Saturday, August 1, 2009

Men's Diamond Wedding Bands

What About Men’s Diamond Wedding Bands?


Just because diamonds are a girl’s best friend doesn’t mean that men don’t like diamond wedding bands. They do.


But what kind of men’s diamond wedding bands are available?


The four C’s of quality diamonds still apply for buying a men’s diamond wedding band that apply for buying a diamond ring for a woman. After all, a quality diamond is a quality diamond, no matter who is wearing it.


Make sure the diamond in your men’s diamond wedding band have the right cut, color, clarity, and carat size. I’ve written four separate posts dealing with each of these in detail. You can read them for more details.


Once you’ve refreshed your knowledge of what makes a quality diamond, you’re ready to start looking for a men’s diamond wedding band.


In addition to the diamond quality and configuration, you’ll also need to make a decision on what metal you’re looking for. A diamond set against a yellow gold band makes a striking statement. The two-tone effect is a real eye-catcher.


Some, however, might find the color differences between the diamonds and a yellow gold a little too drastic. If you’d rather not have such a distinction between the color of the metal and the color of the diamonds, you can always opt for a white gold or even a platinum metal. Both metals subtly accentuate diamond sets.


Let’s face it. A precious stone like a diamond is everyone’s best friend, whether you’re shopping for women’s diamond rings or men’s diamond wedding bands.


Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Is Your Antique Dining Room Furniture Needing a Facelift?

If you have a set of antique dining room furniture, chances are it’s been slowly wearing. The aging of antique furniture can be as deceptively slow as the aging of our children. One day you turn around and your dining room furniture is looking more than antique... it’s looking just plain old.

A quick facelift might be all your dining room furniture needs to restore its former beauty. However, most of us don’t have the time or patience to strip off the old finish, remove any stains or water marks, apply a new coat of stain and refinish the furniture.

A professional antique refinisher is a time-saving help when it comes to restoring antique dining room furniture. Their experience not only allows them the get your antique furniture restored quicker, a professional hand ensures there are no mistakes.

Do yourself a favor. Save yourself time and avoid damaging a beautiful piece. Have a professional refinish your antique dining room furniture.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Re-Upholstering Antique Furniture

One of the challenges of refurbishing antique furniture is doing a quality job with the upholstery. Often you can do a satisfactory job of refurbishing the wooden portions of your antique furniture, but it doesn’t take much to botch a re-upholstery job.


Re-upholstering antique furniture requires attention to a variety of upholstery issues. Patterns have to line up. This can be especially difficult if the pattern you’ve chosen to reupholster your well used antique has stripes.


Seams must be pulled tight and they must remain hidden if you want to  restore your piece of antique furniture to it’s original beauty. If the seams aren’t pulled tight the upholstery job will have buckles in it. If seems don’t get hidden properly, they’re just plain unsightly.


With smaller items, like chairs, these issues make it difficult to get a good final product. When you’re dealing with larger items like a couch, love seat, or settee, these issues just get magnified.


If you’re thinking about having a piece of antique furniture re-upholstered, you would do well to consider having an expert do the work. In our shop, we have a variety of tools as well as many tricks we’ve learned through hundreds of re-upholstery jobs. It’s this knowledge and skill that might make the difference between you being proud to display your antique furniture and being disgruntled with the results.


Thursday, May 7, 2009

Antique Furniture Awakened

If you’re a lover of antique furniture, then you have the wonderful ability to see hidden beauty that’s lost on others.

I’m sure you’ve been in the situation before where you stumble across an amazing piece of furniture in someone’s garage or basement. After you gasp and rave about what a wonderful piece of antique furniture it is, the owner simply says, “What that old chair?”

Believe me, I’ve been there before many times. After almost 40 years of restoring antique furniture, I’ve seen lots and lots of pieces that begin looking like they're ready for the garbage, but end up looking like a piece of fine furniture when we're done restoring it. We’ve restored thousands of pieces of furniture to their original breath-taking beauty, and the astonished look in our customers eyes never seems to get old.

If you have friends who have a wonderful piece of antique furniture hiding in their garage, show them some of our restored antique furniture and let them know they may have a great piece right in front of them. It might just help them catch a glimpse of the hidden beauty they hold right before them.

Come back often as we share more about the rich and fascinating world of antique furniture.