What Looks Like Trash Could Turn To Treasure
What might appear to be a discarded temple door, wheat thrasher or distressed bench in one part of the world might become a coveted piece of furniture in another.
That’s what furniture supplier Ottoman Treasures is counting on with the introduction of a 35-piece line of furnishings and accessories that counts heavily on salvaged items from the Aegean and Black Sea areas for its inspiration.
Hay rakes, a landscape staple in the Black Sea region, are adapted and redesigned as coffee or sofa tables. Antique clay urns and rising boards (used in villages to rise bread dough) become lamp bases. Hand-forged copper bowls are reincarnated as planters.
For more information, call Ottoman Treasures at (352) 383-6286.
Carpet bombing
Avoid overkill when debugging your house. A California apartment dweller caused a blast that blew out his windows and damaged the building when he set off eight fumigation foggers in the 700-square-foot apartment - seven of them in the kitchen. The instructions said one would treat 625 square feet, and to extinguish pilot lights.
Frontier spirit
Remember the old city-slickers-move-to-the-country sitcom “Green Acres?” Well, over the past three decades, hundreds of thousands of “neo-homesteaders” have left their city homes in search of the simple country life, according to “New Pioneers: The Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Search for a Sustainable Future” (Penn State Press).
Just don’t get up
With technology raining new ways of doing things on us like a thunderstorm with no end, we suppose it had to happen.
Hunter Douglas is offering Duette PowerRise, a remote-control system for automatically raising and lowering its Duette honeycomb window shades. The system requires no cords or special wiring and is powered by standard alkaline batteries concealed inside the shade’s headrail and in the remote control.
For more information, call (800) 327-8953.
Going for the mold
Air conditioners need to be cleaned often to reduce mold growth. So says The Maids, a residential cleaning company, which recommends cleaning the coils of a central unit every other month with mild soap and water, followed by a solution of heavily diluted vinegar and water. And replace the filter.
A bad measurement
You can go broke overestimating the laziness of the American consumer - when it comes to premeasured laundry products. A number of them have been shot down in test-marketing in recent years because someone else determined the proper “dosage” and we’ve been conditioned to scoop or pour detergent ourselves, American Demographics magazine says.