Cleaning Antique Wooden Furniture

The following advice does not apply to friends and relatives over the age of sixty, but it will make a difference on your wooden antique furniture. Generally speaking, common sense applies and a gentle touch always works best when dealing with antiques. Read on if you dare, no matter how old you may be. Cleaning Strategies Often the best cleaning treatment for wooden antiques is a little warm water on a soft cloth. If you have just bought a piece that has a price tag on it that won’t come off, dampen a cloth with white vinegar and rub it … Continue reading →

Give Your Furniture A Lift

For the past five years I have drooled over a certain down-filled custom couch from Pottery Barn. I sit on it each time I am in the store, and following my wedding I went in and picked out the fabric, color and cushion style. Two weeks before actually shelling out the money for it I discovered I was pregnant. Needless to say, the money that was supposed to go for the couch went to furnishing my daughter’s nursery instead. Years later, I still don’t have my dream couch, but I still dream about it. So what is the attraction? It … Continue reading →

Dining Room Chairs: What To Look For

If you need inspiration when in the market for dining room chairs, rent Mel Brook’s hysterical farce, Twelve Chairs. Although the chairs in his very funny movie concern the family jewels of a rich Russian aristocrat, you should do the best you can when it comes to the chairs your family will sit upon while enjoying your daily meals. Chairs, like cars, need to be test-driven. According to interior designer, Van-Martin Rowe, “if it’s a bad chair, it’s a bad meal.” No one is suggesting that you eat the chairs instead of the food, but consider the chairs at your … Continue reading →

A New Dining Room Table? Keep It Simple

In the words of famous fashion designer, Coco Chanel, “simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance”. This holds true for everything from clothing to jewelry to furniture; dining room tables being no exception. If you do the simple things, everything else will fall into place. This is a rule of thumb that works for most objects but usually not for people. But I digress, for dining room tables are not, after all, people. When in the market for a new table for your dining room, make sure you measure to see that there is enough room between the apron … Continue reading →

The China Cabinet vs. The Sideboard: Who Wins?

There may be those of you out there in blog-land too young to know the difference between a china closet and a sideboard. If you are, I am jealous because I am old enough and not exactly proud of my status. Let’s take a moment to distinguish between the two pieces of furniture in the hopes that things will be at least as clear as mud in the end. A china cabinet is the traditional piece of furniture your mother and her mother (and I) use to keep our china in. While this may seem self- explanatory, it really isn’t. … Continue reading →

Spruce Up the Sofa: For Company Mostly

An interior designer named Marie Kinnaman once said: “A well-worn sofa is wonderful. It means that people have been having a good time.” Well, maybe so, but when company is coming you don’t want your living room sofa to look like something the Salvation Army forgot to pick up the last time their trucks paid a visit to your neighborhood. Learn the art of gift-wrap and camouflage. Those that make the jungle their home have known of this art form for centuries even though they don’t sit on sofas. You would think they would have had the courtesy to pass … Continue reading →

Cheer Up those Chairs: Company is Coming!

Are your chairs a sight for eyes that cannot or better yet, shouldn’t see? And are you having company in just a few days? Eek! What can you do to make things look more presentable? Well, here are a few ideas for those cruddy chairs that you have been meaning to fix up but haven’t had a chance to. The cushions are the easiest things to tackle, so let’s start there. Loose seats can easily be fixed. If the cushion sits within the frame, simply pop it out and then stretch and staple the new fabric over the old. (Resist … Continue reading →

What is Knock Down Furniture?

Knock down furniture may not sound too appealing. You might be drawing mental images of poor quality furnishings that you can “knock down” with little effort. You might be surprised to learn that knock down or “break down” furniture simply means that the pieces arrive unassembled and you have to put them together. We’ve all seen pieces like these at discount centers. Some are rather cheap, pressboard bookshelves, desks, accent tables, futons, and dressers that can aptly be described as “knock-downable.” However, you may not realize that many of the pieces that appear in local furniture shops and showrooms are … Continue reading →

Furniture 102–Other Key Terms

In my previous blog: “Furniture 101,” I told you about the crash course in furniture terms I took following a nightmare trip to the furniture store in pursuit of the perfect dresser. What I left out of that blog was the importance of knowing some other key terms that will further assist you in making the wisest purchase possible. So without further adieu here are a few more furniture-related terms that may come in handy during your next trip to the furniture store: FABRICS Batik –Any hand-printed material, which gets its color as a result of dipping the fabric into … Continue reading →

Furniture 101

Are you in the market for an armoire? How about a credenza, an étagère, a highboy or a settee? HUH? Yeah, I know. I felt the same way when I recently entered a furniture store and was met with a salesperson who peppered me with the same questions. I didn’t realize that I needed to be a linguist in order to successfully navigate through a furniture store. All I wanted was a new dresser for our master bedroom. To be honest, I did feel slightly intimidated by the salesperson’s queries. I walked out of the store dresser-less and headed home … Continue reading →