Leaking Hot Water Tanks And Antiques Don’t Mix

Your antique furniture is swimming in hot water, and now you’re really in hot water as well. All your mother’s prized antique furniture, even the Louis XVI armchair, is stewing in a half-foot of cloudy water. Yesterday, each piece had survived centuries of children, insects, natural disasters, and naughty animals with surprising grace.

Today, it looks like they might as well have gone down with the Titanic. It’s not just the appearance, either. The smell is equally overwhelming. Bacteria and fungi have good taste, and they are very eagerly devouring the elegant furniture. This isn’t water damage. It’s water desolation.

You have to save it. You run from the room, ready to do everything you can to restore centuries worth of careful preservation. You grab your cherry-scented air spray, a bucket, and paper towels and have almost reached the doorway when you realize that paper towels are not going to fix this.

Many people don’t realize that there are many types of technology that can help to remedy water damage, and that the average household does not have the capability to deal with such a disaster. It’s time to enlist professional help. You might not know a lot about the restoration and cleanup industry because it’s not the kind of thing you have to deal with every day. Even so, they are on call, ready to help save your beautiful furniture.

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If you call a 24-hour emergency response team, within four hours, you can have trained, uniformed cleanup experts at the scene of your disaster to help minimize the damage. Their truck-mounted cleanup units will effectively remove water, and submersible pumps allow them to remove even high levels of standing water quickly. After the bulk of the water is gone, hygrometers, moisture detectors, and other advanced meters help detect the level of water saturation of your belongings, and if necessary, infrared cameras help identify the location of any remaining moisture.

Advanced deodorization products help mitigate the odors from moisture, and professional-grade disinfectants kill bacteria, mildew, fungi, and other harmful organisms to ensure that the culture of your furniture remains the intangible kind.

Professional drying equipment prevents swelling and warping of wood and other materials. Industrial grade dehumidifiers ensure that even furniture and other items that did not directly come in contact with the water do not receive secondary damage as a result. High-speed air movers accelerate evaporation by moving air quickly across carpets, walls, and surfaces.

Now, less than twenty-four hours after that initial panic, it looks and smells as if your crisis was only a bad dream. Water damage restoration is best left to companies with state-of-the-art drying techniques and training. If you find yourself in over your head, there is professional help for these kinds of situations. You made the right choice, when you decided to call the experts, after all you and your paper towels wouldn’t have stood a chance.

At The Soul Inn Berlin presents: Artist of the week: Joe Tex soulinn.de | http DynamicDon & Kristian Auth’s “At The Soul Inn” . Since it was founded in 2006, on every first Saturday of each month there’s no better place for friends of real Soul Music than the Lido: the whole dancefloor, housed in this old 50s cinema, bounces to the dynamic Soul Sound played from rare 45′s. High ceilings, vintage furniture and a great wooden dancefloor make the Lido the perfect ballroom for a soul night. When it comes to the music, we try to cover everything that will thrill a soul lover’s heart: from Deep Funk to Rare Soul, from early R&B to Boogaloo and Reggae Soul…vintage vinyl only from us and our international DJ guests. A special treat for the early birds: a special Promo CD is waiting for the first 50 guests through the door. To find out more about the records we play on Berlin’s biggest Soulnight, check out the gallery of some of our favourite records on our website, with scan facility and sound files. We’ve got over 300 45s listed at the moment, but I guess we will add shit loads more over the next months. The gallery is in no particular order — just browse the pages or use the search function on the bottom of the left sidebar. Apart from that we uploaded all the free cd’s we gave away over the last 36 months and a lot of old mixtapes, radioshows and live recordings, pictures, videos and so So just take a look or even better drop by: every first Saturday of the month at the …

It sounds a bit ridiculous but I actually purchased most of the upholstered chairs in my house for $29.99 or less.

Most of them were purchased either at garage sales or junk stores. I would stop by the bank on Friday and get 30 $1.00 bills and go shopping LATE on Saturday afternoon when all the stuff got cheaper.

And I wouldn’t just buy any old piece of furniture. I would look for classic styles that were not too trendy.

When you need to stage your house, furniture that is 10 years out of date makes people think your house needs redecorating. People don’t want to buy your house just because your furniture is “dated”.

It’s just so ridiculous because antique reproductions can work just fine when upholstered in a nice solid color fabric.

The other thing I do is the upholstery. I can do a professional looking job and paying someone else to do it will often cost more than buying a new chair.

If you don’t want to reupholster, just look for things that are in acceptable fabrics.

Try to avoid garish or flower prints. There are some 1980s vintage sofas and chairs that are really awful and DEATH to resale.

The other thing you need to do is try to keep the scale of the furniture smaller.

Rooms that are too crowded with furniture and collectibles will hurt resale even when all the items in the room are beautiful. People get blinded by the stuff and can’t see the house.

So what do you buy?  Look for classic styles like wing chairs, antique reproductions, or great club chairs. I always sneak in a bit of modern if I like something.

Look for hardwood frames. They will feel heavier than cheaper furniture. They will also stand up to the wear and tear of daily life.

1940s to 1960s reproductions are nice because they are usually constructed of hardwood, but not old enough to be antiques yet. I never wanted to pay for antiques because my stuff was always going into a moving van.

In the 1960’s furniture companies started to use a lot of particleboard (MDF) in furniture. It feels heavy, but it falls to pieces if it gets damp or wet. In fact pieces made of it regularly fall apart. Lots of kitchens are constructed of it in spec houses and they fall apart, too.

And then think about how you can stage your rooms. A pair of chairs and a love seat or sofa can make a nice living room or den grouping. The styles can be different as long as the arms all line up close to the same height.

Buy pairs but not sets of furniture. A matched pair of chairs can work great, but a 3 or 4 or 10 piece “set” just looks unsophisticated.

A pair of club chairs can look great, too, placed around a round coffee table or ottoman.

A pair of chairs can make a quiet corner attractive for conversation. And that’s your goal.

If a prospective buyer sits down in your house, they are thinking of buying it.

But don’t buy sets of furniture and make payments until it wears out. Buy good used furniture for 10 cents on the dollar.

Then you can move to your next place and remix it all and see it in a new light. It’s SO much fun and it can make selling a house quick and inexpensive.

But for whatever reason, this table gets a waxy buildup on it when I use any of those products (it is sealed wood, though I’m not sure if its shellac or varnish or poly) on it has a smeary, greasy look on it.

Are there any other items I could try that won’t harm the wood at all? Its not vintage, its a set she purchased at Ethan Allen about 5 years ago.

Any ideas of other products or methods would be greatly appreciated. For the time being I’ve just been polishing with a microfiber cloth, but I would like to be able to polish it as well every month or so.