Archive for November 2011
Buying Model Home Furniture – Great Deals and a Lot of Fun
November 26, 2011 | 
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Have you ever wandered through a model home and admired the furniture? Have you seen a piece that would fit perfectly in your house and you wish you could get it? Well you can and for significantly less than buying from a retail furniture store. You can buy model home furniture if you know what you’re doing.
All of the big developers like Pulte, Meritage and Beazer buy attractive furniture for their models to help sell the unit. When the development is completely sold out, they typically auction off the furniture from the model homes. What you need to do is this.
Talk to the sales manager of the development and get an idea when the close out will be and what auction service they will be using. Typically these auction services will only invite the homeowners in the development and members to the auction.
Once you have the auction service name you can look it up on the web and see what it costs to be a member. Usually this is around $30 a year and it gives you the right to be at the auction, provides mailings with times and dates of auctions and displays photos of things to be sold. Once you have this you’re good to go.
The auction is normally held in the largest room in the house. A four model development can easily have 200 items up on the block. These auctions are cash only and normally you have two hours to remove the item from the site. There are no minimum starting bids. The people at the auction determine just what an item is going to go for.
You can save some big bucks on these auctions and it’s a great way to add a new piece for your home on a budget. One excellent idea though is to try to find the piece you are interested in on the internet to see what it would go for from a discount furniture dealer. Armed with that information you’ll be in a better position to bid wisely.
One caution. If you have a full size house and the model is a smallish town home, the furniture may be slightly smaller than standard. Smaller furniture makes a small space look larger and it’s a common marketing practice. Measure the piece you are interested in before you buy it and regret it when you get home.
So you can buy model home furniture and it can actually be fun if you enjoy auctions.
Posted in home furniture | 
Tags: Auction Service, Buying Furniture, Discount Furniture | 
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Choosing the Right Nursing Home Furniture
Nursing home furniture needs to fill a whole host of special needs: from its look, to its ease of cleaning and durability. The best furniture for nursing homes answers all three of these criteria affordably and well – allowing residents and temporary patients alike to live in the closest comfort they can to their own homes, whilst affording nursing staff the manoeuvrability and solidity they require in order to do their job effectively. As such, good furniture for these places presents quite a design and construction problem – though one, fortunately, that is being answered well by some new corporate furniture web sites: including the UK’s own Triangle Interiors.
Triangle, which has made a pretty successful business out of designing and supplying bulk furniture for conference centres and hospitals, has recently added a quality range of nursing home furniture to its list. The range answers the three design criteria of good nursing furnishings extremely well. Triangle offer living room chairs, for example that have clearly been designed to replicate the kind of chair one might expect to find in the home of a person of that generation: pleasant, naturally coloured arm chairs, with high backs and furled armrests. They look almost indistinguishable from the “real” thing – but are stuffed with ergonomic design features that ensure ease of use in the nursing area situation. This nursing home furniture is easy to clean – it can be wiped down and disinfected in minutes. It’s extremely durable, which means it holds its brightness and colour, as well as its working features, for a length of time that makes it economically practical to order. And it can be altered to make taking a patient out of it, in an emergency situation, extremely efficient and easy.
There are also ranges of bedroom furniture, built with the same three golden rules in mind. All the beds are comfortable, the tables are ornamental and simply built – but everything works in accordance with the daily requirements of a nursing establishment. This is nursing home furniture at its best: designed to look and feel like “normal” home furnishings, but well capable of withstanding the more intense stresses and strains of supporting less mobile patients. In effect, it’s a trick, albeit a very kind hearted one: hospital furnishings, when all is said and done, made up to look like home decoration.
This, of course, is the most important trait of all. A nursing home is a place intended to give dignity, peace and as much happiness as possible to people who can no longer live in their own houses or flats. As such, the better ones are trying to take care of a wealth of memories and habits – and to detract attention from the frustrations inherent in having to be looked after. Nursing home furniture has a vital role to play in this illusion. Everyone knows that it is, really, hospital grade, designed to facilitate treatment rather than ornament: but, in the best of all possible worlds, it’s also reminiscent of the homes the patients have been forced to leave.
Interior Design
A luxurious lifestyle is not about a huge house with lots of rooms and furniture and fixtures. It is all about quality things that are inside it, and the charm and personality of its decor. Even if you are living in a small house, you can make it very cozy and elegant through clever interior design.
Interior design is a process where one can shape the experience of the interior space and manipulate its available volume. A small home can look bigger, if you just know how to utilize all the space and use the appropriate furniture and accessories. Actually, there are three basic guidelines for a successful interior design – whether your room is very small or very big. Interior design can only be considered successful if it is functional expresses a mood and exhibits a sense of harmony.
A room is considered functional if it serves its intended purpose. Keep in mind that no matter how beautiful your room is, it will be useless if it does not fulfill the function you need it for. Take your bedroom for example; if it is not a convenient place to sleep in, it fails the guideline test.
Your room should express a mood. Mood refers to the general look or feeling that you want your room to give off. As you create your room, you have to see to it that every aspect maintains the same mood. The furniture, the colors and the window and floor treatments should be consistent with this mood.
And lastly, the room should exhibit a sense of harmony. This is attained when all the separate elements in a room work together in harmony. All elements should be harmonious in mood, scale, quality and color.
In every interior design project that you do, you must follow these guidelines. They will guide you in attaining your interior design objectives, no matter how big or small they are.