Tips for Decorating Children's RoomsWritten by Komee Carpenter 2005
Are you thinking about decorating your children’s rooms? Well don’t think too long, because before you know it, they’ll be grown up and gone!When you’re decorating kid’s rooms, you can really save yourself a lot of time and money by having a budget and a simple plan. It doesn’t matter what age your child is, if you’re thinking about decorating his or her room, now is time to make that plan. The foundation of your decorating plan should be flexible enough to work with several themes over years. By foundation I mean flooring, paint or other wall treatment and furniture. You could also carry this one step further and consider window treatments. If you have these basics in place, it will so much easier to just get a few new items in theme of choice, and make a quick change in your kid’s rooms. Choose a paint color that isn’t too trendy so it will withstand test of time, and add some Wallies™ or Wallpaper Borders as accent. You can always remove or replace them later. If your child wants something “way out there”, maybe do something special just on one wall, and be sure you have enough paint left over so you can paint over that special treatment at a later date! (Hint: Buy semi-gloss for lower portion of wall and satin for upper portion in same color. It will give look of two coordinating colors and lower part will be easier to clean.) Quality furniture can be expensive, but if you buy it a piece at a time with future in mind you will save money in long run. Why not buy furniture that your child can take to that first apartment, and then hand down to kids? The convertible cribs are great! They morph from crib to toddler bed to full size bed, and cost about same. (Hint: You can buy some real quality used furniture for much less than new. And chances are it’ll outlast new furniture any way. Just give it a new coat of paint and you’ll be set.) Often times you won’t have a choice about your flooring, especially if you’re renting. But if you are replacing flooring, choose something basic, again not too trendy in pattern or color. You can always kick it up a notch with accent or area rugs. (Hint: It’s also not that expensive to buy a remnant of carpet and have edges bound to make your own area rug.) Window treatments are right up there with some of most expensive decorating items out there. Granted you can buy inexpensive blinds and shades, but if you spend a little more money on quality, you won’t be replacing them every few years. (Hint: Soft fabric kids curtains can make such a difference, and remember that more fabric and other soft furnishings you have in room, more it will help with deadening noise.)
| | Difference Between Cast and Malleable IronWritten by Ali Arnold
The owners of Architectural Ironmongery Ltd would like to explain difference between malleable iron and cast iron ironmongery. The products we sell from Kirkpatrick are all malleable. We feel that we need to explain this due to cheaper cast iron products that are now are arriving in country, many of which are identical in size, shape and general appearance. The difference is that cast iron will break.The name Kirkpatrick Ltd has been synonymous with production of high quality malleable iron builders's ironmongery for over 140 years. At Architectural Ironmongery Ltd we keep an extensive range of their Black Antique and Plain Gothic styles, all can be seen on our website at http://www.arciron.com and available by mail order. Kirkpatrick's malleable iron products are hand-made in their foundry in Walsall using greensand casting process. At this stage castings are hard and brittle and cannot be hammered, so they are subjected to a heat treatment known as 'annealing'. In this process castings are surrounded by an inert haematite ore within iron drums and loaded into ovens of six to eight tons capacity. The ovens take about two days to reach annealing temperatue of 980 C. The castings are then soaked at this temperature for around 80 hours, after which they are allowed to cool naturally. During this process carbon structure of iron is changed. The resulting castings are no longer hard and brittle, but soft and malleable.
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