Dealing With Locally Owned Carpet Depot and Warehouse Flooring Companies

By inandout | Published: August 30, 2010

The name “carpet depot” is one of the most overused company names for flooring stores in the United States currently, and there is not one all inclusive chain of retails stores period. Each store, in each city that you find a company that goes by this title it is merely a mom and pop business concern trying to make a living by selling carpet and hardwood flooring to the public. Although, in the minds of many it is a branded name that gives consumers that warm and fuzzy secure feeling they are looking for when making such a large ticket purchase. It is completely psychological and accomplished by no effort of the carpet industry as whole.

When seeking a carpet estimate at the local carpet depot in your city it will not have any affiliation with another location at all. Some consumers are confused by this as they think it is the same name so they must have the same responsibility for service after the sale, as the one in a neighboring town our county. Since individual business names are registered at the state level to prevent duplication, the owner will alter the name slightly for the sake of the paperwork, and call it “Carpet Depot of Jonesboro” or something to that effect. But when signage is placed on their building and out by the street it will only reflect the first two words of their registered title, and this is legally correct to do business this way, as there is not one law on the books requiring them to use their proper business name.

This also means that since you made a purchase from a previous home, say in Atlanta for that home’s floor covering needs, you will not experience the duplicate success at the carpet tile flooring depot in Houston Texas. Fortunately for the general public, we can all go online to the Better Business Bureau to check out the companies in our cities to make sure they are in good standing with their clients. No matter how well you feel about a name of a store offering any product, especially when it is based on you making a sizable monetary purchase you should check them out thoroughly before taking out your plastic, or checkbook.

Another issue is about references from a company that you are thinking of buying from in the immediate future. References are essentially as worthless as the paper they are printed on, as they can be seeded with friends of the business owners, or could be from customers that made purchases before the retail store was sold to a new owner. Online reviews of companies and The BBB are some of the best tools to protect yourself against unscrupulous carpeting resellers in your area. It is becoming dramatically harder to turn a profit in most any small business today, and there are people out there that will take full advantage of you when they can, and performing the above research will help you from falling prey to their tactics.

Please be assured that not all companies with this name should be judged like this, but individually and on their own actions from the past. Your local carpet and rug depot may have been in business for fifty plus years, and is being run by three generations of family members in good standing with the community, and their customers. The whole premise of this information is to avoid being gullible as a consumer over a common business name, as this happens in almost every type of industry that sells household goods in the retail market. Just stay vigilant and less assuming than normal and you will do well with your next purchase of indoor or outdoor design carpeting for your home.

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What You Need to Know about An Outdoor Polypropylene Rug

By inandout | Published: August 6, 2010

People are decorating their outdoor living areas, just as much as one would the inside of their home today, and specialized products to endure the weather are being produced to support this form of decorative expression for the homeowner. One item in particular is the outdoor polypropylene rug, and is making a huge splash between amateur and professional interior decorators. Their ability to stand up to the elements of extreme heat, cold, and even moisture makes them the perfect rug for outside use.

Outdoor polypropylene rugs are, of course, a man-made product that is produce by various chemical companies, and is used in a myriad of products that consumers purchase daily. They are best know for their ability to stand up in heat, and are widely used in the medical industry. The side benefit is that your outdoor rugs will not melt or fade from extended exposure to the sunlight, and will serve your flooring needs for years to come. The prices for this line of product is ridiculously low, due to poly fibers cost being just a mere percentage of what wool or other natural resources cost when making rugs.

Do not limit yourself with decorating ideas with a indoor outdoor polypropylene rug, you can use them in any decor as long as they match of course. The overwhelming amount of color, patterns and textures that poly rugs come in outflanks the conventional textile make rugs by leaps and bounds. Their ability to create look-a-like rugs that clone Persian, Indian and Chinese floor coverings to the degree of not being able to tell the difference from a few away makes them the perfect selection for any part of your home.

When most people think of an outdoor rug, their mind swivels to the welcome mat at the front door, or at best those commercial area rugs that are placed in the front of retail stores to keep the dirt down in the store from foot traffic. A designer style rug that not only offers a huge dose of eye-candy, but that is specifically made to hold up under less than average conditions is a great value to anyone who wants that blend of nature and the indoors to become one. There is no end to the resources online and with brick and mortar resellers on the rug styles offered in this category.

Outdoor rugs now have a whole new set of decor disciplines that fall within, and you will see with time, that whole exterior design package will include not only the poly outdoor rugs, but matching throw pillows, and complementing chair covers or chair cushion sleeves to carry a particular design idea to a completed look that is just as warm and inviting as say your great would offer visitors or family members. Another feature that some manufacturers are including to help the rugs maintain their appearance, and prevent them from becoming water logged from a rainstorm, is a designed drainage backing that quickly evacuates the water before it has time to set up.

In summary, whether you need a small runner type rug, or 9X12 outdoor rug to go with your dining table or outdoor living room furniture, you will have the luxury of choosing a decorative floor covering that matches or goes well with your furnishings, outdoor design, and is affordable. When researching or shopping make sure you read the manufacturers tag for the materials used in the product, as some rugs will be marked for outdoor use, and technically are made for this reason, but still have a blend of wool or cotton in them. These will fail very quickly in a natural setting, and would be a huge waste of time and money to use them on your back deck or under your pergola.

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The Coir Mat for the Front and Back Doors of Your Home

By inandout | Published: July 28, 2010

Millions of people own them, and quite honestly do not care what they are technically called, as they are known as welcome mats. A coir mat is a fibrous material made of the intermediate layer of the coconut shell. When it is about sixty to seventy percent matured these fibers contain a high amount of cellulose, which is used in the manufacturing of yarn. The darker matured coir fibers are used in the production of bedding for mattresses, hard bristle brushes, woven handbags, and the mats of course. This is product is a large industry for countries that have vast crops of coconut trees, and in India they have a regulating board just for this product.

The coir mats that we see here in the United States have names like straw mats, woven mats, and some even call them grass mats due to the fact they do not know their origin. They can cost any where from nine dollars to over three hundred dollars for each mat, and the higher priced one’s will be of a customized and designer nature that will be sold through high end retailers such as Williams-Sonoma.

A coir doormat is a great outdoor rug, as it stands up to all the weather elements like the plastic woven poly rugs. They are course enough to facilitate the removal of dirt and mud from shoes and will last several years. As they will eventually lose their functionality, they are one hundred percent biodegradable, and can be tossed in the compost bin or heap when they have outlived their usefulness. When looking to purchase one in a store, try and make sure to find one with a rubber border, as this will prevent fraying during the life of the mat.

In it’s natural state core matting is brown in color, and looks great physically, and there are companies that add decorative prints and designs on them with bright and cheerful color combinations to greet your guests when they arrive at your home. Keeping the outdoor rug clean is very simple as you just hose of the mat with a water hose, and sweep off the debris, then let it hang dry. Some companies will inadvertently spray a protective coating on the mats to keep any custom writing from being rubbed off from normal wear and tear, this can prevent the coir fibers from doing their job of cleaning shoes, and feet.

Coir doormats are not only great for the environment, and have a long life of five to six years before replacement is usually needed. There are factors to consider when trying to estimate how long will last, and that is essentially measured in the amount of foot traffic it receives. Keeping one at the back door is essentially in helping your family keep their footwear clean before entering the home, and you will probably want to seek out the coarsest mat you can find, so it will dig into the treads of sneakers and boots to rid them of debris, mud, and grass. Some people will put down a rubber mat before setting out a natural fiber type mat, and this should be avoided as it will seal the bottom and trap moisture inside the outdoor floor cover. Sitting in moisture for extended periods of time will breakdown the ligneous fibers, and render the mat useless in short order.

One place you might want to check out for large selections of coir flooring materials are the outdoor furniture stores, since they specialize in everything outside they will have a large selection of them for you to peruse, so you can find that perfect outdoor design mat for the entrances of your home.

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Carpet Remnants for the Real Estate Flipper

By inandout | Published: July 25, 2010

When you are just getting into the business of flipping real estate, there will certain area where you will gain knowledge about saving money when demolishing and remodeling a house to resell at a profit. The one area where you can save a lot is the flooring, and by using carpet remnants you can save hundreds if not over a thousand dollars at times. When some people think of remnants it conjures up small odd shaped pieces of carpet that might only work well as a welcome mat or small area rug. This is just not true, as there are dozens of large carpet mills in northern Georgia that have huge inventories of this flooring and usually at deeply discounted prices.

A carpet remnant varies so much in size, that you can actually buy a roll of it, which will carpet an entire home, as remnant means anything less than a complete roll of carpet. So if you are renovating a small condo to sell, then this could work into your plans quite well. Generally you can call or email flooring distributors, and find enough to cover your project with the same carpet. There are also great deals to be made with custom orders that were never picked up from their store, as they will let those go quite inexpensively.

You may run across a phrase when looking for floor covering called “Bound Carpet Remnants”, this is highly misconstrued title, as most people think this is where someone takes a small, say 5×7 area of remnant and sews a border on to the edges to make an area floor covering. The real meaning is that this is a short ordered or custom order from the mill that was either canceled or was stopped before running a complete standard roll of carpeting. The term bound means that it is ready to be shipped. This is a great term to know as when calling around to carpet suppliers you can ask if they have any bound remnants on clearance.

Their is an entire industry dedicated to inexpensive carpet remnants, and they can not only be found locally, but they abound online in the form of sellers on classified ad web sites, and online auctions. They will normally have a buy now price on the auctions that are deeply discounted, and will negotiate further sometimes. This is a numbers game for them and they on make a small profit off each sale so making dozens of transactions a day is not uncommon so they can carve out a living wage for themselves. Also buy from local remnant sellers, as you are taking a big of risk having it shipped in and not be the carpet you thought you were getting in the first place. Plus, the extra cost of shipping it back will only pile on top of lost profits.

When you buy carpet remnants for the home that you are flipping, make sure and have your installer meet you at the purchase location for the first few transactions, so there will not be any surprises for him when it is delivered. He will be aware of caveats that will be unknown to you, and save you time and profit dollars for your ongoing real estate ventures. Some carpet retailers will have a email list that they will broadcast their daily deals on, so ask your sales clerk at each store you shop at if they have such a list and have you put on it. This will give you the advantage of picking up a quick deal that can be used on a project down the road. Oh, and don’t forget the carpet padding, they will have deals on that too.

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The Infamous World of Paper Floor Mats

By inandout | Published: July 24, 2010

We take things like paper floor mats for granted as they are used throughout our daily lives. When we get our cars serviced the more respectable automotive service companies will cover our seats and floors with poly bags, and paper floor mats. These are great advertising items for the repair company, and gives them one last opportunity to thank you, as they will take away the seat cover and leave the mat in place to use until you get home. They have many uses in other industries as well.

A paper floor mat is great at protecting carpets when they are freshly shampooed and you do not want the rugs walked on until they dry. Professional rug cleaning companies use them on a regular basis to protect their client’s floors. They will lay them out like patio pavers to allow you access to other parts of your home, and keeping the floors from being marked up at the same time. Usually these mats are purchased in packages of two hundred to five hundred and cost little to nothing if they do not have customized printing on them.

Paper floor mats for cars have been around since before I can remember in my forty seven years on this rock, and I am always surprised when using one, how dirty the bottom of my shoes are, and all the while thinking they are clean. The cost of replacing the entire carpet in a late model car can be upwards of over a thousand dollars so the pennies spent on paper protective mats is a small price to pay for the insurance they offer. Most of the time if there is an accidental staining of auto carpet; it can be taken out with a steam cleaner. The axle grease and brake dirt that comes off a vehicle can permanently stain the fibers in the pile, so it is important to have this type of protection when a car is being serviced in just about any way.

When a shop owners orders automotive paper floor mats they can realize some great deals online, and one company that sells them is Kimberly-Clark, their line of WypAllPluss products includes large paper floor mats with a plastic coating for about sixty dollars. The box contains five hundred sheets, and is twenty two by seventeen inches. These are available through Amazon, so even a consumer can purchase them for use at home. You could keep a box of them in the trunk or storage area of each vehicle for situations like when your kids are through playing their peewee sports and are covered in dirt.

Custom paper floor mats are individually cheap in price, but have to be ordered in quantities, and can run about twenty cents a piece for the best offset printing on seventy pound paper. They are usually in one color for that price and can have just about anything you want printed on them. Logos, product offerings, your company information, and thank you for their patronage are some of the items that are generally printed on these sheets. Just because it is one color doesn’t mean it has to be printed in black, as you can choose one basic color like green, red, blue, etc for the printing hue.

Custom auto detailing companies use them when they are through cleaning a client’s vehicle, and will toss a couple extra in the trunk for personal use, and also in hopes that it will works as some great passive advertising that will keep them coming back for repeat business. You might think these paper billboards are not enough to garner repeat or new business, but the more you can get your name and product or service in front of prospect or client the more likely they will do business with you.

While paper floor mats will not be a permanent part of your indoor or outdoor design plans, they can play a crucial role when it comes to home improvement projects or design projects you may be considering.

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Singing the Praises of Outdoor Polypropylene Rugs

By inandout | Published: July 21, 2010

When designing your outdoor living space you want some of the same decorative pieces that you enjoy in your home, in your outdoor living area too. Rugs, for comfort and decor value would not normally be thought of for decorating outside, but with the use of outdoor polypropylene rugs, this is a reality that is affordable, and will hold up in the elements, in high fashion. You will not be lacking in selection of design, color or patterns, as this product can mimic some of the most expensive Asian and southwestern contemporary rugs available at a mere sliver of the cost.

When shopping for outdoor carpeting pieces make sure you use the phrase “outdoor polypropylene rug”, to insure that you are getting the product that you need for such a specific use. If searching the old fashion way in the flooring and carpet stores locally, then print this out, and take it with you to be sure that you are getting the proper base materials that will last in the sun, wind, rain, and well let’s just roll them up and store them before the first snow fall of the season.

The outdoor rug industry has been around for several decades, but in the past, they were at best something of a larger version of a welcome mat, or an Astroturf remnant. They did not have that faux wool texture and feeling that is available today, and were not at all comfortable to walk on barefooted. Outdoor rugs will have specialized features built-in to help in the longevity and extended use, so they will last for many outdoor seasons, and keep replacement costs down. It may seem silly but doing a search on Youtube will result in informational videos and reviews about this merchandise, and many other household products that you may shopping for from time to time.

To give you an example of an excellent yet affordable selection of outdoor rugs, take into consideration the Couristan Floral Everest Palm Tree Desert Sand out door rug. It will cost on average about one hundred and sixty dollars from several well known online resellers. It features heat seat polypropylene from Belgium, has one million points per square yard, and is easily cleaned by shaking it off or sweeping with a hard bristle straw broom. It never requires any specialized cleaning services like dry cleaning, or bleaching. Rug padding is suggested but not required, as it will prevent the rug from slipping when being traversed.

There is another category of rug that can be very versatile when the need arises, and it is indoor outdoor rugs. You can find very decorative and elegant faux Persian rugs, which will work in your breakfast nook as well as the dining or living area on your back deck. These poly rugs are unbelievably durable, and very low in cost. Fore example an Asian style rug with an approximate size of seven by ten foot area will only cost around two hundred dollars. These specialized selections of floor coverings are so well made that at several feet away you would never know that it was not really a true Persian floor cover.

The polypropylene rug has so many advantages over using the old world resources like silk, and wool that unless authenticity is your number one issue when buying your floor rugs. Then the prudent choice is to go with the man made textile material as they will wear longer, fade less, and takes more abuse by kids and pets than the real thing could ever take. In addition, the cost difference is in the thousands when comparing the same size rugs, with the same or similar patterns and area sizes.

When you take all of this into consideration they can be a really great indoor outdoor design style for your home!

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The Gazebo

By inandout | Published: June 7, 2010

When we think of outdoor activities, the word gazebo, without exception, comes to mind almost every single time. Indoor Outdoor Design is dedicated to giving people the best information possible about things concerning recreational living at home or outdoors. Chances are if you don’t own one (or one of its “cousins”), then you probably do know someone or have a personal friend who does. They are perhaps one of the most versatile, useful, and recognizable pieces of architectural landscape features known to man. But how did we come to use this fantastic outdoor shelter for common recreation? How can we become more knowledgeable about its ability to bring enjoyment to our recreational life? What does it take to construct one of these wonderful, open air works of art in my own personal recreation space? Is there a way to take this miracle of old world invention with me wherever and whenever I decide? Let’s try to uncover some of these mysteries, starting with a look back at the history of this wonderful invention of modern day frivolity.

Gazebos are a pavilion style structure, most often octagonal, found in parks, gardens, and public parks. They are freestanding or attached to another structure. They are usually roofed, and open on all sides; they provide a most comfortable area for outdoor activities, add a pleasant décor to any landscape and provide shelter against the elements. Some gazebos in public parks are large enough to serve a stage, bandstand or rain shelter.

Its “cousins”, also known as pagodas, pavilions, kiosks, follies, rotundas, pergolas and belvederes, are used for almost every outdoor event from cookouts to wedding backdrops. These structures are most at home in climates that offer warm and sunny days. People have used these types of structures for literally hundreds if not thousands of years. They are in the art and literature of many classical civilizations, including China and Persia. Examples of such structures can be found literally all around the world representing nearly every culture.

Gazebos, in modern day America and England are typically built of some sort of weather resistant wood or some other composite material like PVC (especially the floor) and covered with some sort of roofing material, such as asphalt shingles, terra cotta, or metal. For portability, gazebos can be tent-style devices made of poles covered by fabric that is stretched tightly around its perimeter. In some cases, gazebos may have some sort of netting or screen in order to insure peaceful recreation without flying insects such as flies and mosquitoes at bay.

If you want to take the bull by the horns and build your own gazebo, there are countless ways to construct one. You are literally limited by your own imagination; however, it is best to start this project (as with any building project) with the end in mind. Having said that, it is immediately understandable to your average do it yourselfer that a set of gazebo plans will be the very first thing that you will need to undertake a project of this magnitude. The good news is gazebo plans are all over the internet and are free of charge in some cases. You can either choose a very stripped down, contemporary style structure, a very ornate Victorian style, or something in between, the choices are limitless. The thing to keep in mind is that this will be a big project, so if you are not an experienced do it yourself type of person with the tools it takes to do some light construction with limited help, then perhaps you should consult or hire a general contractor to take on the job. Obviously the overall cost will be more with a contractor and construction crew, but it can speed up the process and can sometimes provide a better overall result in the long run.

On the other hand, let’s say you don’t have the need for a permanent structure but still want the advantages that go along with one. Perhaps you need to have some sort of shelter from the sun and rain that you can take with you wherever you go. If that is indeed the case, then possibly a gazebo tent is what you really need. Gazebo tents are a little different from their permanent structure brothers in both form and function. They are generally built of poles (usually metal) and have a canvas top and sides (lots of times there is netting for insects as well). These structures are designed to withstand light weather for a long time, but will deteriorate if left out for extended periods exposed to the elements. These units are great for picnics, camping, cookouts, outdoor parties, weddings, holidays and just about any other outdoor event that requires shelter from the elements and outdoor critters. The great thing about gazebo tents is that you can pick one up from just about any local retailer or internet store for a relatively low price (as opposed to a more permanent structure). These can usually be found in the outdoor or sporting goods section of the major chain retailers selling anywhere from $100.00 to $300.00 or less depending on the size you need.

Now all that is left to do is decide what sort of outdoor structure best suits your needs. The biggest question is “how will this improve my outdoor experience in the most positive way?” That question will be answered in different ways according to the individual persons needs. Both of these types of recreational habitat are so versatile that their usefulness has no limit. I couldn’t imagine a hot summer cookout without the shade and shelter of one of these open air wonders of invention. Nor, could I imagine life without the experience of sitting on a porch swing inside one of the world’s oldest permanent shelters. No matter if you are looking to just “beat the heat” or wax in the splendor of a beautiful late spring afternoon, these structures offer just that.

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