Tuesday, September 25, 2012

An Evening of Decorating Tips and Assorted Stuff...

Are you decorating on a budget?  Or, more likely, are you simply not decorating because of a budget?

So often, we convince ourselves that any work we do in our home is going to be expensive and time consuming.  And expensive.  

And often, when we've convinced ourselves of those things, we simply don't start a project, putting it off indefinitely, wishing for the day we could zap some life back into our homes.

If you find yourself in that situation--bored with your home, but not interested in spending a lot of money on a big remodel--then you should look into our FREE (is there a better word in the English language?) Decorating Seminar coming up on October 18, 2012.

The seminar will run from 7:00pm to 8:30pm and will focus on many money-saving decorating tips that will help you pump some life and energy into your home without costing you an arm and a leg.  In fact, many of the projects we'll talk about will cost less than $50, but will produce big-time results in your home.  We'll have ample time for question and answers and we'll also be sure to keep things upbeat and entertaining. 

The seminar--as I've mentioned--is FREE (there's that word again), but space is limited.  If you're interested in attending, please click the link above and fill out the online form to sign-up. 

Thursday, September 13, 2012

3M Delicate Surface Tape

Every now and again, a new product enters the home decorating field and changes the way everything is done.  Today I want to very briefly highlight one such product:  3M's Delicate Surface Masking Tape.

Now hold on, don't click away just yet.  I know the very words "masking tape" don't necessarily instill a feeling of raw, unchecked excitement even in the hardiest home decorating gurus, but this tape is different.  It's worth a quick read.  Trust me.  You'll thank me later.

See, 3M's Delicate Surface tape will give you razor sharp, crisp lines when you paint.  Oh, it can be used on all sorts of delicate surfaces including wallpaper and recently painted walls, but for me, the biggest, most important aspect of the tape is the sharp lines it leaves behind.

After all, I hate taping a room off.  I cannot stress this enough.  I hate it.  It's time consuming.  It's no fun (I just want to put paint on, not spend this time taping).  And then, usually, after all that work of taping, I roll my paint on, pull the tape off and discover that there are many areas where the paint leaked under the tape.  My lines aren't crisp.  It's depressing. 

But that's where this particular tape changes the game entirely.  The lines are absolutely razor sharp.  They're perfect.  You can go through all the work of taping your room (which still isn't fun--even with this tape), but the end results make it all worthwhile--no paint leaking under the tape, no wallpaper or wall paint peeling off when you remove the tape.  Nothing but sharp lines and perfect walls. 

Now, of course, the tape is more expensive than regular masking tape--probably a couple bucks a roll more.  But think about it this way:  you're going to spend all that time masking a room with good tape or with cheap tape.  You're going to do all that work painting that room.  You're going to spend all that time pulling the tape off when you're done.  Isn't it worth it to do all of that and end up with perfect results?  Isn't that worth an extra $2? 

OK, that's enough said.  Instead of reading, do a little viewing.  Here's a video that will give you crystal clear proof that this tape's worth the money!  Check it out:

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Paint Colors, Light Bulbs and John Boomsma

The other day, I received a call from the Manager at our Jenison RepcoLite, John Boomsma (see inset).  He had just run into a crazy situation in the store and figured I could make use of the information on our blog.  

John explained that he had received a phone call earlier in the week from a customer who was extremely frustrated.  She was at a loss--didn't know what to do.  See, she had just painted two rooms in her home.  As most people do when getting ready to paint, she had agonized for a few days or weeks over colors. 

Finally, after much effort and after asking her family 100 times which color they liked the most (and then opting for the color she liked the best despite what they said), she painted both rooms.  

And that's when things got weird.

In room 1, she loved the color.  It was perfect.  It blended with the fabrics, the carpet, the trim and so on.  It was exactly the look she had wanted.

However, she was shocked to discover that she hated room 2.  The color looked terrible with the fabrics, the carpet, the trim, and so on. 

The weird thing?  The color was the same in both rooms.  So was the fabric.  And the carpet.  And the trim.  Identical rooms painted with the exact same color out of the exact same gallon and room 1 looked beautiful and room 2 looked terrible.

So she called RepcoLite in Jenison where she bought the paint, wanting to know what was going on.

Now, I'll admit that while John was telling me this story, I was a little intrigued.  These things are sometimes like mysteries and it can be fun and rewarding to puzzle them out and find a solution.  However, I have to be honest:  I wasn't sure, from what I was hearing, what the problem could possibly be.

I assumed maybe a paint color problem.  Maybe the roller she used had paint in it from another job.  Maybe the previous color on the wall was showing through, making the color in room 2 look different.

I had a number of different theories, but then John said "you know what the problem was?  You know what went wrong?"

I waited.  He waited.  (Turns out he wanted me to say "no, I don't know what the problem was" before he'd continue.)  So I admitted ignorance (which made him happy), and he explained, in a single, compound word:  "lightbulbs!"

He went on to explain that the customer had an incandescent lightbulb in room 1--the room she loved.  In room 2, the lightbulb was one of those fluorescent, energy-saving bulbs.  The tone of the light coming from each of those bulbs was enough to visually alter the color on her walls. 

The fix?  Simple:  change bulbs.  

The customer tried the fix and was back in the store a day or so later to report that everything turned out well.  Instead of repainting a room--going through all that work and spending that extra money--all she had to do was change a lightbulb.  

So the point of the story, if it's not obvious, is this:  lighting matters!  Check out your colors in your room, in your lighting before you buy and before you paint.  And likewise, before you give up on a color that you thought you liked but find that you really hate when you see it on your wall, give some thought to the lighting in your room.  Could a simple changing of a lightbulb make all the difference?  It's at least worth a try!