Counter tops in the casa de Johnsons

Last week we had a customer come in looking at dark counter tops for her wet bar.  She wasn't sure about how it would look.  Well in our house and kitchen we have a variety of counter tops.  I was just thinking that it would be nice to see what a few different types would look like.

We put in high faucets because I felt that they would be easier to use with us girls.  ( and they hold our elastics really well...) the draw back to the black granite is that it shows EVERYTHING if i could go back i would have gotten a dark color with the variation, but as it sits I am happy with it.

This is the island that we put in when we put in our cabinets. The cabinets are a rustic cherry with a glaze and the counter top is granite giallo ornamental.  Where my bathroom shows everything, this hides everything.

This is a closer look of the counter top.

The bathrooms upstairs have the same counter top as the kitchen.  Being that they are granite they do need to be sealed once a year or as needed... Usually you should stain it when the moisture starts to absorb instead of beading up.

Pass it along...

To help out our coustomers, we decided to hand out a carpet matitnance forms. As far as I can tell they appreciate it ...
It goes as follows, I hope you find this helpful also!

Carpet maintenance

When getting new carpet or maintaining your existing carpet, there are a few things that need to be made known.

Vacuum Habits:

Rule of thumb for vacuuming your carpet is as follows: Vacuum your carpet as many times per week as you have people and pets living in your household.  So for example if there are 4 people living in a home and the family dog you should be vacuuming your house 5 times per week.  Your carpet loves to be vacuumed.  Stairs and hallways being high traffic areas in your home need to be vacuumed more often.  **In our house hold we offered $2.00 for vacuuming the stairs, if a child needed $4.00 we had them vacuum the stairs two consecutive times just because the stairs need the extra care.**

Carpet Cleaning:

Carpet should be cleaned once a year minimum, although every 6 months is Ideal. When I say cleaned, I mean steam cleaned by a professional.  Steam cleaning your carpet helps maintain the warranty on your carpet.  Please avoid cleaning your carpet chemically.  When you use chemicals to clean your carpet, your carpet has a tendency to stick together making it look matted.

Spot Cleaning:

When a spot gets on your carpet depending on what the spot is, refer to the “Shaw stain center” you can do this a few ways.  There is an app. for the i-Phone, or you can look at the website: http://shawfloors.com/Cms/Home.aspx?DN=ecb3c2bf-7515-4484-9646-fb99065e374c

(An easier way to find this is Google “Shaw stain center” it should be the first site that pops up.)

There is also a number that you can call Stainmaster:  800-438-7668 or Shaw / Anso:  800-441-7429.  This is the most helpful thing to use when it comes to stains; it helps with solutions and ways to dub the stain out of the carpet.

Footwear:

 Despite what rumor has or what many of us think, socks are the way to go.  Bare feet walking on your carpet is one of the worst things for your carpet.  When the oils from your bare feet rub on your carpet, the dirt tends to stick to your carpet making it harder to maintain and keep looking clean.  If you have the choice between bare feet and shoes, wear your shoes but socks are the ideal way to keep your carpet looking better longer.

Just For Fun:

Make sure to check out the Johnsons Carpet blog, there we post helpful hints for carpet care and jobs that we have done. Just to further help you understand your carpet.

Johnson-carpet.blogspot.com

Backsplash at the Johnson House

There have been alot of questions as customers come into the shop of with all the options of back splashes that are available, how do you pick the one that you want.  The short answer is good question, I have no idea!  But in all seriousness it is a hard thing to pick.  There are thousands of options, I tell people to GOOGLE it, or PINTREST it.  Look up images of what other people have had ideas and get a few pictures that you like and combine them.  We can help you when you have an Idea of what you like.  Personally I love the look of glass tiles.  This is a concept that I pushed when we started looking into changing the back splash.  We has ideas of tiles that we liked but not really any options that were set into stone. 

This is the glass tile that we LOVED! the color variation and the cracked glass was different and worked with the colors that we were using. 

Natural stone was something that we also really liked the look of in back splashes.  Although you have to seal it, we were doing granite counter tops and figured that we could seal them all together.  The travertine pencils and decorative edge really looked elegant and we though it would be nice to incorporate all of this into the back splash.

As the ideas were brought up the highly visual Scott looked at our ideas and with all the brainstorming that we did this was the design that we all agreed on.  It had all of the things that we really liked. 

The pencils the glass and the travertine all have a great look! In my opinion of course!

Natural stone has a mind of its own, no 2 pieces are alike and that variation was something that we really thought would look elegant.

Sorry about the lighting here. We have a window that the sun loves to shine in, and while it is great to see outside it is so bad for pictures! but you can see that we finished the edge with that decorative piece of travertine, and the pencils went around the glass tiles.

Another picture of the over all look of the cabinets, counter top, and back splash (and the dishwasher).

(also as you can see we haven't finished putting in the plugs, we are working on that)

Last sunshine picture.  As a side note the cabinets are natural cherry with a glaze. 

( the cabinet installers told us that installing handles helps preserve your cabinets because the oils from your hands is hard on the finish of the cabinets.)

Spalted Maple laminate

Life happens... As sad as it is true....
We did a job a while back for a house that had a lot of water damage, water was left running for a few hours and when the home owner came back there wasn't the warm welcoming awaiting as they had hoped.  As many projects start, they start small (ish) and turn into large projects... so what was supposed to be a floor install became a upper floor install and counter top install! ( we were okay with it, it looked great!)

Spalted Maple Honey Laminate Floor

I love the warm rich colors that this floor has...

New Counter tops and laminate.

New counter top...

Side note ... Laminate is a really nice option of flooring because of how easy it is to maintain.  It is a wood product though so I would not recommend it in a bathroom or any area that has a high amount of water/ humidity.  It can be installed up to 7 times when you use a click option.  Many people don't like that laminate can not be sanded and finished but when looking at laminate get a laminate with a polyurethane finish and then you would have not need to sand and finish.  As I said before no floor is indestructible, but this is a very affordable option for a floor that can be lived on.