About me

I have a confession, I do not have dread locks or a soul patch, I don’t sit around camp fires listening to Bob Marley whilst playing the bongos’ and I’m not on a spiritual journey to “find myself”, I know exactly where I am already.

Sometimes however, I do feel like it would be nice to walk bare foot on the grass once in a while, but it seems harder to find any to walk on these days. I have come to realize we now are living in a mass produced fake plastic world, from the fake leather we sit on in our office furniture to the little mouth piece’s that we drink our coffee from.

When people would say to me “the world is getting smaller”, I would answer them ”no, I think its just all becoming the same.” I wanted to feel connected to something real. I wanted to sit in something organic, not synthetic, I wanted to see things that look natural, not constructed and I wanted to feel effortless, not forced. I wondered if this was too much to ask.

So, in 2005, with the help of my friend and designer, Cobi Achara. We started tree house decor to design hand made furniture that is functional with an unprocessed air. After letting our imaginations run wild, we soon realized the advantage of designing and producing our own furniture, comes the ability of being able to create special one off bespoke pieces. Depending on peoples own personal tastes and wishes we created all sorts of unusual shapes and sizes, from footstools to sofas, with some spectacular results. I genuinely believe we have managed to create something we can now all feel connected to.

With regards to the materials we use to create our furniture, they not only look and feel extraordinary but we are actually helping the environment too. Here are just a few examples why.

Water Hyacinth.

One of the fastest growing plants known, water Hyacinth is an aquatic weed. It was introduced from South America by accident. Within a few years it had spread though Thailand and was causing all sorts of problems. When not controlled, water hyacinth will cover lakes and ponds entirely, this dramatically impacts water flow, blocks sunlight from reaching native aquatic plants, and starves the water of oxygen, often leading to the death of fish or turtles, a solution had to be found and that solution was to harvest it for the production of furniture.

Bamboo.

Bamboo is the strongest and fastest growing plant on this planet. Some species of bamboo can grow as much as 4 feet a day. A sixty foot tree cut for market takes 60 years to replace, a sixty foot bamboo cut for market takes 59 days to replace. Bamboo also has a tensile strength superior to mild steel (withstands up to 52,000 pounds of pressure psi) it also has a weight ratio surpassing that of graphite.

There is a suspension bridge in China 250 yards long, 9 foot wide and rests entirely on bamboo cables fastened over the water. It doesn’t have a single nail or piece of iron in it.

Para wood

This environmentally sound timber is better known as rubber wood. With the high price of rubber on the world market there comes a benefit…lots of timber. A rubber wood tree has a lifespan of around 20 years at this point it has to be replanted which means plenty of timber for furniture manufacturing. Para wood accounts for 60% of the furniture made in Thailand.

Rattan

Rattan is a large climbing vine that wraps itself around existing tree life. Because of this, it actively discourages deforestation, as farmers will strip away the rattan, leaving the trees unharmed. Rattan grows in area’s that will not support most other commercial crops, such as tropical forests that remain under flood waters for extended periods. The harvesting of rattan is labor intensive and requires only basic tools and machinery. As such it provides an income for some of the poorest communities in these areas.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and remember, Why be ordinary when you can be extraordinary.

Drew Fitzgerald

Tree House décor, not your ordinary furniture.

So you’ve gone through all the magazines and decor books, and you know the general look that you want your room to have.  But you don’t want to copy it exactly… so what do you do to get that look with YOUR colors, materials, decor, and furniture?  This article deals with achieving the look you want with furniture.  Of course, many of us don’t have the option of buying all new furniture.  But if we understand how our furniture is affecting the look of our decor, then it’s easier use color, patterns and materials to adjust that look to what we DO want!

Furniture comes in many styles and finishes.  From Traditional furniture to Modern furniture, white-washed furniture to mahogany, painted to unfinished, wood to metal, and antique to new furniture… if you can dream it up, someone’s probably made it somewhere some times hand made.  But despite this wide range of styles of furniture, there are only two major aspects that must be considered – style, and material or decor.

Considering the material or color of your furniture is easy.  Wood finished furniture comes in anything from white-washed furniture to natural pine furniture, oak furniture, cherry furniture, mahogany furniture and a host of other furniture.  Painted furniture can be in any color of the rainbow. And metals are finished as anything from white enamel to black wrought iron.  All you need to do is consider whether your furniture is light, medium, or dark in color, and how that color will affect your decor.  This follows the same basic material principles that I outlined in the “Achieving the Look You Want With furniture ” article; dark colors take up more visual space and look more formal, and light colors take up less visual space and look more casual.  So a frosted maple living room furniture set will look best in a casual room and give it an open feel to help it look larger, while a dark cherry living room furniture set will help your room to look more formal and masculine.

The style of your furniture is a more complicated consideration.  To help, I will break it down into three aspects of the design for the overall look of your decor — simplicity, weight, and grace.

The simplicity or complexity of the furniture’s design is important to consider because it needs to be ‘matched’ to your decor style.  A simple design would be straight legs, straight or simply curved chair backs, etc. A complex design would include lots of carving and curves in the wood or metal.  This doesn’t mean that you have to put a simple bedding set and simple curtains in a room with simple furniture; it simply means that you need to balance the simplicity or complexity of your furniture with the decor style of your room to achieve the look you want.  If you want a simple looking bedroom and you’ve already got simple furniture, then all you need to do is keep your curtains and bedding simple.  But if you’ve got simple furniture and you want an ornate and luxurious bedroom, then you’ll need to get extra-rich looking materials and styles to dominate the room and achieve that rich decor look you want.  On the other hand, if you’ve got Great-Grandma’s ornate antique furniture, but you prefer a simple decor style, then you’ll have to go ultra-simple in the rest of your decor to compensate… perhaps simple painted walls, straight elegant silk draperies, and simple table scarves will simplify your room enough to create the look you want.

When considering the weight of your furniture, you need to focus more on the visual weight, and less on the actual scale weight.  A simple wrought iron bed could weigh more than a cherry sleigh bed.  But the sleigh bed has more visual weight because all you see is a thick solid piece of wooden furniture across at both ends of the bed, while the wrought iron allows you to see the wall behind the bed.  The visual weight of your furniture will affect how much room it looks like it takes up, and therefore how large or small your room looks — the heavier your furniture looks, the smaller your room will look.  So if you’ve got a small room and heavy furniture, then use other decor techniques such as light colors and simple designs to ‘lighten’ up your room.  And if you have tiny light-weight furniture and want a dark, masculine look, then consider using dark colors on the walls, and heavy-looking bedding and draperies to add weight to the room.

Finally, consider the grace of your furniture’s design.  By grace, I mean the amount and type of curves used in the design.  This is important in determining whether your rooms décor looks feminine or masculine, romantic or modern, and rich or simple country.  Gracefully curving legs and scalloped pieces work wonderfully in a girl’s bedroom or a Victorian sitting room.  And straight Shaker-style chairs or beds look great in a country kitchen or boy’s room.  But again, if your furniture isn’t ideally suited to your decor style, then you simply need to effectively use your other decor options to alter or disguise the look of your furniture. If you’ve got a simple country bed set, and your daughter wants a frilly Victorian bedroom, then plenty of ruffles and floral fabric will easily dress it up.  Or if you’ve got a beautiful fancy Queen Anne bedroom set, and a husband who hates frills, then simple, solid-color drapes and bedding should add enough of a masculine touch to make you both feel at home in the room.

To sum it all up, achieving the look you want isn’t as difficult as it may seem.  Just take one aspect of your room at a time, and analyze it to determine what it contributes to the room.  Once you’ve done this, you’ll have a much easier time figuring out what the room needs.  And above all, use what you love…  no matter what you do, you can’t create a room you love out of colors and materials you hate. Sometimes we have to compromise on something, but if we can figure out how to balance those items with things we love, then we can still achieve a room that is comfortable, beautiful, and makes you feel right at home in your house.

Have fun!

Tree house décor

www.treehousedecor.com

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