Category: Decoration

Suspect Your Building’s Stairs Are Dangerous? Here’s What To Do

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Staircases have the basic purpose of facilitating unfettered movement to a higher floor while still optimizing a facility or commercial space. In various shapes and sizes, staircases are also installed to complement buildings, varying from basic and utilitarian to sophisticated and informative.

industrial stairs

Staircases are a high-traffic place, and because almost everyone in your house uses them at least once a day, it’s important to make sure yours is safe. Stair falls are among the most frequent forms of accidents in the United States, particularly among young children and the elderly. The ability to easily access stairwells in an emergency is another reason to invest in their safety. 

Stair falls can cause serious injuries ranging from concussions to broken limbs. Owing to the extent to which workers must use stairways to complete required tasks, construction, moving or courier firms are at a higher risk of these kinds of accidents. On the other hand, staff may reduce their chance of injuries by following a few basic guidelines. Additionally, employers should ease the financial burden of employee compensation expenses.

1. Know the Stair Parts Names

When optimizing the use of stairs, hitting the right mark on stair parts would be beneficial. From treads, railings to rise and runs, getting these terminologies right is key to maximizing the facility’s safety protocols.

2. Familiarize Yourself with Building and Safety Codes

Commercial stairs are those that are meant to be used by the general public. They can be found both inside and outside of any edifice. International Building Code (IBC) guidelines must be followed when designing commercial stairways. Industrial stairwells are those used in privately run facilities. There are usually sites of work, such as factories or industrial plants. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) laws must be observed while constructing these stairs.

3. Don’t Get Offguard about Guardrails and Handrails

It would be best if you explored the possibilities of handrails and guardrails. It’s not just a matter of semantics; they serve two completely separate roles.

People are shielded from slipping over the side of the stairwell by guardrails. When ascending stairs, handrails provide leverage and help in balancing.  Place metal handrails on both sides of the stairwell if at all necessary. Rails should be mounted on any stairwell that spans a considerable distance, particularly if the stairs are steep.

Facilities should always install handrails at adult elbow height between 34 inches to 38 inches, according to IBC recommendations. 

4. Mind the Load-Bearing Capacity

Hiking upstairs with things in your hands will cause your body to try to twist in unusual ways. People constantly using the staircase should consciously concentrate on maintaining their upright posture with both hands squarely on the object being held to prevent injuries. Strains and pulled muscles are significantly minimized where the weight is distributed evenly between the hands, and the spine is supported when it is in the upright position.

Additionally,  OSHA-accepted design for a fixed stairway is to have a capacity of five times the anticipated maximum weight, which is a single concentrated load of no less than 200 pounds safely at the tread centers.

Stairways are a wise leader’s choice for both shape and feature. They also schedule ahead of time. You’ll need to build a stairwell. It would be best if you got away with OSHA stairs for the time being. It’s not fancy, but it’s practical and affordable.

However, after a few years, you’d like to have a part of the floor available for public guided tours. Meeting the commercial stair code would be needed for public tours.

You’ll have to repair OSHA stairs if you install them now. It is now more expensive to build to the IBC stair code. However, in the long term, it is much less expensive.

You may also plan stairwells or parts of stairwells to satisfy both OSHA and IBC specifications. Planning accordingly, in any case, makes up for the cost and puts safety at a foremost priority.

Office Furniture

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office-furniture

Office furniture is the cornerstone of your office decor. If you are truly concerned about making a great impression and having a great office decor, you must invest in the proper office furniture. With that being said, however, not all office furniture is going to work in all offices.

The first thing to do if you are going to work from the ground up and replace the entire decor, including your office furniture, is to have a plan. To get started, you want to have a color scheme chosen, a theme chosen, and you want to ensure that your selections are going to mesh well with the overall office building you are in.

For example, a modern high rise office may be a great place for ultra modern office furniture, but if your office is located in an old style Victorian home, the modern look is not likely going to mesh well with your architecture and/or overall vibe of your office. So basic rule number one when choosing office furniture, make sure it is going to go well with your particular office.

The next thing to consider when choosing office furniture should be comfort. Having great looking office furniture is not going to make much difference if it is not comfortable. With so many choices of office furniture on the market these days, you should be able to find a style that fits your taste, while maintaining a high level of comfort. Remember, you will be using this office furniture for a good portion of your waking hours during the week, make sure you will enjoy using it!

When choosing their type of office furniture, you have many choices regarding materials. The basic two materials you are likely to find are going to be some kind of wood and some kind of metal. Choosing between wood and metal is partly your particular taste, but also goes back to the overall feel of your office building. Typically, metals are going to give you a modern look than many woods, while a traditional look is typically going to incorporate wood furniture.

Once you have an idea of the type of office furniture you want, you will then need to decide on a budget. The cost of office furniture can vary greatly, so it is important to have a good idea of the type of furniture you want and the budget you have available before actually shopping for your office furniture. With a budget in hand and an idea of the type of office furniture you want, it’s time to start looking.

There are many places you can look for office furniture. Browsing online is a great way to get started. In a short amount of time, you can get a good idea of what is available in your price range. Another good place to start is local furniture stores. If you live in or near a large city, chances are there is a furniture outlet in the area. Take a look at these types of brick and mortar stores as well as you may find office furniture less expensive than you would buying online and having to pay shipping.

Good luck in your office furniture endeavors! Remember; above all, make sure you are happy with your new office furniture and how it looks in your office space, as you are the one who will be spending the most time enjoying it!

Memorial and Meditation Garden Landscapes

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memorial-garden-landscape.

Walkway and Patio Edge Designs with Modern Low-maintenance Plants

 

Modern low-maintenance plants surrounding walkway and patio edges in memorial and meditation garden designs convey intimacy. Choosing suitable garden plants is crucial.

 

Memorial and meditation garden landscapes are welcoming and restful spaces. Regardless of size, components of these landscape designs are a central meditative or memorial feature, an open space like a patio, benches, and walkways for entering and exiting the garden. If the area is large, there may be margins of walls, fences or hedges as well as meandering pathways. Nevertheless, the setting should be one of intimacy. Low-maintenance landscape plants contribute tremendously to achieving this desired effect.

 

In order to focus on the main meditative or memorial feature, plantings are best restricted to patio and walkway edges. Plant selection is usually the last designed garden landscape component. Planting a successful garden landscape requires knowing three factors:

  • Site conditions
  • Characteristics and functions of desired plants, and
  • Coordination of plant colors and appearances

 

This example shows a church model that memorializes early 19th century church founders as the focal point of a landscape garden. The plant hardiness zone 7 garden is set facing south on disturbed soil that is primarily acidic red Virginia clay. The specified soil amendment is mushroom compost.

 

Planned benches are teak. Installed irrigation is underground. Poured concrete makes up the patio and walkway. Timers trigger safety lighting on poles and within the model.

 

Low-maintenance Plant Colors and Characteristics

Coordinated colors and plant textures present a unified and tidy appearance and pleasing public image. The idea here is to bring warmth and welcoming to the garden without detracting from the model. Colors, carried out through both flowers and foliage, are white, pink, deep blue and intense yellow.

 

Plants in this scheme either are small-leaved evergreens or possess some kind of late winter interest. They remain small and require little or no pruning. They are also resistant to common pests, diseases, drought and, for the most part, are deer resistant. They can all triumph over a variety of soil types.

 

Sun and Shade Site Essentials

  • South facing walk edges: East, west and southern year-long sun exposure on shrubs planted here. Plants here must be capable of withstanding year-long sun exposure on a daily basis. Evergreens are not appropriate due to possible winter wind and drought damage.
  • South facing patio edges: East, west and southern winter sun exposure; some east and full southern summer sun exposure. Plants here must be capable of withstanding winter sun exposure. Evergreens are not appropriate here also due to possible winter wind and drought damage.
  • North and east facing patio edges behind memorial: Limited winter shade from surrounding deciduous trees and memorial; heavy summer shade from surrounding deciduous trees and memorial. Plants here must be capable of surviving in part to heavy shade. This is an excellent location for some small-leaved evergreen shrubs.
  • North and west facing patio edges with benches: Limited winter shade from surrounding deciduous trees; filtered summer shade from surrounding deciduous trees. Plants here must be capable of surviving in part to dappled shade. Evergreens are also not appropriate here due to possible winter wind and drought damage.

 

Specific Low-Maintenance Plant Selections for this Landscape Garden Design

  • Low-Maintenance Plants for DIY Landscape Gardens: Bordering Walks and Patios in Memorial and Meditation Garden Designs

 

If you need help maintaining your garden or clearing trees, be sure to visit Portland TT to know more about their professional services.

Container Gardening – Edible Roses

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roses-on-container-garden

As if the rose isn’t perfect enough with its exquisite beauty and seductive perfume, this winsome favorite also produces edible fruit, called hips. Throughout history, rose hips have been used in herbal medicines and in many a family recipe for jelly, jam, soup, syrup and tea.

Hips, also called haws, appear in early fall underneath the spent flower blossom and contain the rose’s seeds. They are typically red, maroon or orange and, just like roses, come in various shapes and sizes, from plump and round to long and skinny. Since roses are members of the apple family, their fruit is often called a “rose apple” and in some species, the hips can be as big as crabapples. Once hips are allowed to form, this stops flower production and signals the plant that it’s time to rest and go dormant.

Extremely high in Vitamin C, hips have as much as 20 times more of this important vitamin than oranges. No wonder ancient cultures used rose hips to treat a myriad of ailments including stress, colds, urinary tract infections and digestive problems. Walk into any health food store today and you’ll find that rose hips are still a key ingredient in many herbal preparations. Sources of Vitamin C have long been staples in both the medicine chest and the diet. In World War II Victory Gardens, rose hips were grown so they could be converted into a Vitamin C-rich syrup to replace the oranges that could no longer be imported into Britain during war time.

If you’d like to experiment with using hips in cooking, be sure they are from a rose that has not been treated with pesticide. Look for disease resistant rose varieties so spraying is not necessary. You can also employ organic controls to manage any pests or diseases. Stop deadheading your roses in August/September (depending on your climate) to promote the development of plump hips.

Many roses produce interesting looking hips. For starters, check out Rosa rugosa ‘Hansa’ which sports double medium-red blooms and then lovely large red hips. R. moyesii ‘Geranium’ has brilliant geranium red single flowers with large, deep orange-red hips. R. ‘Felicia’ is a modern shrub rose in a pink blend and produces large, round hips that slowly turn from green to red. Hips start out hard and green, but the first frost usually turns them bright red or orange and helps to sweeten them. Leave them on the bush until they reach this stage and then collect them. To prepare the hips for cooking, cut off both ends, cut in half lengthwise, remove the tiny hairs and seeds in the center and rinse. Don’t use any aluminum pans or utensils because they will destroy the Vitamin C. Dry the washed hips on a cookie sheet in a low (250 degrees) oven and then store in a cool, dry spot or in the fridge in glass jars.

There are many recipes for rose hip jelly, probably the most common edible use for this fruit. Try this one for something a little different.

Even if you decide not to cook with rose hips, they are still beautiful in the winter garden, adding a dash of color to the stark landscape. And they are also a great source of food for birds and other wildlife. So, no matter how you enjoy the hips, they are really just one more reason to grow this most lovely of all plants – the rose.

If you need tree planting or yard maintenance services for your house garden or yard, be sure to check out Portland TT.

Picking your perfect Roman Blinds

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When it comes to pure convenience and simplicity, there isn’t a better addition to your home than a set of Roman Blinds. If you’re redecorating a room from top to bottom, or simply just fancy a subtle change, Roman Blinds are an ideal solution.

You could say that they provide a perfect hybrid between curtains and normal wooden blinds. Whilst the Roman Blinds give the homeowner the aesthetically pleasing features that curtains do, they also provide the operational ease that blinds do.

It may come as a surprise, but for such a useful product, they are actually startlingly cheap in comparison to the competitors. As the blinds are in essence, simply flat panels of material, the cost is very low. In turn this means that even the top of the range products tend to be within the budget of the majority of homeowners.

The two main varieties from which to choose are categorised by the shape or fold they take when raised. The popular choices tend to be the horizontal draw and the teardrop style. The former is the style most people associated with blinds, and it simply folds neatly into itself. Teardrop blinds tend not to lie flat when raised, but in a more curved, teardrop-style shape (hence the name).

Which blind you choose is totally up to you, and different blinds suit different windows. The general assumption is that windows in rooms such as bathrooms and kitchens may well go hand-in-hand with the horizontal blinds to represent the simplicity of the room. On the other hand, rooms with picturesque views may reap the benefits of their settings when fitted with teardrop blinds. Teardrop blinds can combine with scenery to create a picture-perfect view on the right day, so it totally depends on what you want to get out of your blinds.

Another important factor to consider is how well the blinds will match the existing furnishings in the room, especially if you aren’t carrying out a full makeover. No matter how complex your current decoration is, a simple solution is always around the corner. Whilst a custom-made product will cost more than the average set of Roman Blinds, the price would still be extremely competitive when compared to alternative solutions.

Whatever you need – be it a simple blind that stops the neighbors watching you slave over a hot stove, or a quirky teardrop blind that makes a statement and adds a dash of character to your existing view, the solution can be found at Brenda Lee Designs to consult and get the best set of Roman Blinds for your home.

 

The Three Biggest Interior Design Questions

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interior-design-architects-in-office

interior-design-architects-in-office

Before starting any interior design or remodeling project, you need to think about the three biggest areas. Do you know what they are? You’ll find out below along with some interior design tips on how to handle them

 

What To Do With The Walls?

This is perhaps the biggest question and the area that can make the most difference in the outcome of your interior design. Wall color can set the tone of the room, but many people are afraid to paint their walls with anything but white. One way to get around this is to buy small samples of paint that you think you may want on the walls and paint it on a section of the wall. You don’t have to paint the whole wall – just a 1 foot square section. Live with it for a day and see how it looks in all different kinds of light. Be advised, however, that many colors – especially darker ones – attain their true beauty from the look of the entire wall after being layered with several coats of paint.

Don’t be afraid to go ahead and paint the walls – paint is cheap. If you don’t like the way it looks you can always paint over it!

 

What To Do With The Furniture?

Should you buy new furniture? What if your old stuff is still good, should you have it re-upholstered? While budgetary concerns may dictate, you should evaluate the furniture for style and value versus the cost of the re-upholstering. If you are looking for a sleek modern style living room and your old sofa is a country style, you should probably consider buying new. If expense is a problem, take a trip to your local consignment store. You can buy like new furniture for a fraction of the cost and if your old stuff is still in good condition you can consign it and get some money for it to help pay for your new one. To a better result, you can hire an interior design company like Brenda Lee Designs to assist you.

 

What To Do With The Floors?

Decisions about floor designs should be based on your personal taste as well as your budget. Some flooring is extremely expensive and, although it may be the type that will look best with your design it may not be affordable, or even practical. When replacing flooring, you should always consider the use of the room and if the flooring will hold up well. A wood floor might be a bad choice for a kids playroom and will soon show the marks and wear of toys being slid across it. Carpeting might go well in the family room, but if you tend to eat in front of the TV you’ll want to be sure to get a stain resistant type.

 

The Three Main Ingredients to Making Candles

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candle-flame-close-up-background

candle-flame-close-up-backgroundWhen making great candles one should consider not only how they will “smell”, but how they will burn (as the burn will affect the scent throw). Think about what you look for when choosing a candle and give that same quality, or better, when making your own. Each person has their own ideas of what they want to achieve, but here are some fundamentals to help get you started in the right direction:

 

Choose a Wax

 

There are numerous waxes available for candle making. Each differs in their performance with fragrances, appearance, how they receive dyes, etc. Look at the characteristics of the waxes you’re considering and make an informed decision. Your retailer should be able to recommend a wax for the types of candles you are looking to make.

 

Fragrances

 

Fragrance oils can be purchased from candle supply companies, fragrance companies and even hobby stores (I do not recommend the hobby store route, however – they are usually pretty weak). There are probably 1000’s of fragrances available and each company will offer their own variation of a specific one. Here’s the biggest piece of advice I can give you: Order samples (or a small 4oz bottle) first before buying a larger quantity – make sure you like it.

 

Also, when making candles, fragrance is measured by weight, not volume. Also, the amount you use needs to be compatible with your wax for proper mixture. Not all waxes hold the same amount of fragrance. When too much is used you could find some of it sinking to the bottom of the jar!

 

Wicks

 

Choosing a wick is as important as anything else when making candles. A wick not strong enough for your jar will leave wax behind causing the waste that can be so very irritating. A wick that’s too strong will burn your candle too quickly. Like everything else, finding a proper balance is a good thing.

 

Choose a container before purchasing your wicks. Measure the diameter of your container and ask a candle supplier which wick is the proper one to use. They should be able to tell you. If not, trial and error usually does the trick. Just like wax, there are numerous types of wicks that have their own characteristics. I suggest purchasing a sample package of several and decide which one fits your needs.

 

To make the most of your candle making effort, do some research before investing in your supplies. Check what ingredients great companies like The Big Damn Company use for their candles. This will help minimize mistakes, which translates into money spent.

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