Posts Tagged ‘wooden bedroom furniture’

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Choosing the best bedroom furniture for you

Friday, May 7th, 2010

A bed room is the peaceful area of your dwelling to have your privacy and be totally relaxed. Everyone loves to sleep in a lovely and cozy bed room, just like they want to have quality in any other rooms in your home. Picking the correct furniture to go in the rooms should be critical. Developing a fine bed room gives a type of security and multiplies your comfort. When you are married then you will have better times together if you could have a comfortable double or king size bed and beautiful home furniture such as dressing tables, bed side tables, cabinets, chests and wardrobes. Bedroom furniture can come in numerous styles of designs. Here i will discuss various good tips on how to choose the most suitable bedroom furniture which will offer you the lovely sleeping experience.

1. Must haves and Desires. Get to know the things you would like and what you might need from the bedroom. It is really better if you talk about it with your husband or wife to get good designs ideas. You have to prioritize on things that you need as opposed to want, when you cater for your needs then is the time to start to think about what which you may desire.

2. Styles and Concepts. Study your bedroom’s structure and dimension and envisage what kind of pieces of furniture would suit it. Why not use our free planner that can be found on the homepage?

3. Decide on Appropriate bedroom furniture. Whenever you’re getting your furniture ensure that it’s hard-wearing, of high quality, and well engineered. You don’t want to waste your cash on poor quality pieces of furniture that can only survive for some months before it falls apart. AKKA furniture only produces timeless bedroom furniture in oak and walnut that will stand the test of time.

4. Deciding on your right website. There are numerous shops and warehouses that retail pieces of furniture but you will need to select the best one. Use the world-wide-web and locate one that supplies the types of furnishings you desire but after that be certain that they have got good credibility and good buyer satisfaction. Why not come down and visit our showroom in Colchester?

5. Enjoy your good quality bedroom furniture. The bedroom is required to be your sanctuary, finish it off with quality furnishings and insure that it is an area you may love sleeping in.

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Posted in American woods, Furniture Advice, Furniture finishes, beds, dressing tables, wooden bedroom furniture, wooden wardrobes | No Comments »

Quality products

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Now I know we’re a bedroom furniture company but I thought I’d share this with you anyway despite the fact that it is clearly kitchen related. As many of you will know, it’s now that time of year: the daffodils have just gone over, the trees have a light fuzz of green, birdsong fills the evening air and the wife has planned a series of DIY shock and awe campaigns for the each of the bank holiday weekends from Easter until August!
Our very own version of Desert Storm I shall rename Melamine Storm! We decided (and you know how I use the word ‘we’) that it was time to redecorate the kitchen. New tiles, new floor, and forty gallons of Farrow & Ball white paint. The final thing in the mix was a bit of extra storage for the kitchen. Now, our kitchen units were out of date and discontinued so we popped off to a certain well-known DIY store and bought the nearest thing we could to match in with our old stuff.
Now the tiles are down and the grout has gone off, it’s time to build the new cupboards. All in all reasonably good fun. It came in kit form, and after following instructions carefully to avoid accidentally building a kitchen shed, the first cupboard was up. I’m not that pleased. It made me realise just how unsatisfying it is to look at something synthetic. There was no natural beauty or craftsmanship. Each day when I look at the chests of drawers in our bedroom, I feel pleased with the way it all looks and feels, especially as we’ve had our furniture for years. The change in colour is about acquiring a beautiful natural patina rather than a yellowing with age that you get with tired kitchen cupboards. Even when our oak stuff does need a little perk-up, we just treat it with some danish oil, which is a pleasure in itself.
As far as I’m concerned, melamine, particle board and MDF belong in the same place as Divans!

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Buying Bedroom Furniture

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

 

We spend about one-third of our life in our bedrooms. It is the place where we sleep at night and the place where we get up in the morning. Majority of our day-to-day activities, right from reading a book to watching TV to sleeping, are carried out in the bedroom only. This makes it only reasonable that we make the room as comfortable as possible. In order to do this, we need to keep a lot of things in mind, selecting the right furniture, going for the perfect draperies and deciding on the most appropriate adornments. Talking about bedroom furniture, it needs to be chosen with great care, keeping in mind the overall home Decor, the particular look that you want for your room, the color of your walls and your budget. At the same time, it needs to impart a cozy ambience to your bedroom.

Before buying furniture for your bedroom, you first need to keep in mind the size of your room. If you put too many or too big furniture items in a small room, you will be left with no walking space and the room will look cluttered. On the other hand, having too few furniture items in a big room will give it an incomplete look. While bed, chairs, dressing table and side table are a must, their size as well as the possibility of putting in more furniture will depend on the length and the width of your bedroom. 


While deciding on the type, quantity as well as the size of your bedroom furniture; keep in mind your needs and not desires. You might want to buy the bed that you saw in a furniture store the other day, mainly because of its looks, but if it doesn’t fulfill your requirements, say of storage, it is better to skip it altogether. In other words, if a simple five drawer chest suits your budget and room size, it is advisable not to go for a double Queen Anne dresser.

While buying bedroom furniture, keep in mind the kind of people who would be using it. If you want furniture for your mind, going for Brazilian rosewood, which looks impressive and also proves durable, is a great idea. However, in case the furniture is meant for your little kid’s room, it is advisable to go for something that is inexpensive, easy-to-replace and not at all delicate.

 
Whenever you go out to buy bedroom furniture, keep in mind that quality matters more than quantity. Furniture is not something that you would want to change every other month (unless and until you are a billionaire). If you want to pass on your bedroom furniture to your children, or even grandchildren, go for something that, although a bit expensive, is durable and will last a long time. In other words, rather than veneers, buy furniture with dovetail edges and real hardwood finishes.

Some More Tips

  • While shopping for bedroom furniture, place a higher importance to comfort than anything else. Remember, you will be spending a major part of your day, and night, in there.
  • Give due importance to fine craftsmanship, as it will ensure durability of your furniture and help you save unnecessary repair expenses.

 

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Dressing tables

Friday, March 5th, 2010

So you’re thinking of purchasing a new dressing table. There are a few things you need to know before you buy to get yourself the best quality and the best deal. And, although you might think dressing tables a luxury, a good one can help reduce bedroom clutter – so they’re actually practical, too!

Dressing rooms are great (just think, a whole space dedicated to grooming and dressing up!) and a functional and fabulous dressing table is a luxury no lady can do without.

Mirrored dressing tables are everywhere at the moment but they are a sexy alternative to some more traditional wooden units. If you do prefer wood, try something like walnut, which will look more retro than rustic.

Not everyone’s a fan of the boudoir look, but dressing tables needn’t be prissy. A well-designed bureau or console – anything that you can tuck your legs underneath and that won’t look too officey – can work just as well, if accessorised properly. A good mirror, comfy chair and tabletop light are an absolute must.

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How to make the most of your bedroom

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

With the addition of televisions, desks and exercise equipment to bedrooms, there is a greater constraint on available space in the room.  There are many creative solutions to dealing with a lack of space. When planning your bedroom, it is important to maximize the space you have to deal with. Whether you just have a lot of stuff or your room is small, creative organizing will help to make the most of the room you have.

 

There are many ways to save space simply by the calculated positioning of your bed in the room.  In a limited space, one idea is to shift your bed lengthwise against a wall to create a daybed, thus allowing extra room for more furniture, like a coffee table or some chairs.

 

In a small space, prioritize the pieces of furniture for the room.  By deciding what’s more important, whether it’s a big impressive bed or a lot of space for storage, the room is better able to fit your specific needs.  For example, if you’re a person who has a lot of books or videotapes that you wish to keep in your room, a good solution would be finding a bedside table that also serves as a bookshelf.

 

If extra shelves are not needed, but drawer space is using a small chest of drawers for a bedside table could also be a good solution. Using that specific piece of furniture as a table and either shelves or drawers to store things, the potential of the space is maximized.

 

Storage can also be accomplished by a large chest at the end of the bed for example a blanket box, which could also serve as a place to sit with the simple addition of a cushion. Underneath the bed is also a storage place that should not be overlooked for underbed drawers which could help free up more space within the room for other things.

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Wooden Dowels Used By Cabinet Makers

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

Wood dowels are cylindrical pieces of wood that can be used in woodworking, crafts and other pursuits as pegs, axles and support rods. Available in a variety of diameters and length, dowels can be bought ready-made, or you may make them yourself.
Shapes and Sizes
1. Wooden dowels are not tapered; rather, they are the same diameter along their entire length, although the ends may receive special treatment. Dowels range from as much as 3 inches in diameter down to an eighth of an inch. Thicker dowels are more expensive than thin ones.

Dowels usually are sold in 3-foot lengths at hardware stores and home centers, although manufacturers produce longer dowels, up to 12 feet in length.
Common dowel diameters are a quarter inch, three-eighths of an inch, and a half inch.
Dowels in Joinery
2. Dowels are often used as pegs to join two pieces of wood. After selecting a dowel of the appropriate diameter, the woodworker drills two holes of a similar size, one in each of the wood pieces to be joined. After checking for fit, the woodworker puts glue on the dowel and inserts it into one hole. Then, after applying glue to the other end of the dowel, the woodworker slides the dowel into the corresponding hole on the other wooden piece. Any excess glue is wiped off.
Dowels provide strong joints between wooden pieces without the use of screws or nails. When used by a skillful woodworker, dowels can help create an apparently solid slab of wood out of many individual pieces.
Other Uses
3. Besides joinery, dowels can also be used for trim, either by being cut in half and attached or by being laid in a groove cut by a special jig.
Outside the wood shop, dowels are used in crafts. They can serve as axles in wooden toys or be turned into knitting needles. They may serve as the blanks out of which an artisan carves chess pieces. Inserted through the layers, dowels provide internal support for multitier cakes.
What Are Dowels Made Of?
4. Just about any kind of wood can be used to make a dowel. Hardwood dowels—made of walnut, oak, or maple—are common, because hardwoods are stronger and less apt to snap than a softwood, such as pine or spruce. You can buy dowels made of poplar, hickory, ash, beech and even mahogany.
Some manufacturers offer custom-made dowels created from exotic woods, such as olive, plum, rosewood or holly.
Special Treatments
5. Dowels may be sold as simple cylinders, known as square cut dowels. However, special treatments are available. You may purchase a dowel with rounded, tapered or pointed ends. A chamfered end is similar to a square cut, only the edges of the dowel’s end have been sanded so they are angled. End-bored dowels have a hole bored in the end. A tenoned dowel has a tenon at one end and a mortise on the other, allowing them to be fit together.
Short dowels intended to be used in joinery may be either spiral grooved or fluted (grooved from end to end) to provide extra surface area for the glue.
Making Dowels
6. Some woodworkers choose to make their own dowels. To cut a long dowel rod, they would place a piece of wood stock into a lathe and use a chisel or a router to trim the stock to the proper diameter.
Another way to make short dowels to is use a tool called a dowel plate. The woodworker roughs out a piece of stock and then pounds it through the chosen hole in the plate. The sharp edges of the hole cut the dowel to the precise diameter. This allows the woodworker to use short pieces of wood that might otherwise be wasted.
However, industrial dowel-making machines are more suited for producing a lot of dowels. A dowel-making machine uses cutting heads of various sizes, depending on the diameter of the dowel being produced. The cutting heads can be switched out when a different sized dowel is to be cut.
To cut very large numbers of dowels, manufacturers use machines called wood shapers. Wood shapers are similar to routers, but instead of one bit they use cutting heads above and below the wood. Each head forms half the dowel.

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History of wooden furniture

Monday, December 21st, 2009

For many people, the warmth and beauty of solid wooden furniture is inviting and reassuring; as if a touch of nature were still present in our modern, everyday lives. Wooden furniture is one of the earliest, and most important, inventions intended strictly for human comfort and pleasure. Understanding where our love affair with all things wooden comes from is an important part of understanding human nature and aesthetics.
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Chairs
1. Perhaps the earliest form of wooden furniture, the wooden chair has seen many permutations over the centuries. In Egypt, chairs carved of wood were status symbols in that mostly-treeless environment. Pharoahs would sit upon thrones of carved cedar inlaid with gold and gems. Romans also carved chairs, but Roman chairs were an open “U” shape allowing the occupant to rest his arms but without a backrest to lean against.
Arguably the most intricately crafted chairs hail from the 18th and 19th centuries. French, American, English and German craftsmen all produced highly detailed, exquisitely-crafted wooden chairs that displayed the grains, knots and patterns of exotic woods, all protected under layers of lacquer.
Chests
2. Chests in China were cedar-lined boxes delicately enameled and lacquered to protect precious silks and clothes from destructive insects. Medieval European wooden chests were relatively watertight, sealed with tar or lacquer, to protect important documents such as maps and papers from the occasional storm. Chests have changed over time, and have even been given new name: armoire, wardrobe, chest-of-drawers and hope chest. Regardless of their name, the function is the same; to use the durability of wood to protect precious belongings while making the room more attractive.
Beds
3. Early beds were nothing more than piles of animal skins or straw with a blanket on top. But Mesopotamian and Egyptian nobles slept off the floor, thanks to a wooden frame with interwoven leather or hemp straps. The essential configuration of a bed remained largely unchanged for centuries until the early Renaissance. Beds then were considerably shorter than they are now for two reasons; people slept sitting up and mattresses were becoming more widely used.
In 19th century America, Sears Roebuck & Co. began selling beds that could be dismantled and re-assembled fairly easily and thus distributed wooden beds across the country in a few short decades.
Tables
4. As old as chairs are, tables must be nearly as old. Persian emperors and the Rajahs of the Indus valley used tables as platforms for games of Shataranj (also called “Chess”). Roman and Greek feasts rested upon intricately inlaid and carved tables. The mythical King Arthur ordered a round table built so that all knights of his realm might be seen as equal.
Simple but elegant tables in the Shaker style are still in high demand both for their quality and for their attractiveness. Born of the Protestant American religious philosophy of simplicity, functionality and modesty, Shaker tables are easily recognized across the world.
Desks
5. Writing desks became the province of educated gentlemen in during the Enlightenment. Thomas Jefferson is often depicted with quill in hand, sitting at a beautifully carved writing desk penning the Declaration of Independence.
Presidents of the United States are often photographed sitting behind an imposing, wooden desk known as the “Resolute Desk.” Originally a gift from Queen Victoria to Rutherford B Hayes, the Resolute Desk was made from the planks of the HMS Resolute, a British ship rescued from the Arctic, refitted, and returned to England two decades earlier. The Resolute Desk is usually the desk of choice of American presidents and serves as a reminder of the “special bond” between the United States and Great Britain.

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Wooden Beds

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Wooden Beds are bulletproof
I’m not quite sure that I should be taken literally here, but I won’t patronise you any further by explaining the metaphor! Another one of my chance conversations the other day caused me to ruminate over the whole wooden bedroom furniture thing. Having said that, our bedroom furniture is never far from my mind, let alone thinking about what I need to write on a blog about wooden bedroom furniture! I digress and am in danger of becoming the Ronnie Corbett of the blogging world. So the producer said….. Sorry, hang on, where was I? Yes, a chance chat. I happened to bump into my neighbour, Jimmy the other day when he announced that he’d just gone and bought a new car. ‘Nice.’ says I, ‘what have you gone for this time?’
‘Merc.’ Says Jimmy. ‘Well they’re bulletproof aren’t they?’.
I won’t bore you with the whole conversation, but needless to say, Jimmy doesn’t like having to pay out for cars all the time, he considers them a necessary evil. He’s going for a Merc as he plans to ‘run the thing into the ground’. Mercs are not a cheap option, but they do have that reputation of solid build and reliability over long periods of time.
Wait for it.
Just like quality wooden bedroom furniture! Any luxury item that has a commodity value needs to be stylish and durable. Like cars, we don’t go buying beds all the time and when we do, we want them to stand the test of time both in looks and reliability. With the odd bit of Danish oil over the years, an akka bed will continue to look as fantastic as the day you first owned it and last you for many years to come.
Akka beds are bulletproof. QED.

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The Dovetail Joint

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Dovetails can be cut by hand or by machines, often with an electric router and using one of a range of commercially available jigs or templates. Although it is technically a straight forward process, hand-cutting dovetails requires a high degree of accuracy to ensure a snug fit and so can be difficult to master. The pins and tails must fit together with no gap between them so that the joint interlocks tightly with no movement. Thus the cutting of dovetails by hand is regarded as a mark of skill on the part of the craftsperson.
The angle of slope varies according to the wood used. Typically the slope is 1:6 for softwoods and a shallower 1:8 slope for hardwoods. Often a slope of 1:7 is used as a compromise – perhaps using a dovetail template for marking out.
When being cut by hand, there are two schools of thought as to whether the pins or the tails should be cut first. For pins first, the pins are laid out and cut by the chosen method, then the outline of the pins is transferred to the face of the tail board. For tails first, the tails are laid out and cut and then the outline is transferred to the end grain of the pin board. Each has advantages and it is a personal choice as to which is chosen.
Hand cut dovetails can often be distinguished from machine-cut dovetails by the width of the pins. It is possible to have pins that are almost triangular when cut by hand that are not possible when cut with a router, owing to the thickness of the router bit’s shank. These narrow pins are known as London Pins.
Types of dovetail
Through Dovetail

A through dovetail joint
Through dovetails are common in carcass and box construction. Traditionally, the dovetails would have often be covered by a veneer. However, dovetails have become a signature of craftsmanship and are generally considered a feature, so they are rarely concealed in contemporary work.
Use for:
• Carcass and box construction
Half-blind dovetail

A half-blind dovetail joint
A half-blind dovetail is used when the craftsman does not wish end grain to be visible from the front of the item. The tails are housed in sockets in the ends of the board that is to be the front of the item so that their ends cannot be seen.
Half-blind dovetails are commonly used to fasten drawer fronts to drawer sides. This is an alternative to the practice of attaching false fronts to drawers constructed using through dovetails.
Use for:
• Attaching drawer fronts
Sliding dovetail

A sliding dovetail joint
The sliding dovetail is a method of joining two boards at right angles, where the intersection occurs within the field of one of the boards, that is not at the end. This joint provides the interlocking strength of a dovetail. Sliding dovetails are assembled by sliding the tail into the socket. It is common to slightly taper the socket, making it

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Seeing your home through new eyes

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

When my wife and I moved into our house just around four years ago, we were full of good intentions. Every room needed decorating, we would finally buy co-ordinated furniture for each room. We would make sure we treated ourselves to new bedroom furniture from the akka range for ourselves and not just for customers. We would strip back the floors, re-tile the bathroom, put preserver on the shed and insulate the loft.

Did we do it all? Hell, no! We still have our old oak furniture and the same bed that we had in the last house, we even still have the coaster in the same place on the bedside table where I keep meaning to polish out the water mark that got left there when I put down a nice wet cup of tea on the top!

So, have we got lazy? Are we too busy to fix our house up the way we would like? Maybe both, but the chances are that we have just got used to living with things the way they are and we stop seeing how things could be different. For those of you who have seen, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ you’ll know how James Stewart never gets around to fixing the cap on the bottom wooden banister post which always comes away in his hand as he walks upstairs. We need to see things through a fresh set of eyes.

Why not download our room planner from the link on the home page and think about how you could see your home differently? Maybe it really is time to stop ignoring the fact that most of your clothes are piled up in awkward places because you don’t have the wardrobe you want. Or maybe it’s time to lose the formica topped tallboy that Aunty Maud lent you to ‘tide you over’ and replace it with something you really want.

Go on, take a look at your house now and see it through fresh eyes. Engage that imagination of yours and start thinking how great it would be to finally get that lovely walnut bed you always wanted!!

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