Period Features

Energy Saving Trust

Green, as the media is increasingly telling us, is the new black and going green is all the rage. The Energy Saving Trust's website offers a free home energy check to tell you how you can save energy - and money - in your home. It also offers lots of tips on energy saving. Energy saving light bulbs are more expensive than ordinary ones but just one energy efficient light bulb can save you over £60 over the life of the bulb as they last up to ten times longer than ordinary light bulbs. They now come in a wide range of styles to complement any period of home. Find out more at the Energy Saving Trust website.

Stone's Polish & Furniture Cream

Stone's pure beeswax furniture cream has been made in Devon, England since 1760. It was invented by Dr. Stone, an Exeter pharmacist during the period of great English furniture design and manufacture. Stone's is still a small family managed company.

Stone's is used by restorers, collectors and householders on both antiques and fine modern furniture in England and abroad. The furniture of many of England's stately homes and great houses open to the public is cared for by Stone's. The polish is sold in all the Devon National Trust houses and shops who are pleased to support a true local West Country heritage product.

The difference between Stone's and other polishes lies in its total purity and its ease of application. The Stone's traditional formula includes no silicones or artificial additives, it contains only the finest beeswax, white spirit, pure soap and essential oils, which are combined with water into an emulsion to produce the distinctive soft cream. This combination ensures that Stone's has both cleaning and polishing properties while imparting a fresh scent that is reminiscent of the days of great houses and furniture regularly cared for by household staff.

Application is very easy. Apply the cream to a cloth, spread it very thinly and buff it immediately before it dries. This will give a hard layer of wax which will not smear and will take further applications if required. Thicker waxes cannot be spread so thinly and are difficult to polish often leaving a soft layer of wax which will smear and collect dirt.

Visit their website www.stonesfurniturecream.co.uk  for more information and stockists.

Get Creative

Why not use Farrow & Ball Exterior Eggshell to decorate stone or terracotta plant pots or rocks - a great project to do with the children!

Whether painting inside or out, try to avoid painting in extreme temperatures. If it’s too hot, the paint will dry too quickly and you will not achieve a smooth finish. If it’s too cold or damp, the paint will take much longer to dry.

Spring Cleaning

If you are keen to avoid additional chemicals in your life, or if you want a more eco-friendly alternative to the usual cleaning products, you might like to try some traditional solutions to your spring cleaning problems. Vinegar is a great cleaning agent for example and you might like to try distilled white vinegar for removing lime scale from taps and showerheads suggests Joanna Peios at Red Pepper magazine.

Soak kitchen towels or rags in white vinegar and wrap round your taps making sure that the area is saturated. Cover with a plastic bag. After a few hours, you will be able to wash the lime scale off. Place the showerhead in a large glass or vase and pour vinegar in to cover the head. Leave for a few hours. The lime scale will have softened and can be washed off effortlessly with water.

For more advice see the Red Pepper website Red Pepper website

Old Beams

If you have old or original beams in your home which have suffered from being painted 'pub black' or coated in some other unsuitable paint finish you might have thought about stripping them. However, the sandblasting process is quite harsh and messy and often forbidden in listed homes. Hand stripping is generally recognised as being a very time consuming process and a true labour of love. The solution? Renaissance Beams believe that they have a viable alternative to sandblasting and hand stripping beams: the no mess 'back from the black beam' process. For more information and 'before and after' photographs visit
www.renaissance-beams.co.uk

Paint Stripping

If you are faced with trying to remove some paint - whatever the surface from cast iron fireplaces to beams or from lincrusta to quarry tiles and whatever the type of paint - Strippers Paint Removers will have some suggestions for you. There is a helpful 'I want to remove...' guide to different surfaces and types of paint with a specific advice sheet for each one. When you have removed the objectionable paint you might like to consider your new scheme with the help of a great colour matching tool at the Farrow & Ball website Farrow & Ball Period Features stocks a full range of Farrow & Ball paint and wallpaper and we'd be only too happy to advise you on your new scheme.

Peg Out

Much PR has been given recently to increased sales of dolly and sprung pegs as a green alternative to the tumble dryer. I would like to share Jo's Gran's tip with our customers! Soak your new dolly pegs in water overnight before use and this will make them more supple and easier to use.

Sparkle!

Summer parties and glass dishes always go well together and below are a few tips on getting your glassware looking its best!

Glass can usually be cleaned by washing in warm, soapy water followed by a clear rinse. If the glass article is particularly dirty, add a drop of vinegar or ammonia to the detergent solution. For extra sparkle, the rinse water can also have a few drops of vinegar added. After rinsing, dry glass with a clean, lint-free cloth (linen is ideal) or water spots will remain.

If the bottom of a vase, decanter or similar narrow necked vessel has become grimy and washing in the above solution fails to affect the dirty deposit, try a spoonful of sand in the bottom, using a funnel if necessary. Add a drop of liquid detergent, a few drops of white vinegar and enough warm water to cover the bottom of the vessel, swish the abrasive mixture around the base, rinse and repeat as necessary.

Bold As Brass

Traditionally, brass should be kept shiny, however, many people prefer the attractive patina which occurs naturally over time and acts as a protective layer too.

Our brass products are all unlaquered and we are often asked how you should you clean them. As well as using well known brands and plenty of elbow grease many of our customers have tried homemade solutions which they have shared with us.

Here are a few for your amusement..... We have not tried them ourselves and we cannot guarantee whether or not they work! Please let me know if you have any other great recipes or tips yourself.

Vinegar and salt paste. Place the brass items in the paste for about half an hour, rub stubborn areas with a soft cloth, rinse with water and dry thoroughly.

Ketchup. Bring a pan of ketchup to the boil and cook until the brass is shiny, leave to cool, rinse with water and dry thoroughly.

In contrast......If you want to age brass. Cover the item in cow dung for at least 24 hours, rinse thoroughly and dry!!!!!

Surface Restoration

We've had some interesting enquiries regarding cleaning and restoration this week which prompted us to delve a bit further. Here's an excerpt from a very interesting and informative paper we found at www.bafra.org.uk .

As antique furniture restorers, we often tend to think of ourselves simply as specialist craftsman in wood and forget that we frequently need to be involved with the surface restoration of the metal items which will invariably form an essential part of the whole piece which has been entrusted to our care.

Restoration to some antique metalwork, often badly damaged and with parts missing or completed corroded by rust, will require specialised metalworking skills beyond the scope of this paper, which is concerned with various aspects of restoration to the surface finish. In the hope that it will be of interest to readers, I should like to share my thoughts and experience of some of the traditional methods of rust removal and simple chemical colour enhancement, to simulate age or blend an area of over abraded or new metal with the existing colour or patination adjacent.

Let us consider the basic requirements for the removal of surface rust, without deep erosion, from antique surfaces. Firstly, it is fundamental that the oxide be removed without affecting any integral brass or bronze work. Secondly, any precipitate formed by the chemical action of the derusting agent must be easily and completely removable without causing abrasion damage to the item. Thirdly, the existing patination, if any, should be affected as little as possible with little discernable colour change taking place. Fourthly, further oxidation should at least be inhibited, positive protection is not a practical possibility if the visual aspect of the item is to be considered. No protective precipitates are either invisible or truly metallic in appearance.

The metalwork to be restored is likely to fall into one of three main categories:

• Various hinges, handles and knobs, escutcheons, lock plates and facings. All to be found incorporating or partly formed in brass or bronze and often engraved or surface etched.
• Engraved and inlaid plates and mechanisms mounted on antique gun and pistol stocks. Also hilts of edged weapons and parts of their scabbards, again often inlaid with brass.
• The many and varied parts of antique clock mechanisms and some early engraved clock dials and other parts.