Vintage Home Furniture

Should I buy a leather couch with vinyl sides? I'm shopping for a leather couch and have found 1 that I like but the sides and back are not leather. (It's a Cindy Crawford one from the Brick Furniture store.) The salesman said it's "leatherette" so I assume this is vinyl. I would like to buy a full grain leather sofa and am concerned about the vinyl sides. I have a 13 and an 11 year old that will likely spend hours every day lounging on the sofa and I'm concerned the vinyl will wear differently than the leather. Does anyone have any advice or recommendations? Thanks.

In my home I have a walk-in basement apartment which is occupied by my 23 year old son. The living room was at one time completely paneled with knotty pine. He has been doing son renovating and removed two of the paneled walls and replaced them with sheet-rock. He would ike to leave two paneled walls and paint them the same color as the sheet-rock walls. Question: Because this is a basement I want it to be light and bright. His furniture is dark blue leather. I was thinking of painting the walls white. There are 2 full size windows in the room. Would you agree or do you have another suggestion? Also, kitchen, natural slate tiled floor in charcoals grey with green and red accents. Walls are divided with a chair rail. One brick accent wall that I don't want to paint, the red brick complements the red in the tile. Ideas for the walls please, I was thinking about a pewter grey for the lower wall and not sure of a color above the chair rail. Ideas appreciated!

i have a backyard of rubbish that the council have said i must remove. how much do waste companys charge? i may have about 20 bin bags of mixed rubbish, some old doors and broken furniture, few bricks, a fridge, in fact it takes up half my yard (standard terraced house). got a quote for a skip for over £100 but with my bad back, i need a WASTE REMOVAL SERVICE to clear it. what am i expecting to pay about? so far ive had 2 quotes, first was over £400 and the other says it will cost me £250 for each tonne. should i carry on finding out? what would a tonne of rubbish look like anyway? i live in NW Uk

Need to show a picture of my yard? Okay I need some ideas and advise here... I live just off a lake and have a beautiful view.. So I wish my yard to compliment it and flow with it. Now I have an Are of land the house itself is facing the lake.. so only the front end has a FULL view of the lake. This house is built a little higher on ground so the houses before me don’t block it… I would like to make this area a mix of rocks, bricks and grass. There is a huge catch.. Since there are large hills almost mountain size behind me in the spring we get a huge run off of water during the spring (sum pumps going mad) flushing water in the dug outs in front of the property, now I don’t wish to hold water around the house.. What exactly do I need to lay under the stone and brick to allow water to flow into the dug out??? I want to do this right without damaging my house.. The good part is the land slops downwards towards the dug outs. This house has flooded before because the previous owners did NOT set up the drains and sum pump pipes properly. Also the pipes from the house leading down to the drain area isn’t set right… the pipes sit only 3 inches under ground.. no support under the pipe either to keep it level between winter and summer freeze ups. Should there be rocks under this too? And what other materials are needed to help the flow of water going towards it. This dug out area I will be placing rocks around it for a nice curb appeal. Should I add an underlay to this area as well? I have watched a number of shows to see how they do it. But I know I’m missing important elements because of the change in weather we have up here in Northern Alberta. I wish to add seating in this area too… My concern is quality of outdoor furniture. Sure everyone has nice furniture but I need something that can handle good old fashion weather abuse…Water.. Sand..Dust.. Dirt..Sun… Heavy rains and so forth. What brand names are out there that are worth the extra buck that have style/class and quality?? What I am hopping for is heavy duty plastic. I don’t want to over do it with wood being already lots of trees around here.. I want this to stand out not just blend in. Wood furniture I don’t have concerns about.. A good stain and TLC keeps it looking good. And will implement it accordingly. Landscaper around here.. That’s Funny…..Would have to get someone from Grande Prairie or Edmonton both are 2 ½ hours away… I live outside of Slave Lake.. Let me give you an idea as to the type of “Hired Help” available out here. Our furnace needs to be repaired… 4 weeks we have been waiting on 3 different furnace companies to come out here and fix it.. NOT ONE PHONE CALL explaining the delays or anything.. Its not even Winter for Christ sakes, nor has the building boom started.. (still isnt fixed and into week 6) We live in a Community of 7000.. Home Hardware and another Home place is open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm… Ya if you work full time best to drive hours away to get what you need on a weekend. We are literally living in LAZY ZONE. Oilfield and Logging go 24-7 but get someone out here for an emergency repair or even a simple fix… HAHAHAHAHAHA… Best to do it myself then wait on anyone here.

Fire resistance of a brick home? I have a mostly double brick home - tile roof at front, metal roof at rear. Back section of house is fibrous cement walls [int & ext]. House is two storeys & has timber floors almost throughout tiles in kitchen & bathroom & concrete with carpet in two rooms on ground level. I don't have many powerpoints as it is an old house so use powerboards a lot. Mum says this is a huge fire risk but being a solid building I didn't think there's much chance of fire spreading to other rooms & a fire would be pretty much localised. Mum says the furniture & rugs & bookshelves & curtains would fuel fire & it would spread up or down [depending where the fire starts] rather than go from one room to another, although she added that the fire could spread to another room via the timber floor & insists I get an electrician to install powerpoints rather than have leads & boards all over the place,especially with coming winter and need for heaters. Is my place a hazard or pretty safe from going up in smoke?

Fun things to do with a dog run? We have an empty dog run with about 80 bricks, I have a little fort, and in it, it has : a big chair, dining table, and old lamps that don't work. All of the furniture is made of brick and rock. The lamps are taken out from the ground (solar lighting) because we had to make room for a pool. Anyways, I need a fun thing to make the run a fort. we have bricks, a uneven slab of marble, and some wood. Most of the bricks are square, and some are landscaping bricks. We also have a dog igloo from the former owners. I need some ideas! Thank You! Please answer, even if it isn't much! I don't need to sell the stuff, because we had 9 garage sails, and noone took the bricks! I need ideas to make it a fort!

Is everyone tired of tv commercials using old-school music, but using different words? For example, over here in California, they aired a commercial for a furniture company. they sampled the song: "Brick-house" (a song i like) and the company changes the lyrics to promote their stuff!! or Circuit Citys' commercial, they use "Just what I Needed" by "The Cars". There are a few others but i can't remember (thank goodness!) is anyone sick of this?

14 month old not walking on her own yet? hi my daughters 14 months old and still wont walk on her own, she is advanced in other things (builds 4 wooden bricks/talks using 2/3 words, crawled at 5 months) she walks round the furniture and has for the past 5/6 months, she also walks in the street holding my hand for 15/20 mins at a time but if i try to get her to let go she sinks down on her knees, its very frustrating as all her baby friends that are more or less the same age have been walking for months..... any advice please xx

Is your son or daughter ashamed of your home? I have a 15 year old daughter who is friends with some rather wealthy kids. She loves her family and is not ashamed of us, but recently she said she didn't want to invite someone over because our house wasn't as nice as theirs. We live in a doublewide, but it is extra nice, bricked under, the yard is beautiful and we live out in the country. Our house is furnished with very nice furniture, we have a beautiful home. There is a porch on the front, a patio on the back, etc. This really broke my heart. Do you think it is a phase she is going through? We are not poor, we are middle class. I am a teacher and my husband works for the USPS. We chose to live close to my parents out in the country. Should I just get over it and not say anything else about it?

Can we be blamed for accidently blending a blind person? Me and my mates know this guy who is blind. We like to have a bit of a joke with him; - moving his furniture about - tying tin cans and house bricks to his guide dog - taking pages out of his braille books and putting them back in upside down, or replacing them with randomly indented paper. So far, this has just been lighthearted fun but... On friday night we'd had a few too many and one of us put his blender next to his phone. Well someone gave him a call on saturday morning and now he only has the thumb and little finger left on his right hand. We haven't talked to him yet but, by all accounts, he's pretty angry. We're a bit worried that he might turn against us and grass us up to the old bill. I mean, we were only joking for Pete's sake! It's not our fault if he can't tell a blender from a telephone, is it? What we want to know is, will the courts see it the same way? Are we responsible in the eyes of the law?

would you buy this house in this situation? I am shopping for a house, I own a Condo at this moment. I went to see a nice brick house, one floor with finish basement. But the thing is the current owner is an old lady who is terminally ill at the hospital. Her daughter put the house for sale this past weekend. I went to see it yesterday but even though is a nice house it gave me the chilly willies seeing the old ladies furniture, her bed room set and her clothes in the closet being still there. I mean just the thought of her ghost roaming the house and me putting my bed on the same room where she was ill for a while. If the house was empty it would be a different story. I mean anyone here would think the same as me?

cream colored fireplace ? I I have a cream colored fireplace and it has brown mortar. It looks really boring and old. The walls around it are a latte color and I decorated with like a brick red colored furniture. My question is what would be the easiest way to update this look? I thought about doing some type of stone over it. I also thought about glazing it somehow with a red color. Or do you have any ideas? Preferably something I could learn to do myself.Thanks

tell me what you think of this short story? The desperate drug addict stumbled into his dimly lit cheap apartment room. He looked around nervously as his paranoia crept up on him. It was hard to see, for the room was dark and his eyesight was blurry. His careless steps made an echoing noise on the bare floor as he cautiously walked over to the window and looked out. He turned around almost losing his balance to see if someone else was in the room. He saw nothing but the same old worn-out furniture. However, there was a presence. Someone sitting silently crouched in a corner. Unaware, the anxious druggie fell to his knees to the small glass table before him. His heart was beating as fast as a falling brick. He snorted his addicting lines of cocaine and shot up his precious heroine. “This is the last time.” He repeated to himself over and over again. Yet nothing could stop the deadly venom seeping through his veins now. Nothing except for the face of a little young girl the quietly appeared from the shadows as she innocently asked, “Daddy, is that you?…” -justina easter ooops. i have a few grammar mistakes. but disregard those, please. rate it from 1 to 10

What type of area rug should I get? I live in a 90 year old home with a lot of original features, including fir flooring. Our living room is brick red with off white (original) trim and moldings. Furniture is currently a dark brown, but will probably change to tan soon. We have a traditional style area rug (oriental-ish) with reds, browns, and creams but want to change. I'm wondering if we should stick with this style or move to a new "shag" style (either tan or brick red?). The surrounding rooms are a little more modern in colors (light teal) and wondering if the flow would be okay. Thanks.

Re-doing my room and need help!? I'll start from the beginning. I want my room to sort of look like older 1910-1920's New York, Chicago, big city style with black and white photos of architecture and buildings of all around the world. But not like a city loft bedroom with lots of metal and really square. My bed head and foot boards are those skinny rod iron poles like you would find in older beds. The thing is, my other furniture is like my past theme with some bouquets of flowers and cream colored (i've had that theme since i was really young) and I'm not sure if I should leave them like that. It would cost a lot to repaint them and I'm not sure my parents would want to re-paint it. How can I make my room the way I want it and have a good color theme that matches that era. I was thinking brick hearth red walls with black and white, but that seems sort of Chinese to me. Any other ideas. O ya... I have a lot of knick knacks and trophies, etc... What should I do with those? My head and foot boards are wrought iron. A dark charcoal almost black color. Would a brick hearth red walls go well with that. Does brick hearth red go well with wood, just plain non-painted wood? (its my lining of the walls on the bottom near the floor. What type of rug should I get for an older black and white, big city type of room? We are takin out the carpet and putting in wood floors.

paint colors for house? i want to paint my house. as of right now all the walls are white. we have wooded floors, staircase thats also wooded rods. same color.. light brown. and just a dining table thats also a dark brown standing and chairs with a very light brown on top. actually it looks white from far away. thats about it with furniture. oh and black leather sofa. any color ideas?? our living room is also connected to our kitchen with a stair case in b/w. and we have tall white column in the middle of the living room. it's a brick victorian town house. which explains the columns. any ideas for color? nothing old. i don't want it to look all comtfy like old peoples house's. which is why i'm a little hesitant about yellow. also i forgot to say we have bay windows. just want to color living room for now on. my dining room is actually my living room. it's all in one big space. thats why we have the tall column for. it sorta gives the rectangular shape within in the column and walls of a separate room. but it's ALL one big open space.

My mom wants me to do a HUGE favor?? would you do it?? Okay so im 14 years old and i mved into this small house with a large basement. Well theres two bedrooms upstairs. Which means one for my mom and dad and a spare one. Well I live in the basement and my dad out a D humidifyer or however you spell it and he put stuff over the gray brick walls and painted my floors. and I have EVERYTHING of mine down there. including my tv, bed, computer and average closet space. Well my mom has to quit her job to take care of my nephew and theo nly way she can make money is to legally sell furniture. She said I would have to move up into the small bedroom so she could use the big basement for furniture selling. I really dont want to and she told me to think about it. I'm not sure but Im sure she would give me atleast 30 dollars a month for doing such a favor. The only reason I wanted to move into this house in the first place was b.c. of my own basement. Soooo would you for your mom and the money that she could make doing it?? sorry i meant 20-30 dollars a week.

Feeling Pinch, Stores Woo Lagging Shoppers. Evaluate Article? Lackluster sales in this holiday season have retailers scrambling to wring a few last dollars from procrastinators by slashing prices, extending hours and wooing customers more persistently than last year. The moves show that retailers' strategy during this final weekend before Christmas -- when about 10% of holiday sales are expected to take place -- has become increasingly reliant on the same promotions and marathon hours once unique to the "Black Friday" weekend following Thanksgiving. But the discounts also reveal the pinch stores are in this year as the credit crunch, rising gas prices and winter storms have taken a toll on companies dependent on end-of-year sales. The tough economy has left aisles more empty this year. Total foot traffic at U.S. retail outlets took an 8.9% dive during the second full week of December, compared with the same period last year, according to an estimate from ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which bases its numbers on a formula that involves an electronic count of shoppers in malls and other retail outlets nationwide. A bright spot, however, has been online, where aggressive discounting and cut-rate deals on fast shipping have contributed to a surge in spending. From Nov. 1 to Dec. 16, online shoppers spent $23.5 billion, 19% higher than the corresponding days last year, according to comScore Inc., a Reston, Va., market research firm that tracks Web spending and traffic. Videogames, consoles and accessories are the fastest-growing category, more than doubling from the comparable period last year. Furniture, appliances and equipment ranks second, up 63%, while event tickets and consumer electronics are up 29% and 24%, respectively. Now, a final push is on, both online and in stores. Web retailers continued to hunt for business by cutting shipping charges to seal deals before the pre-Christmas shipping window closes. Shoebuy.com, a Boston-based unit of IAC/InterActive Corp. offered free express shipping until today. Online handbag merchant eBags upgraded purchases made by Wednesday from standard shipping to two-day air-shipping through UPS for no extra cost. Brick-and-mortar stores, meanwhile, retooled their hours for the weekend, hoping to spark their own shopping flurry. J.C. Penney Co. stores are staying open until midnight tonight and Saturday. Select Macy's Inc. stores on the East Coast will stay open nonstop throughout the weekend -- 107 hours straight for one branch in Queens. And New York-based FAO Schwarz made discounts of 25% to 50% on certain toys. Ed Schmults, the chief executive officer at FAO Schwarz, said that while foot traffic was up, business had not been as booming throughout the season as he hoped. The National Retail Federation, a trade group, is predicting just 4% in sales growth for 2007, the smallest growth rate in five years. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, paints an even grimmer picture: He lowered his forecast of 2% retail sales growth to 1.8%, his lowest forecast in nearly 10 years. In the apparel category, men's clothing has showed modest single-digit growth through the first 20 days of the shopping season, according to MasterCard Spending Pulse, a unit of MasterCard Advisors, which tracks spending of all types. But women's apparel -- which last year constituted three times the sales of men's -- has been a major disappointment, as shoppers have avoided big purchases. Sales were down 5.7% from the same time last year. Retailers have responded with a flurry of price cuts, but large inventory remains in some stores. One of Gap Inc.'s Old Navy stores in downtown Chicago on Wednesday had piles of festive sweaters marked down to $20 from $36.50. Women's coats still stuffed the racks, despite being already marked down 50%, and its signature "performance fleece," also half off, was stacked eight shelves high. The bad tidings for apparel have left some retailers looking for other items to push. At Banana Republic, also owned by Gap, $64 gift sets of its perfumes, body creams and shower creams were marked down 30%. Gold-boxed gift sets of a new line of bath products at Ann Taylor Stores Corp. stores were discounted to $19.50 from $29. At Limited Brands Inc.'s Victoria's Secret, stores were piled with beauty gift sets, many 40% off. Meanwhile luxury goods are expected to have a good season this year, and retail consultant Frederick Crawford of AlixPartners predicts "pockets of good news" for high-end retail. For brands like Prada and Gucci, he expects to see 5% to 7% growth. According to retail surveys, electronics sales were down 0.5% in the three-week period between Nov. 18 and Dec. 9 compared to a year ago, according to Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for market watcher NPD Group. He said consumers in recent years have been delaying purchases until closer to Christmas, which may account for the slowdown. Indeed, Angela Smith has waited until the last week to make her purchases. A 39-year-old bank employee in Dallas, Ms. Smith said she is waiting for prices to drop further as well as trying to spend less. For her three nephews, ages 12, 8 and 7, she plans to buy remote-controlled cars, which Wal-Mart Stores Inc. initially priced at $59 and has since dropped to $49. "I am going to swing by this weekend and see if they are going to take it down one more time," says Ms. Smith, who was shopping for a co-worker's present at her local Wal-Mart midweek. Home-furnishings retailers, fighting the weak housing market, are being particularly aggressive with their promotions this year. At Williams-Sonoma Inc.'s Pottery Barn store on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, Christmas-tree-shaped candles were discounted 50%, and holiday garlands of fake evergreen branches were 30% off. Wrapped gifts such as silver jewelry boxes, also marked down 30%, were stacked high Wednesday afternoon. Home-improvement outfits like Lowe's Cos. Inc. and Home Depot Inc. are destined to be hardest hit, says AlixPartners' Mr. Crawford. "Consumers are absolutely showing us that they will be delaying discretionary purchases" like gear to remodel a kitchen, he said. A boom-bust pattern is typical after Thanksgiving's Black Friday discounts, which encourages a flurry of purchases early but leads to a tapering off in early December, killing shopping momentum. This year the pattern was more pronounced: A double-digit sales surge on Black Friday exceeded retailers' expectations; but come December, throngs of shoppers didn't return. There was one exception, however: online retail. Web merchants have discounted and promoted heavily this season, say industry analysts. Shipping promotions have been particularly popular. Sixty-eight percent of surveyed Web retailers said they are offering express shipping promotions this year, up from 49% last year, according to Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, an online retail trade group and unit of National Retail Federation. As the boom continues, these companies are becoming increasingly creative to draw customers. This year Ice.com, a Montreal-based Internet jeweler, has rolled out new videos to promote products and free overnight shipping. It has experimented with new marketing tricks such as buying front-page ads on Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Yahoo Inc.'s Web sites this week. Ice.com even tried to tap influencers to drive word-of-mouth among blogs, magazine mentions and celebrities.