Thoughts from the Shelf

Moving homes is certainly not cheap. More and more, people are looking to take on home improvement projects rather than tackling the property market. But where do you begin? Whether it’s a bathroom makeover, a whole new kitchen or perhaps a loft conversion, it’s a good idea to get some inspiration before you begin. Home improvement magazines are designed to offer exactly that: advice, tips and techniques that inspire without prompting you to spend a fortune. Home improvement magazines are also great for providing step-by-step templates of how to tackle small projects. From planning your budget, to researching different costs, skills and materials, most home improvement magazines promise to cover all issues!

Of course home improvement can carry very different meanings for different people. One person might be planning to completely revamp the downstairs layout of their home, and the next could simply want to install a new bathroom. Home improvement magazines such as Celebrity Home Angels aim to address a number of issues, so whatever you’re planning to do, there’s bound to be something relevant. Home improvement magazines often outline various projects that other people have undertaken, so you can gain an insight into how they managed to transform their home and importantly how much it set them back. As well as being crammed full with glossy pictures of beautiful properties, home improvement magazines often offer the latest in design news so that you can ensure your improvements are bang-up-to-date.

So, if you’re thinking of improving your living space, why not take a look at some of the many home improvement magazines on offer? Even if you’re simply redecorating, you can uncover some innovative and inspirational ideas that will ensure your house remains stylish for years and years to come.

Fast-growing hardwood furniture retailer, www.oakfurnitureland.co.uk, launches its first ever TV advertising campaign to raise brand awareness and support their nationwide store expansion plans
The UK’s largest retailer of solid hardwood furniture, Oak Furniture Land, has announced the release of their first television ad. The 30-second advert premieres on 14th August and will run for two weeks across several national channels.

Produced by Wordley Production Partners, the advert aims to raise brand awareness and reinforce the company’s core selling point: ‘No veneers, no chipboard – just solid hardwood’. It depicts a couple exploring an Oak Furniture Land showroom for the first time. With a sense of mischief, the husband is keen to inspect the quality of the furniture; even going as far as lifting a dining table to feel its weight. Clearly impressed with the furniture, the ad concludes with the couple jumping onto one of the beds and a pan shot of the Oak Furniture Land Thurrock showroom.

The ad also highlights Oak Furniture Land’s free delivery service and interest free finance options (up to three years interest-free credit or buy now, pay later on all purchases over £600). It showcases just a few of the many products available, including a distinctive Rustic Solid Oak Sideboard (£359) and Solid Oak Extending Dining Table with six Leather Scroll Back Chairs (£699). Tabitha Penny, Head of Marketing for Oak Furniture Land, comments:-

“We’re very excited about Oak Furniture Land’s debut TV advert. Following the tremendous success of our new showrooms, we decided that now would be a good time to support our growth with a TV campaign. The objective of the commercial is to raise awareness of our brand and drive viewers to our website at Oakfurnitureland.co.uk. We aim to show off the quality of our products and their fantastic, highly competitive prices.

All our furniture is handcrafted by skilled craftsmen using traditional dovetail joints – we don’t use chipboard, MDF or veneers in any of our products. Oak Furniture Land is currently experiencing double-digit like-for-like sales growth and we intend to maintain this pace until our brand is firmly established as a household name.”
For more information on Oak Furniture Land and its debut TV advertising campaign, visit www.oakfurnitureland.co.uk/category/tv-advertising/
About Oak Furniture Land:

Recognised for quality, value and choice, Oak Furniture Land is the largest retailer in the UK to make hardwood furniture directly. Everything is designed and crafted in-house and delivered, free of charge, direct to the customer’s room of choice.

This approach allows the company to cut out the middle man; and reflect these savings in their highly competitive prices. Oak Furniture Land was recognised as one of the UK’s fastest growing private companies by the Fast Track 100 in association with The Sunday Times. Published on the 5th December 2010, the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 ranked the company number 34 in the league table.

With the summer now in full swing and the BBQ out more nights than not, home improvement may be a task that is put on the back burner. That said it is these summer months when some great prices can be got on furniture and other house hold products. You only have to look at the DFS sofa advertising and Kitchen prices available to back this up.

Here at The Shelf we make bring you the rundown in what furniture to look for this summer. First up sideboards:

Sideboards are often a highly under-rated piece of furniture; they are incredibly useful in many different spaces and rooms throughout the home; they fit inoffensively and neutrally with the rest of your furniture as they are not tall enough to impose upon or dominate the space in a room. In fact, most sideboards are effective in creating extra space, as they act as both a useful storage facility and a make shift coffee table and extra surface to display vases or ornaments.

Like dressers, a sideboard can be used as either an attractive piece of furniture and neat way to organise things in your home, or a cheeky space to clear the clutter away when guests announce a surprise visit! Sideboards are ideal as a piece of Indian, birch hardwood or oak furniture, as the solid wood makes them appear elegant and sophisticated. An Indian side table offers a much richer depth of colour to a room than oak furniture, which is more light and natural, but the ideal choice depends on personal preference, the existing furniture within the room and the colour and décor of the space.

Sideboards are most commonly used in dining rooms, living rooms or hallways but they would also make a useful addition to bedroom furniture or in a bathroom, where they could store towels or bathroom products.

The range of sideboards available is extensive. It is possible to choose sideboards with or without legs, sideboards with varying patterns, a sideboard of birch, Indian, mango or oak furniture, sideboards with drawers, cupboards or a combination of both depending on what exactly you intend to store, and sideboards of varying length, width and height so that the furniture will fit neatly and exactly into your home and complement the other furniture in the room.

We have recently launched a few articles that have detailed various help and advice for home improvement, namely our article titled ‘Identifying Credible Online Furniture Retailers’ and ‘Thinking about Oak Furniture’.

In the research for these articles we identified the following information that could be interesting to users reading these articles.

We have been discussing the possibility of using Oak furniture in the home, but before we move onto discussing our next topic, contemporary bedroom furniture, we should finish off with a final analysis.

Although often more expensive than other hardwoods it seems that oak furniture is a firm favourite. With alternatives including birch furniture, Ash furniture and even Mahogany still popular, the longevity of oak and ease when staining has been seen to save customers money in the long run, and thus leads the market.

When buying any hardwood furniture it is important to examine the workmanship than has gone into it. This alone is often a good indicator of the quality of a retailer. If the piece seems ramshackle or thrown together, with a sub-par finish, it obviously does not reflect well. Conversely, the sale of oak furniture, as explained above, shows the company is aware of quality, but more than anything things like well dove tailed joints and good, smooth finishes shows a company that takes pride in its work.

In short, when deciding on furniture for your home do a bit of research, and mixed with a bit of common sense you can make all the difference in getting a value-for-money, quality piece of furniture. If the price is right, The Shelf believes oak furniture is always a good way to go.

In our second home improvement post, The Shelf picks up a theme echoed in many consumer forums of late. How can you best identify a quality furniture retailer?

Narrowing this down to fit into our newly created home improvement category, we narrow this down to furniture sector, and explore how you can be safe in the knowledge you are using a credible retailer with what tend to be larger online purchases.

It is true that some people avoid shopping in sectors such as these altogether due to this uncertainty, but by identifying those online furniture retailers that are established and hold a good reputation, you can be sure that you are safe in spending larger sum of money those e commerce channels.

For most people the purchase of your house will probably be the most expensive personal outlay of your entire life. It is also commonly accepted to be one of the most stressful. However, decorating your home can also be an utter chore, and finding yourself ripped off with inferior furniture and fittings is a hassle you don’t need.

Choosing furniture for your home will no doubt take up a lot of your time whilst decorating. With the advent of the internet, the amount of people wanting to sell you furniture has increased prodigiously. The problem with too much choice though is that there will always be inferior companies that offer varying degrees of quality for your money. So, how can you attempt to sift through the chaff and find the wheat, how to spot a good furniture retailer from a bad one?

Well, like many things, a lot of picking a furniture retailer comes down to simple common sense. In many cases, if a price appears too good to be true, it often is. It is false economy to buy the cheapest when for shelling out a little more you could get a piece of furniture that endures.

Our second piece of advice is to do your research! Jumping at the first option that appears good is a recipe for disaster. Browse multiple websites, assess prices and take the opinion of families and friends. If they have furniture you consider to be well made and at a reasonable price, ask them where they got it, would they buy from there again, what was the service like? Word-of-mouth recommendations are often the most reliable indicators as to whether a retailer is genuinely worth considering or not and as such forums such a moneysavingexpert.com can be invaluable.

Observing the furniture itself is also telling. Pine furniture, while cheap, is flimsy and will not take well to painting and staining. Also, chipboard and MDF constructs will often appear cheap, but will not endure for very long. On this point, oak wood furniture is often the way to go.