Cincinnati Tag

28 Oct

Posted at 13:18h in Design & Décor, Featured Stories
0 Likes
Deteriorated floor gets new life and attracts buyer just two days after completion 046A lot of people would have decided to tear out the floor and start over. But Interior Designer Jen Phillips was determined to do the right thing. The pine floors in the historic, downtown Cincinnati row house were damaged by water and years of abuse. Sections of the subfloor were rotten. And as the work began, termite damage was quickly discovered. Phillips, owner of Interior Renaissance, called in her experts and got the answer she was looking floor. “The contractor we hired determined that we could replace only the bad subfloor and flooring, then use a special machine to sand and refinish the entire floor to make it all blend and look uniform,” Phillips recalls.

25 Jan

Posted at 09:09h in Featured Stories, Home & Real Estate
0 Likes

Wintertime’s dry air means special precautions for hardwood floors

030Q.  I had solid Red Oak select installed throughout my first floor last summer. It was sanded and  finished with low-VOC waterborne polyurethane on site. It was absolutely perfect.

But now that winter is here, there are spaces between the boards. Is it possible that I was sold inferior wood?

A. Gaps between floor boards are common in the wintertime. Your installer should have told you that you have to control the humidity in your home to prevent inordinate gapping. In fact, most hardwood manufacturers recommend maintaining your indoor environment at 40 to 60 percent humidity year-round. But 36 to 50 is better if you want to prevent mold growth.

04 Nov

Posted at 12:22h in Design & Décor, Products & Certifications
0 Likes
Gray or brown, this hardwood floor blends seamlessly with home’s bold natural colors 018The color of this stained Maple floor is called “Jellybean.” When you look at it in natural daylight, it is gray. Put it under artificial light, and it takes on a deep brown. But no matter where you look in Brittany’s new  Milford, OH, home, this floor from Mirage Hardwood is the perfect background for her sky blue and terracotta walls, and her kitchen backsplash tiles that look like they were painted with watercolors. These colors are just spot-on.

26 Oct

Posted at 19:33h in Design & Décor
0 Likes
Demand will mean more product selection, but can your retailer tell you what standards a product meets? 053 “Renee, Renee, Renee. This is fabulous!” Friends are in awe when they walk into Renee’s new master bathroom, one of many rooms she is remodeling in her newly purchased Indian Hill home, just northeast of Cincinnati, OH. This room used a perfect balance of both textured and smooth surfaces. Line patterns within the porcelain tile are the perfect upscale-spa backdrop for the sleek lines of the bathtub, shower enclosure and plumbing fixtures.

24 Feb

Posted at 07:30h in Home & Real Estate, Products & Certifications
0 Likes
Water-based stains offer better indoor-air quality and a different aesthetic, but applying them requires an experienced professional There is a critical question you should put to your hardwood flooring contractor if you are planning to finish your floor with a water-based stain: Does he know how to apply it? The question is easily overlooked. Most of us would assume this knowledge is a given. But applying water-based stain requires a different technique than what is used with traditional oil-based products. And so can applying a water-based polyurethane over the water-based stain. If you try to use these stains like traditional products, you most likely will not be happy with the final appearance of your floor. And you will face the costs of refinishing in order to fix it.

11 Feb

Posted at 15:37h in Home & Real Estate, Products & Certifications
0 Likes
Luxury Vinyl Tile’s realistic patterning and glue-less installation boost demand despite uncertain “green” product attributes A floor does not have to be natural to look natural. And the new natural looks of a number of luxury vinyl tile (LVT) brands – coupled with glue-less installation options -- are noticeably boosting LVT sales. Newer, self-locking installation systems do not require adhesives for installation, and replication improvements mean fabulous imitations of wood, ceramic and other patterns. You don’t need adhesive to install these products. So the products much easier to install and repair, they are more indoor-air friendly, and they’re water-resistant, too.

14 Nov

Posted at 07:35h in Design & Décor, Products & Certifications
0 Likes
Glass backsplash adds just the right color and dimension In a perfect world, you would remodel your master bathroom all at once, making every selection in advance to ensure all components of the finished product complement each other. In reality, remodeling in stages is sometimes forced upon us. In this case, the latest addition of a recycled glass countertop, new vanity, mirrored cabinets and sink were supposed to mark the completion of this bathroom overhaul. But there was something noticeably missing. The counter area needed a backsplash for a finished look that pulled the whole room together.

12 Jan

Posted at 06:26h in Design & Décor, Products & Certifications
0 Likes
Authentic reclaimed hardwood can have advantages over wood that is made to look old “Distressed or old?” A designer that I work with was going back and forth about reclaimed hardwood and hardwood flooring that is purposefully distressed to make it appear old. “I like the idea of reducing wastefulness and landfill mass by making floors from old barns,” she said. “But could this floor be less durable because it is old and had a past life? Or what if it was salvaged after a forest fire or taken from a tree that was killed by beetles? Could it be infested?” She was thinking it is safer to stick with flooring products that have been made to look old, but are not. This is an example of confusion that has resulted from having too much information.