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When you want to add style to your house, one way of doing so and adding security at the same time, is by having window shutters fixed to the exterior of your home. Exterior window shutters add a traditional, Mediterranean look to a property. These days, most houses have glass windows, but before that, people used shutters to adjust the light levels, stop insects and the cold from entering and for protection. Exterior window shutters are available in many different shapes and made from various materials, although the most common ones are wooden and oblong. The quality of the materials used will influence how long your shutters will last, because, as with all exterior goods, they will be exposed to all forms of extreme weather conditions. Plastic, vinyl, metal and wooden shutters are available at many home improvement centres. Although they look fantastic, shutters also have practical uses. They can prevent glaring noon sunlight from over heating your home as well as offering protection. Cedar wood is a good choice, as are most other hard woods. Hardwoods are more resistant to rain and sunlight and, so long as they are painted, stained or oiled regularly - at least once a year - then your shutters will give you ten or more years of good service. Most varieties of hardwood are very resistant to attack from insects too. This is because a lot of them contain oils that are distasteful or even poisonous to insects. However, if you are unsure about the quality of the timber that your shutters are crafted from, you can paint them. Painting, staining or oiling is far simpler if you carry it out before you hang the shutters. If you want to use oil to take care of your new wooden shutters, first stain them to the colour that you want them to be with a stain without varnish. When you have accomplished the desired shade and it has dried, pour oil linseed oil onto a cloth and rub it into the wood in circular motions. The more coats you give it the better, but it may not take more that two or three coats. If you want to varnish your shutters, either stain them to the colour you require as above and then seal them with clear yacht varnish or use a stained yacht varnish without the stain. Whichever way you go, thin the first coat of varnish down until it is almost watery. Paint it on and leave to dry. Rub it down with medium coarse sandpaper and then coat it again with neat varnish. Wait for it to dry and sand it down again, but with fine sandpaper. Add at least one more coat, but it is a matter of the more the better. If you want to paint them, apply a primer or some thinned down undercoat. Wait for it to dry and sand it lightly with fine sandpaper. Next, apply a coat of undercoat that is appropriate for the finishing colour. For example, grey is good for black, brown and even green or red. Sand it down when it is dry with fine paper. Lastly, gloss your shutters with the final colour. In conclusion, hang the shutters on apposite hinges using brass screws. Next time, you paint or varnish your shutters paint over the screw heads, although brass never looks out of place anyway. Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several subjects, but is at present concerned with researching wrought iron floor lamps. If you would like to know more or check out great offers, please go to our website at Wrought Iron Light |
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Posts Tagged ‘remodelling’
Exterior Shutters For Security And Lighting Purposes
Friday, December 2nd, 2011The History Of Candle Making
Sunday, June 5th, 2011|
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People have been making candles for a very, very long time and so you can believe that there have been a lot of changes in the making of candles too. Perhaps the biggest change over all that time is the use to which candles are put. In the beginning, candles were used first and foremost for lighting and in the second place for heat, but nowadays they are used more for embellishment as in religious ceremonies and romantic dinners. It is not entirely certain when the first candles were manufactured or used, but fragments of clay candle holders were found in Egypt which dated back to 4 BC. It is also known that candles were in use in ancient China and Japan. These candles were made from oil extracted from insects and seeds. Meanwhile, taper candles were being used in India made from the oil drawn by boiling cinnamon. Candles were in use in America during the early years of the first century AD. Before that native Americans probably used oily fish and the bark of the Cerio tree. In fact, when the first European settlers arrived, they used a similar method to manufacture candles from wax extracted from bayberries. Some manufacturers still use bayberry wax in candles, but they are apt to be quite expensive. Much later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tallow was used to make candles, but tallow is produced from animal fat and it smelled very bad, particularly when it was burning. Bees wax and paraffin wax were introduced as substitutes for tallow in the early nineteenth century and tallow candles went out of style instantly. People started manufacturing candles by dipping in about 13 AD. Candle merchants travelled from town to town and house to house making candles to order. In Paris in about 15 AD, candle moulds were invented and that vastly improved the candle making process. They were still having problems though with the wick - they just did not seem to burn consistently. The solution was begun in 1825 when someone braided the wick in a moulded candle. This procedure was perfected in 1830 when a braided wick was placed in a moulded candle made from paraffin wax. This produced excellent candles that burned evenly without a foul smell. Not much has changed in the cheap, plain, white candles we use today. The biggest modification came with the proliferation of gas and electricity, because it made the melting of the paraffin wax simpler. The evolution of candles slowed in the twentieth century as candles went out of fashion in favour of gas and electric lighting. The use of candles found a new lease of life in the 1970’s when the hippy culture took to using them again. They are still popular now with the sons and daughters of the 70’s hippies, although nowadays there is a lot more variety. One of the most popular types of candles now are the perfumed or aromatic candles, some of which are used in aromatherapy. Candle making is once again a cottage or home business with many people making their own brand of perfumed candles in their kitchen and selling them to friends or online. It can be quite a lucrative hobby-cum-business. Of course, candles are now more of a luxury, tasteful decoration than they ever were before. You can easily add atmosphere and ambiance to any room in your house by the deployment of candles. In fact, with appropriate candle holders you can even use candles outside to brighten up your patio or deck in a modern garden. Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on several subjects, but is at present involved with researching decorative candle holders. If you would like to know more or check out great offers, please go to our website at Wrought Iron Light. |
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Using Contemporary Fine Art In Your Hotel Decor
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011|
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Businesses of all kinds have come to realize that contemporary fine art makes fantastic, yet inexpensive decor and the lighting necessary to illuminate them is useful for lighting corridors too. Hospitals, hotels, airports, restaurants and bars are jumping on the band wagon as well. There are all kinds of paintings and objets d’art, so many in fact that you will always be able to find something to fit in with whatever style of decor that you have. You can use contemporary fine art to give bare walls an interest and to keep people interested while they are waiting for something to transpire. For example, contemporary fine art displayed in a restaurant will prevent diners from becoming bored while they are waiting for their order. Contemporary fine art in a bar will give solitary travellers something to do while they are passing an hour or two in your establishment. Likewise for hospital patients, looking at contemporary fine art might help relieve anxiety and stress. Hotels and Guest Houses. When people come to check in, you want to offer a warm, yet stylish appearance to them. Many hotel guests travel alone and spend time sitting in the lobby to pass their evenings or weekends. An interesting exhibition of contemporary fine art will keep them amused for hours. Put your paintings or and objets d’art at regular intervals around the walls, but do not crowd a wall. You should pick a warm, yet neutral colour for the wall’s emulsion. Lighting is also very important. Up lighting, down lighting or back lighting are common methods of illuminating pieces of art work, but you can also use spotlights to highlight something out of the ordinary. The lobby can also contain a few plants and a coffee table or two with an interesting wrought iron lamp on each. A matching lamp shade helps to generate a warm, co-ordinated effect. You should also place some contemporary fine art in the guest rooms, because, once again, many travellers are alone and have to spend hours sitting in their rooms alone. If you are stuck for a theme, think about your location. Is it near the sea or is the town famous for something? Does it have a well-known historical connection? Once you have your theme, you will surely find pieces of contemporary fine art to decorate it with. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the average person who comes to stay or eat at your establishment. Is he there for business or pleasure? If it’s pleasure do families come or is it mostly singles? Whatever the type of hotel, guest house, restaurant or pub, you will find a theme and the rest will follow because there is so much choice of contemporary fine art. Uniformity is a good thing when you are decorating a hotel or guest house. Try to keep everything ‘on topic’. The colours, the furniture, the plants, the contemporary fine art - the lighting should be subtle and the whole decor must be in the same theme, if it is to be hugely successful. Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is at present involved with researching wrought iron floor lamps. If you would like to know more or check out great offers, please go to our website at Wrought Iron Light |
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Six Useful Suggestions For Saving Money
Thursday, November 11th, 2010|
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When times are difficult, like they have become lately, it is time to cut costs. This is not a well-liked move, but really, it need not be such a problem as you might envisage. The biggest single cost for most households is the energy bill and in particular the electric bill. If you do not use electricity to cook or heat your house, then the next biggest contributor to your bill is probably lighting. Anyway, here are six suggestions for reducing your household expenses. 1] Plan your menu before you go shopping. If you can, plan your meals for the entire week so that you can use bits and pieces from one day’s meals in the next day’s. It is also easier and less expensive to buy in quantity, which will also save you travelling costs. Use coupons were you can. It is an obvious idea, but one that a lot of people overlook as they peruse their magazines. 2] Replace all your traditional, incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). These bulbs use a low quantity of energy, but still put out a high amount of light. It is a good idea to check for the ‘Energy Star’ rating before you buy in order to ensure that you are getting a high quality product. 3] Instead of using all the lighting in a room, try to illuminate only what you have to. If you are working at your desk, switch off all the other lighting except a desk top lamp and possibly a standard floor lamp. It is surprising how far light travels in a dark room. The light from two lamps such as these will be ample to see your way around too. 4] Buy stocks of light bulbs by the score. They will last a long time, but the CFL bulbs will not deteriorate, so as the price rises with inflation, you will have a stock at the old price. If you can, buy them online, because an online retailer has fewer expenses, which can translate into savings of as much as 70%. Online auctions are also a good idea, you may be able to pick up bankrupt stock. 5] Prepare your own meals and prepare your own food for work. Take home-produced sandwiches or salads. A flask of tea or coffee will supply up to $25 of Starbucks’ alternative coffee drinks 6] Put as many of your lights and appliances on timers or photosensitive switches. If you use passive infra red sensors to turn on lights to deter intruders in your garden, you could be burning more electricity than you have to during the day. If you buy flood lights with photosensitive switches, then they will deactivate the lights during daylight when they are fairly useless anyway. If you have a pond and pond lights, you can also use similar devices to turn your pond lights and pond fountain off during the night.. None of these measures should have a negative effect on your lifestyle, although they will save you money. Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on several topics, but is at present involved with researching wrought iron floor lamps. If you would like to know more or check out great offers, please go to our website at Wrought Iron Light |
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Using Discount Lighting In Your Home Decor
Monday, July 5th, 2010|
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Lighting is the one, single most critical means of altering the mood of any room. Therefore, it stands to reason that if you enhance the lighting and appearance of your house, its value will also increase. Lighting improves any decor. However, you do not have to use expensive lighting, budget or discount light is just as good in most cases. There are thousands of kinds of lighting, at least one of which will go well with the sort of decor that you have. Lighting is best kept understated. Up lighting, down lighting and back lighting are fantastic ways of lighting up objects in a room. The days of a single pendant lamp hanging from a rose in the centre of the ceiling are long gone so if you do have to have one, at least put a dimmer on it. Using many lights instead of one powerful light does not have to be more expensive. Typically, the one powerful light was a 100 watt bulb, so you could have four 20 watt wall lights and still save 20% on electricity. Or you could use one 40 watt bulb in a standard floor lamp or table lamp for reading or working and save 60% on your lighting bill. Besides the savings, a wrought iron floor or table lamp is far more beautiful that a hanging light. How about candelabra? You could make use of candelabra to startling effect, whether you use candles in them or small light bulbs. Candles have made a big return too. Many people use candles for supplementary or even back-up lighting and candelabra are one of the hottest latest trends. Interior designers are buying them up antique shops and painting them bright colours. You can see them in the photographs of the houses of many celebrities. A lot of people use candelabra in conjunction with aromatherapy too. Another aspect of lighting is security. A well-lit house is less likely to be burgled than a dingy house. Outside lighting can also play a key role in security measures. External lighting that is controlled by movement or heating sensors to switch them on are the best means of discouraging burglars. External lighting is the best deterrent, but it can also be beautiful. Back or up lighting on a water fall, a pond or a beautiful arrangement of plants or bushes is amazing in the dark. Spotlights have a role to play in lighting up garden plants as well. If you want to give your fish free, organic meat to eat, put a floodlight or even an ultraviolet light at the pond side. If you switch it on for a few hours after dusk, hundreds of flies, moths and mosquitoes will be drawn to it and fall into the water, where your fish will be waiting for them. You can have a lot of fun with lighting and the possibilities are infinite. Both indoor and outdoor lighting can enhance the beauty of your home and garden, but they also have functional uses: they enable you to see what you are doing and what other people are doing, which is why they are a good deterrent. Good lighting also makes anyone living alone feel safer. Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is at present involved with researching wrought iron floor lamps. If you would like to know more or check out great offers, please go to our website at Wrought Iron Light |
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How to Design Stunning Home Lighting
Thursday, July 30th, 2009|
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You know how some people have homes that look as though they ought to be on the cover of a chic magazine? Ever wondered how they manage to get that look? Well it’s no big secret - it’s mostly down to lighting. Like most of us I expect you’re quite familiar with the sparkly lighting found in up-market stores and though I’m sure you’ve never personally been thrown into a grim prison cell you almost certainly recognise the stereotypical image from countless movies of a single light bulb that’s way too bright. Would you consider using either of these as a design influence for your own home lighting? Yet it is truly amazing just how many folk do fall towards one or other of these extremes with unfortunate but entirely predictable results for their interior decor. If a room is lit predominantly by, overhead ambient lighting it will appear flat, featureless, drab, dull and thoroughly uninviting. If on the other hand the main light sources are feature lamps and/or accent lighting it will seem undoubtedly dramatic, full of shadows and contrasts, but also rather stark and again uninviting. The secret (such as there is) to designing effective home lighting is to blend all four of the basic lighting styles - ambient, accent, task and decorative - and not rely on just one or two. Clearly it is important to adjust the ratio between these four elements to match the desired function and aesthetic effect, but the fact remains that best home lighting is based on having all the available lighting types working together. To use a musical analogy, think of a band with drums, lead guitar, bass and vocals. Each of these parts can assume prominence or take a back seat and the effect will still be pleasing; but lose one completely or conversely push it to the fore to the exclusion of the others and you will quickly notice that things don’t sound quite right. The same applies to lighting. So what exactly are these four lighting types and how do you combine them to get the best effects? The first two are all about function, creating usable light. Ambient light is characterized as appearing to fill a space with diffuse light and is often provided in domestic settings by central ceiling roses and in working environments by fluorescent strip lights. The point of ambient light is to create a foundation of background light on which to mount the other types. In the absence of ambient light other types of lighting paradoxically don’t produce enough luminosity yet also appear too bright (because they contrast too strongly against the background). Task lighting is to provide sufficient light to perform certain tasks, such as working at a desk, reading a book, or preparing food. It needs to be fairly bright (but not so bright as to dazzle or cause glare and strain your eyes) and confined to the area where the task is conducted. The second group of lighting relates to style and the things appear; creating atmosphere if you like. Accent lighting is simply using light to pick out whatever features you want to enhance; these could be books on a shelf, sculpture, wood panelling, brightly colored fabrics, the shape of a piece of furniture, the line of a wall, anything really. The point to remember is that the light source itself should be inconspicuous - it is the thing being lit that is on show. Decorative lighting is a variation on this theme, but the item on display is the light fitting itself. This could be a crystal chandelier or a beautiful Tiffany lampshade or recessed LED decor lights for example. Mixing these main types of lighting typically requires no more than ensuring that related groups are controlled by their own switches. Most obviously, task lighting should be able to be turned on when required and eliminated from the scene when no longer needed. Possibly the most important of the lighting types to get right is the one that is least noticed - ambient lighting. Varying the levels of ambient light completely alters how the overall effect looks and if you were to adopt only one measure to enhance your home lighting, then controlling your ambient lighting with dimmer switches would be the one to go for. How much accent lighting you use is pretty much a function of the availability of features suitable for accentuation, but if possible avoid clustering all your accents in one location. And finally, decorative lighting can be used wherever you feel there might otherwise be a gap in the lighting scheme or positioned to guide the eye to (or from) specific zones. So that’s a brief overview of basic home lighting design, but there is much more to this topic than meets the eye (so to speak). For example, contemporary designs are increasingly based around LED lights, not only because of the stunning effects possible with LED lights, nor even because they are far and away the most efficient (and therefore cheapest) form of lighting, but for the simple reason that it won’t be too many years before LED has totally replaced all other forms of home lighting. About the Author:
If you found this article interesting then you’ll enjoy finding out much more about lighting for the home in general and kitchen lighting in particular.
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