Dear Clients and Friends:  Sailing through summer? Enjoying the warm days? Well, thankfully here in California we are blessed with extraordinarily benign weather. It is not until we read about less fortunate climates that we come to realize how dependable the Bay Area weather is for our outdoor lifestyle – barbeques, summer parties, swimming, camping, way into the fall months.

Not surprisingly, none of us want to return a large part of our daily living, play, and entertainment back indoors. And although the stores want us to purchase Holiday items already, we’re a good few weeks away from doing that. Still – perhaps a newly arranged interior will help us ease into going back to reading by the fire?

Looking forward to be of assistance with your Fall projects!

Our Topics are:
• Introducing Boca Bargoons
• Buying for your Home? Better Learn the Lingo
• Staging Update
• How to Achieve Balance with Furniture
• Reading Corner – “designerguys” by Chris Hyndman and Steven Sabados
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe

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Introducing Boca Bargoons

Boca Bargoons – Decorative Fabric Outlets
24780 Hesperian Boulevard - Hayward, CA 94545
Phone: (510) 783-0323
www.bocabargoons.com

One of my favorite stops when I shop for clients is Boca Bargoons in Hayward. Conveniently located just minutes from Freeway 92, this store a must-see when you look for fabrics. With over 4,000 bolts of high end designer fabrics on the15,000 sq.ft. floor, and hundreds of additional swatches to choose from, you better plan on spending a few hours. Boca Bargoons offers frequent sales to their customers, usually advertised in the San Francisco Chronicle and other Bay Area newspapers.

The choice of exquisite fabrics from designers like Christopher Edwards, Scalamandre, Robert Allen, Schumacher and many others often seen in Architectural Digest is downright overwhelming. Whether you’re looking for beautiful brocades and damasks for your upholstery projects, or need silks, cottons and sheers for draperies, you’re likely to uncover your material of choice here – at incredibly reasonable prices!


The staff is very friendly and knowledgeable. Additionally, Boca provides scissors, and you are allowed to cut your own small swatches. This makes the designing and matching process easier. So even if you’re still in the planning phase of your design projects – visit the store and collect ideas!

For more information and directions, visit
www.bocabargoons.com

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Buying for your Home?  Better Learn the Lingo…

Shopping for home furnishings is incredibly complex – as the choices widen, so do the challenges of identifying exactly what you need and finding the right product at the right price. It’s even harder not to get into a state of confusion and sometimes buyer’s remorse as you patiently wait for your 14+ weeks delivery… To make matters worse for the average consumer, sales folks like to use an array of technical terms just to show you how knowledgeable they are.

We’ve all heard the terms “8-way hand tied”, “top grain leather”, “broadloom carpet”, “fabric grade XYZ” etc. but what do they really mean? More importantly, do these have anything to do with quality?

Top Grain Leather

Our mind associates “top” with “top quality”, however in this case it describes the lower layer of the 4 mm thick hide – not the quality. This layer has to be heavily pigmented and altered to compensate for imperfections. The top layer is called “full grain” (very confusing!), meaning the best quality. This layer will show the pores from the hair follicles that came out during the double tanning process. It will be much more comfortable because the surface actually breathes. Also, note that Italian or Spanish leathers are from animals that are more ‘pampered’ than cattle in the US (no branding, no barbed wire fences, etc.) – however, beware of the delivery estimate. One Residence Redesigns client recent waited a long time for her recliner – perhaps finding the perfect Italian hide was kind of hard…

For more information, visit:
http://www.spinneybeck.com/images/PrintedMat/Factsheets/Large/leatherqual.pdf

Broadloom Carpet

Did you think “Broadloom” was a quality indicator? Wait! Standard looms are 36-54” wide. However with the expanding sizes of American homes, larger looms were developed in order to avoid too many seams in spacious living, family, and sleeping rooms. “Broadloom” describes just that. A loom that is wider the 54” is a broadloom – it does not describe the method of construction, and it carries no implication about quality.

For information about how to choose a carpet or a rug, visit:
http://www.carpet-rug.com/index.cfm

Laminated Wood vs. Laminate

Confused already? Here’s the deal: Laminated wood is ALL wood – sometimes 3 to 5 layers or plies of wood glued together, with the top layer being the decorative wood. Other layers consist of lesser grade and other species. This floor can be sanded and refinished a few times. It’s less expensive than solid hardwood, and often comes pre-finished.

“Laminate” is entirely manmade – again, a few layers glued together, but none is real wood. The decorative surface has a wood pattern, the center is a core board, and the bottom layer is a balancing backer. It comes in strips, planks and squares – most likely you will see it as Pergo in the stores. This cannot be refinished.

Excellent additional information about floor options can be found at:
http://www.floorshop.com/HTML.cfm?HTMLID=30

Fabric Grades

Did you know “Grade A” has nothing to do with quality, contents, or durability of fabric? As most manufacturers have their own grading system, it is easy to falsely assume that “A” is the best, or “Z” the most inferior quality. However, beware – it is merely a gradation of how the pricing works. You will best trust your own judgment as to whether a particular quality will be suitable for your project – be it upholstery or window treatments. And make sure to ask the store for instructions on maintenance as well as suitability for your application.

As the real estate market in the Bay Area is still sizzling, we have had an extremely busy summer, helping homeowners from Palo Alto to Pacifica with the presentation of their properties. Remember, “staging” does not have to be elaborate, invasive, or costing thousands. It’s all about putting the investment into a healthy perspective, i.e. calculating how much (how little, really!) of a fraction the staging fees represent versus your listing price.

For more info, visit
http://www.residenceredesigns.com/ResidenceRedesigns_Services.html#services2

Do you ever look at a professionally decorated room and wonder what exactly makes it look so good? There are many aspects of decorating that come together to create the perfect room... but there is one element that brings it all together into a harmonious whole. That all-important element is balance. This article addresses furniture and balance.

[ Click HERE for full article ]

“designerguys”
by Chris Hyndman and Steven Sabados

One of my clients showed me this book, and I love it! Subtitled “Finding your Personal Style” it does a fabulous job of sharing with the reader how people with regular lifestyles (as opposed to the millionaires and esoteric purist designers) furnish or remodel their spaces. The book gives you the standard “before & after” pictures but offers much more. The TV hosts of the HGTV shows “This Small Space” and “designerguys” impart their stories, their clients’ wishlists, “designerguys” secrets, including “How to survive a remodel”, hints for collecting artwork, and most importantly, how to find your style.

Published by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
Available at www.amazon.ca
Price: Approximately $25.00