Month: August 2018

How to Prevent Carpet Mold

We can all agree that a carpet carpet cleaning Pasadena CA is nasty. Removing mold and mildew on hard surfaces is not easy and it’s even more complicated to remove them from the carpet. Moreover, they often have the tendency to appear at the back of the carpet, which is often hard to notice until it’s already too late.

Here’s how you can prevent them.

Why Clean Carpets?

It’s worth noting that if your carpet is clean enough, it’s almost impenetrable by mold and mildew, despite the conditions in your home. In a study where a clean nylon carpet was subjected to a high level of humidity and high temperature, no mold growth was noticed. Even those clean carpets that are known to have active mold spores remained mold-free.

Dirt on carpeting is prone to mold for two reasons – first, the dirt may have mold spores in them and second, the dirt itself has moisture, which encourages mold growth.

Preventing Carpet Mold

As it turns out, it’s relatively easy to prevent the growth of rug cleaning Pasadena in your carpet than to remove it.

Here are some ways on how you can prevent mold growth:

– Keep Humidity Low – A humidity that’s 65% and lower is the perfect level to maintain a mold-free environment. So try to keep your home’s humidity level at 65 percent or below. Consider installing a portable dehumidifier in order to maintain low humidity in your house.

– Keep Temperatures Low – The temperature is another factor that could contribute to mold growth in your home and 80 degrees Fahrenheit is seen as high. Effective HVAC can benefit you in two ways – it lowers the temperature and the humidity level in your home.

– Keep Carpets Clean at All Times – Although there’s really not an official definition of a “clean carpet”, in order for a carpet to be considered clean, it should be vacuumed on a regular basis. Vacuuming the carpet for at least once a week should be enough to keep it clean and inhibit the growth of mildew and mold.

– Install Man-Made Carpet Materials – Your choice of carpet is also a factor in mold growth. Carpets made from organic carpets such as wool are more prone to mold, unlike the manmade or inorganic carpets. So although organic carpets are more environment-friendly, if you want to prevent Pasadena carpet cleaning, it’s best to go for carpets made from inorganic materials such as olefin and nylon.

Carpets on Basement

Basements are often damp, which is why most homeowners avoid installing carpet in this part of their house. Even a light humidity that gets trapped in the basement has the ability to build up over time and will make the carpet to become moldy.

carpet cleaning Pasadena are not only unsightly. They can also be a hazard for health, especially if you or any of your family members has allergies. Furthermore, they can also get into the things that you have stored in your basement and could lead to costly damages. So try to avoid installing carpets in your basement as much as possible.

Houzz Tour: Eclectic Country Beach House

What do you get when you combine a love of flea market finds, a beautiful blank slate of a shore house, a walkable California neighborhood and eBay savvy? A comfortable and beautiful house that the designer and former proprietor, Kelley Motschenbacher, describes as “eclectic nation.”

By balancing her exceptional finds with white space and modern pieces, she made a house that was so inviting, someone purchased it from her fully furnished, right down to the tiniest knickknacks. So much for those design shows that let you clean out your house when staging it! Let’s take a look at all of the distinctive ways she infused this house with personality and charm.

Kelley & Company Home

Though built on a really narrow lot, the inviting house in Corona del Mar creates the most of its exterior spaces, such as this front terrace, a back terrace and magnificent roofdeck.

Kelley & Company Home

The living room, right off the front entryway, lets visitors know they’re in for a complex country treat. “This painting inspired the whole room,” Motschenbacher explains. It was painted by artist Jean Jack, along with the lime green tones on the pillows came straight from the painting.

The coffee table was fashioned from a wicker carrier-pigeon cage. Motschenbacher enjoys animal prints and utilizes them as accents. The leopard print is from Barclay Butera. “People either love or hate the zebra cowhide rug,” she says. “There is no in-between. Personally, I love it.”

Kelley & Company Home

The family room, a mixture of vintage textiles, antique pieces and a few new finds, is a fun spot for collecting.

Kelley & Company Home

Motschenbacher has a thing for antique ice-cream-maker buckets, and has gathered a group of these as well. They have been converted into lamps and topped with vintage fabric-covered shades. “I love to turn all sorts of things into lamps,” she says. “I will walk into my lamp shop carrying a strange object and since they know me so well, I simply hand it to them and they know exactly what to do.”

Kelley & Company Home

Between the slanted ceiling, the flat bar, and also the way the fans rotated, this ceiling fan was a challenge to hang, however, the results were worth the effort.

Kelley & Company Home

As it came to this very long, windowless wall, Motschenbacher quickly realized she was going to want something big to break up all the white space. Pressed flowers from the 1920s have been an eBay score (she purchased 40 of them for $100).

“To be able to showcase the botanicals, I framed them quite simply in green/gray barn wood frames without mats,” Motschenbacher says. “They belonged to a teacher who labeled each pressing genus, species, and place — they’re really unique.”

Kelley & Company Home

“We spent the vast majority of the time in this house in the kitchen,” Motschenbacher says. An individual can see why, with its open atmosphere, natural lighting, and enchanting vintage touches.

Kelley & Company Home

Motschenbacher enjoys to use indications as folk art in her designs. In fact, she’s pickers who keep a watch for great sign discovers for her, who will email her pictures from big antique shows like Brimfield.

Kelley & Company Home

Another Jean Jack painting hangs over a marble-topped Parsons table from Room and Board.

Kelley & Company Home

After Motschenbacher and her husband purchased the house, it had undergone a redesign, which makes it just like new. Thus, “the bathroom fixtures were all very boring and basic,” Motschenbacher explains. She remedied this by substituting them with fittings from Rejuvenation’s Jadeite Collection.

Kelley & Company Home

“Vintage postcards from the local community are a great way to add art to your house,” Motschenbacher says. The framed functions over the commode are vintage postcards of Balboa Island and Newport Beach. She had her framer add conservative black photo corners as a pleasure detail.

Kelley & Company Home

“This guest room is the only really romantic room in the house,” says Motschenbacher. She used lots of natural textures, Ralph Lauren fabrics and vintage textiles.

“The headboard is upholstered in a Ralph Lauren stripe, which we partially coated with a vintage French linen, showing off the detail of the embroidery as well as the monogram. We wrapped this piece with ribbon ties.”

Kelley & Company Home

Grasscloth is a feel that Motschenbacher used throughout the house. “I picked this specific grasscloth since it had a very fresh feeling to it,” she says. “Sometimes it can have a tough feeling to it.”

Hint: Make sure you hire an experienced paper hanger when installing grasscloth.

Kelley & Company Home

The painting within the little desk was yet another eBay find. “It was painted on masonite in the ’60s. I initially wanted to use it in a bathroom, but the scale was too big. It does a wonderful job of bringing a couple of beachy colors into this otherwise neutral color palette.

Kelley & Company Home

Hint: Feeling obstructed? Create a clean slate before trying to envision your space.

“This laundry room was so boring I had to pull everything from it in order to imagine what it might be,” Motschenbacher explains. “I called it my laundry room and started out there.” Now that the room is a location which truly makes one want to do laundry.

Kelley & Company Home

The master bedroom features a traditional base, which includes the Ralph Lauren four-poster bed, the bed, and also the customized cloth lampshades. Motschenbacher layered in a bit of modern style via the lamp bases along with a bit of Asian flair throughout the painted nightstands. Her love of botanical prints appears, in the form of three hand-tinted pictures, framed in light natural shades in order to bring out the color.

Kelley & Company Home

1 place in the bedroom is coated in grasscloth, and incorporates a wet bar and little sitting area. “The color of the turquoise table increases the Asian flair,” she says. Her hand-tinted botanicals look here as well, framed the same manner as the prints within the bed.

Kelley & Company Home

The family spent a great deal of time enjoying ocean breezes and sunshine on the roofdeck.

Kelley & Company Home

This house makes the most of the natural lighting, and opens to the outside in a simple, casual, beachy way.

Kelley & Company Home

On the opposite side of the house, this outdoor terrace makes the most of the narrow space with a fountain, a fireplace, and a little table for dining al fresco.

Kelley & Company Home

The kitchen is on the opposite side of the doorways, providing easy accessibility to the terrace.

Kelley & Company Home

Motschenbacher made the fountain. “We needed that little bit of drippy sound,” she says. Input three hand-thrown Greek urns, and antique spigots mounted on antique European tiles. The very small patio has all of the elements: air, earth, water and fire.

To find out more about the decorating she’s finished here along with her other new projects, take a look at her blog, The Polished Pebble.

More:
Houzz Tour: Warm Country Biking
Houzz Tour: Living in Color
Houzz Tour: It’s a Bloomsbury Life

See related