Can’t live without…..Walker Zanger’s Line of Bamboo Tiles February 29, 2008

WALKER ZANGER LAUNCHES THE WORLD’S FIRST LINE OF EXQUISITE BAMBOO TILES

The Exclusive Sobu Collection Leads The Trend In Green Design

Sylmar, Calif., Feb. 28, 2008—WALKER ZANGER puts a new spin on the traditional beauty and versatility of bamboo with its exclusive line of mosaic tiles. Crafted from renewable bamboo, the Sobu Collection is truly an innovative design product. This environmentally friendly product is made of a renewable resource; indeed some species of bamboo can grow as much as three feet a day. The Sobu Collection of bamboo mosaics adds warmth and depth to any room and is a visual and responsible delight for homeowners and building professionals committed to using green building products.

While Sobu is made of bamboo, it can be employed in the designer’s palette just like tile.

It’s available in multiple mosaic patterns: Straight, Basketweave, Herringbone, and Random Planking, all of which showcase the material’s delicate veining, rich linearity, and subtle variations of texture and hue. Three colors are available: Gold, which highlights the classic look of cut bamboo; Sable, which adds a warm, reddish brown; and Espresso, a deep, dark brown which complements virtually any color. All colors feature a matte finish and a smooth texture.

WALKER ZANGER Sobu is at home in a wide range of decorating styles, ranging from Asian Zen to Classic Modern to Contemporary. It can add a modern green design to a traditional kitchen backsplash or evoke a sense of serenity for a home spa.

WALKER ZANGER is the world’s most comprehensive stone and tile company. WALKER ZANGER combines traditional tile-making techniques with a modern sophistication that transcends any singular design style. A leading choice for design professionals and consumers, WALKER ZANGER natural stone and tile products, as well as, its new line of exquisite bathroom vanities, can be found in luxury homes, trendy boutiques, lavish spas and resorts, famed museums and fine restaurants around the globe.

WALKER ZANGER is available through 17 beautiful showrooms and exclusive distributors nationwide. To learn more about Sobu and the full line of WALKER ZANGER products, visit www.walkerzanger.com.

2008 Color Trends February 28, 2008

Color Trends - Color trends in fashion and home styles often cross paths. The thing to remember is that trends are always changing, changing with the seasons. Don’t feel pressure to change your home’s color palette every time fashion trends change! The natutral time to change your home colors will happen when you are ready. These changes over time will help create your own personal style. Over time you will have an eclectic look that you can be proud to call your own.

The ultimate source for color forecasting in fashion is Pantone. Click here for Pantone Fashion Color Report Fall 2008 and Pantone Fashion Color Report Spring 2008. My favorite color from the spring report is Cantaloupe!

Hot Colors

• Purple - in fashion and home, purple is the front runner of color.
• Yellow - Yellow is the new orange! Orange will still remain with a presence, but not quite as hot as yellow.
• Blues - varying shades from soft spa blues to robin’s egg blues to deep sea blues. Many nature inspired blues.
• Greens - with all of the buzz about the environment, natural greens are making their way into the home
• Browns -look great with other hot colors, especially the softer colors where black would be too harsh.

Enter the World Floor Covering Association Spring Sweeps with prizes totaling over $20,000 in flooring! February 27, 2008

Vinyl Flooring Mainenance February 27, 2008

Flooring, no matter how new or beautiful, is meant to be walked upon. Vinyl flooring is no exception. Time and the onslaught of foot traffic will most certainly take its toll. But take heart, keeping your vinyl flooring as beautiful and inviting as the day it was installed just requires a little knowledge. So, check out the following advice and be a little smarter about smart and stylish vinyl flooring.

New vinyl floors are extremely durable and long lasting, but like any floor covering they still need regular maintenance to stay looking like new. Follow these general guidelines for vinyl flooring. For more detailed information always refer to the manufacturer’s written floor care procedures. You can’t avoid wear on your vinyl flooring, but knowing how to care for and maintain it can keep you floor in beautiful condition and make it a source of pride for years to come.

 

• For the first 24 hours after your new vinyl floor is installed, protect all the seamed areas. Also, don’t walk on the seam sealer. The seams in the floor need time to set properly.
• Keep the room at 68° F or greater for at least 2 days after installation. This allows the adhesives to setup properly.
• Do not roll heavy objects directly on to a newly installed vinyl floor for at least 5 days. This can cause the vinyl and adhesive to become compressed, and once the adhesive sets up any compressed marks will become permanent.

Do’s and Don’ts about Carpet Cleaning February 25, 2008

New carpeting can be elaborate and elegant, cool and contemporary or tasteful and traditional. It’s one of America’s most popular floor covering choices, enhances virtually any room and it can add value to your residence. Keeping that feeling, and your carpet in beautiful condition, is a challenge if you don’t know the proper steps of maintenance. And that’s why we created this section. We want you to know that, with the care guidelines below, your new carpet can stay attractive for many years, and many bare-foot crossings, to come.

DO’s

• Place walk-off mats wherever there are entrances to your home from high-soil areas like backyards, garages and so on. A few dollars invested in these mats can prevent a lot of dirt and grime from being tracked across your beautiful new carpet.
• Buy a quality vacuum and use it regularly. There have been significant improvements to vacuum cleaners in the past few years, making them easier to use, and better at doing their job. They’ve gotten lighter in weight, stronger in suction and loaded with convenience features. A good vacuum cleaner can be your carpet’s best friend so vacuum as often as you want! Thorough vacuuming removes loose dirt and dust from the fibers. Over time these particles dull your carpet’s appearance; frequent vacuuming maintains the beauty of your floor covering and extends its life.
  

December’s Child….. February 23, 2008

I was tagged in a game an exercise to get to know fellow bloggers by Christine Whittemore . She is the highly motivated and generous author of Flooring The Consumer and co-author of Carpetology.

I am a December baby - snow is one of earth’s best floorcovering!

The rules of the game are simple

1. Mention the person who tagged you and create a link back to them.
2. Pick your month of birth.
3. Copy-paste the traits for all the twelve months (see below).
4. Highlight the traits that apply to you and if you would like write some wit or not.
5. Tag 12 people and let them know by visiting their blogs and leaving a comment for them.
6. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve done it!

DECEMBER’S CHILD IS: Loyal and generous. Sexy. Patriotic. Active in games and interactions. Impatient and hasty. Ambitious. Influential in organizations. Fun to be with. Loves to socialize. Loves praises. Loves attention. Loves to be loved. Honest and trustworthy. Not pretending. Short tempered. Changing personality. Not egotistic. Take high pride in oneself. Hates restrictions. Loves to joke. Good sense of humor. Logical.

In more detail….

The Right Way to Clean Ceramic Tile February 21, 2008

Because of the success of What Feeding the Bears and Ruining Your Hardwood Floors has in Common, today will begin a series of maintenance guides for all types of floor covering. Stay tuned for more!

Tile Maintenance

Sooner or later, time and traffic, life and living, will take its toll on any floor covering. Ceramic tile is no exception. But take heart, keeping your tile as clean and beautiful as its first days in your home just takes know-how. In fact, understanding the best methods to care for your ceramic flooring will help maintain its beauty and keep it close to its original condition. Plus, knowing what’s expected of you regarding upkeep can be a determining factor in which type of ceramic tile to purchase. Knowing how to care for and maintain your ceramic floor will help keep your investment beautiful, durable and a source of pride for years to come.

How to choose a grout color February 19, 2008

Choosing the right grout color can change the way your whole tile project looks. The grout color helps tie in each tile to appear as one complete floor. The function of grout is to protect the edges of the tile from being chipped or cracked. When trying to choose a grout color, it is helpful to look at the sample on all four corners of the tile, preferably in the space where the tile will be installed. It is also helpful to place several different colors near the sample you are considering. This can easily help rule out some colors while making some colors a clearer choice.

When choosing a grout color, there are several different approaches you can take.

Blend - Choosing a grout color that compliments or almost matches the tile will make the floor look more even and uniform overall. In this case, the grout almost disappears. The way I look at it is, you paid for the tile and not the grout, so let the tile stand out instead of the grout. Don’t worry if the color doesn’t match exactly. As long as it blends and is in the same family, you are ok.

Contrast - Contrasting grout is sometimes a desired look, but will make the floor appeared more checkerboard. This is unavoidable when intentionally choosing a checkerboard pattern tile. When using a multicolored mosaic tile, you can’t possibly choose one color. In this case, a contrasting grout can simply serve as a neutral background. Choosing a specific color could change the overall color appearance of the mosaic.

Accent -With today’s popular styles of tile, they are no longer a solid color. This can make choosing grout a little bit more challenging. Often, these tiles have a lot of range of color. In this case, any color grout that matches or blends with the family of colors in the tile will look great. Sometimes, there will be a more solid color along the edges of the tile. In this case, you can choose to highlight or accent that color by choosing a grout color similar to the color along the edge. This will make that border more visible. Most of the time, it is more desirable to choose a color with in the color ranges of the tile rather than the color on the edge of the tile.

Another way to accent with grout is to intentionally use a color that is not in the floor tile, but perhaps the wall color. For example, a black and white checkerboard floor can have a deep red grout to compliment red walls or red accents in the room.

Things to consider:

• White grout can be bleached and should mostly be used only with pure white tiles
• Light colored grouts should be sealed in heavy traffic areas
• Darker colored grout hides more dirt
• Dark grout can fade from sunlight and harsh cleaners
• Sealing grout can help protect the color as well as provide protection from mold and mildew
• Epoxy grout keeps stains from penetrating the grout, more so than a sealer and does not need to be reapplied. It’s great for countertops.
• Faded or discolored grout is not ruined. It can be re-stained.
• Different grouts are needed for different jobs. Unsanded grout is used for smaller grout joints such as natural stone joints. Sanded grout is used for normal and larger grout joints. Mexican tile or Saltillo has special grout for it’s larger than normal grout joints. Your flooring professional will guide you on what to use. For DIY projects, check the back of the bag for more specific instructions.
• Areas where a tiled surface meets a perpendicular surface should be caulked and not grouted. This may require you (not the tile setter) to recaulk annually in areas like the where the wall tile meets the bath tub or where the countertop meets the backsplash.
• It is always a good idea to keep grout from the original installation in case of repair. Grout from a later batch might not match exactly. If a repair happens and your new grout doesn’t match, remember you always have the option of staining the whole floor to a uniform color.

Recycled Rubber Flooring – Helping used tires find a new beautiful home February 11, 2008

Well first of all I would like to say thanks to Shannon Bilby for not only writing such a wonderful and informative blog, but also for letting me write a guest post about something I am passionate about, recycled rubber flooring. Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Mark Rollings and I am a co-owner of Rubber Flooring, Inc.. We specialize in marketing and selling commercial weight room flooring and home gym flooring on line. Well enough about me. Let’s talk flooring.Perhaps the latest and hottest craze in the building industry is “green building” and getting LEED points. I have even heard of a new phenomenon called “green investing” where investors are considering investing a portion of their portfolios in companies which focus on creating and marketing “green products.” Why has this become such a hot topic? I personally believe it is because the general public is slowly becoming more and more socially conscious about how our actions and practices affect the environment. Plus, we feel that if we can even do something small like buying recycled goods, we are doing our part to protect the environment for ourselves and for our kids.

This leads me to rubber flooring. There are many types of rubber flooring products on the market. Some of it is made of virgin rubber that is either harvested from rubber trees or made synthetically. Other types of rubber flooring are in fact made predominately from recycled automobile tires with an added mix of virgin rubber to add color to the product. This is the kind of rubber flooring that we sell and market at www.rubberflooringinc.com . Not only do we feel that we are doing our part environmentally, we also feel that we are creating a great product for our market and offering it at a great price compared to 100% virgin rubber flooring products.

Some examples of recycled rubber flooring can be seen below:

Just to show how our growing market is contributing to the green building craze, let me explain the history behind our market. Twenty years ago, most used tires sat in landfills like this one:Obviously this was not the best situation since tires have a degradation period estimated to be in the thousands of years and could lead to environmentally devastating landfill fires. I have heard many estimates about the amount of tires once stored in landfills but the general consensus was that there were around one billion tires in landfills at one point in time. Today there are around 250 million. That’s Progress!

Now those tires were not all used for flooring but were also used to make rubberized asphalt concrete for roads, anti slip mats for the shipping industry, synthetic turf infill, and even as a fuel derivative by pulp and paper mills. Nonetheless, recycled rubber flooring is an excellent outlet for those used tires and can help lead not only to LEED points, but also to saving the environment one tire at a time.

Trends in Flooring - Carpet and Area Rugs February 8, 2008

TRENDS IN CARPET AND AREA RUGS

With hardwood and tile being selected in more living areas and hallways, this is allowing bedrooms and rooms off the hallway to have their own identities and themes. Carpet in the hallway can dictate that the surrounding rooms be the same material because when the doors are all open it doesn’t look so great for the hallway carpet to be seamed to several different colors or pattens of carpet. Hardwood or tile serves as a neutral divider. Because of this, rooms can have patterned carpets that compliment the theme of the room, bedding or drapery or wallpaper.

Natural fiber carpets and rugs have enough texture on their own, but the addition of raised patterns on top of that texture made me want to break out my checkbook and order some!

Carpet companies like Glen Eden are taking advantage of the metallic finishes that are so popular by incorporating them into their patterned carpets. (left)

Because of the continued use and success of hard surfaces in main living areas as well as bedrooms, area rugs are in high demand. Like other colorful accents, rugs are being shown with lots of color, bright and bold colors as well as great patterns that can let the rugs be a focal point of the room.

Trends in residential products include warm neutrals, large and small patterns and soft luxurious yarns. With rooms having their own themes and identities, it’s easier to use multiple patterns and colors. Patterned carpets are becoming focal points and foundations for rooms that are dictating other design choices in the room. (these pictures are courtesy of Flooring the Consumer author C.B. Whittemore who is the Director, In-Store Innovation for Solutia’s Wear-Dated carpet fiber) For more information about carpet trends, see Christine Whittemore’s post on The Carpetology Blog called The Latest in Carpet Style Trends .

(Craftwork) (Shining Allure)