea of using window blinds rather than curtains in their home. But what are the real benefits of using window blinds and are they suitable for all situations? In this article we’ll be finding out exactly why window blinds are so useful in almost any home.

First of all, nothing can match window blinds the sheer number of different types and styles that are available (you can also check out the Wood Blinds Guidebook for info as well).  Whether you want to buy wood blinds or something completely different you’ll find plenty of options that match the design of your home. Window blinds also bring a modern style to any room that simply can’t be matched by curtains or other sorts of window coverings.

Another benefit of using window blinds is that there are so many different materials that can be used. While most people think that wood blinds are the only option when it comes to decorating a home this definitely isn’t the case. Some of the more popular alternatives to wooden blinds include PVC and vinyl. There’s always the option of going for faux wood as well.

Window blinds also allow a lot more control over the amount of light entering a room. A curtain can either be open or shut while a window blind can be adjusted to set the amount of light required. This makes them much more flexible than curtains. However, if you want to eliminate all light from a room then regular blinds won’t be enough as the slats are flat and will allow slivers of light through. In this case you should go for curved slats in order to block all the light.

The main question you need to ask when thinking about getting blinds is which type would suit your home the best. This isn’t a straightforward question to answer because there are many variables so the best thing to do is start looking at different styles and materials until you find a favourite. The great thing about the internet is that it provides you with a huge number of different blinds and even custom wood blinds that are just a click away so you’ll be able to compare the different styles without having to spend time looking in stores. However, you should make sure you know exactly what a certain blind looks like and how it’ll fit into your homes design before ordering online as it can be difficult to get a true feeling for what it’ll look like from a picture.

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What are the Must Haves for a Baby Nursery?

Posted on February 27, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

With all the various baby products available, new parents could easily spend thousands of dollars on baby gear before the baby even makes its arrival into the world. All those cute little clothes and beautiful furniture and nursery crib bedding sets just beg to be taken home.

Because most parents want to make sure they supply the best for their children, new parents can easily get carried away and purchase items that are not really necessary. One baby item that is needed is a crib and should be one of the first items of furniture purchased. Cribs come in all shapes and sizes, as well as a wide variety of price ranges. Cribs must meet certain safety standards including having the side slats or bars no more than 2-3/8 inches apart.

While antique cribs may be pretty, they may not be safe and it is best to purchase a crib manufactured in the last few years to make it is JPMA certified. Cribs that meet or exceed these standards will be labeled as being JPMA certified. Also make sure that the mattress you purchase fits snugly in the crib. Once you have chosen a safe crib and mattress, you can move on to the fun part of choosing nursery themes and baby bedding.

There are quite a variety of solid, patterned and themed bedding sets available and just like with nursery furnishings you will find a wide range of prices as well. All parents want the nursery to look nice, but your baby’s safety and comfort should be the top priority.

When choosing bedding, you should keep comfort in mind. 100% cotton crib sheets will just get softer with use and will hold up well to the repeated laundering that will be required. Most crib bedding sets will only come with one crib sheet, if you want additional sheets to coordinate with the bedding you will need to purchase these separately.

Shop wisely for baby products. Purchase a safe crib and comfortable bedding for the nursery first. While you are at it you might want to get a yourself a comfortable chair to place in the nursery for those middle of the night feedings. Then you can look at all those other cute little baby products.

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