You’ve spent days crafting a beautiful, handmade wooden Adirondack chair. You used high end wood, and carefully cut each piece. You used a trusted brand of combination screw and nail fasteners, that enabled you to work quickly, but easily back out a fastener if needed. The seat slats are perfectly spaced. The arms are wide and smooth. It’s sturdy, but comfortable. Construction is complete. But you aren’t finished, until you’ve finished. Proper finishing technique transforms your handiwork from a raw wood chair to a treasured work of art. Here are 5 tips to take your furniture to the next level:

It’s difficult to imagine that the holidays are less than a month away. Weren’t we just wandering the aisles in annoyingly busy stores looking for the perfect holiday gift a few months ago? Well, the calendar says that was actually a year ago and unless we have the ability to time travel, it’s time to face the fact... the holidays are back.

There are many articles detailing shortcuts and tips to contractors to save time and money, and many of them contain great sound advice (see our article “How to save money on your next fencing project,” for example).  However, you should be concerned on articles that detail shortcuts.  A shortcut usually means you will be cutting corners to save costs at the price of quality.  Sacrificing quality of work can damage your reputation, as well as increase the callbacks you receive once a project is done.

Regardless if you are going to try your hand at making your own furniture or if you are a seasoned veteran crafting outdoor furniture for others, you can benefit from the Mini-SCRAIL^® fasteners.

Behind the world’s greatest inventions there’s always a great inventor. Behind the fastest race car, is the best performing engine. Behind the best tasting beer, is a really great recipe to make it. And here’s one you may or may not agree with: behind every great man, is an even greater woman. Ok, that one has likely stirred more than a few pots over the years, but the point is, behind just about everything great, there’s usually something else that made it so great. That’s true for every floor installation. Behind every great install, is a really great subfloor. The customer never sees it, but it’s the real reason the floor looks and sounds (or doesn’t sound) the way it does.

The term “sexy” doesn’t exactly mean what it used to. We all know its traditional meaning, and may have a mental picture of what we think it looks like to us, but it actually means so much more nowadays. The term is widely used today to describe a myriad of things, rather than a person.

Take a sports car for example. You've likely heard someone define a “roadster” as sexy because it’s got great curves and looks great on the road, or maybe because it has that racecar sound. Or food. They use the term sexy all the time on those cooking shows to refer to the appeal that a meal has when you look at it. In that realm, the word sexy replaces the word appetizing. How about technology? A recently released smart phone was marketed as sexy. It may or may not appear sexy to you, but the technology behind it becomes very desirable for those who are tech-savvy. And what about the movies? Filmmakers and critics commonly refer to movies as “sexy" all the time.

We could go on and on with examples, but the real question here is: Can a fastener be called sexy? And if so, what makes it that way? We think the answer is "yes!" and here’s why:

Many families today are finding that their current home lacks sufficient square footage for their needs, but they're reluctant to pack up and move. They look for a solution to their space dilemma, and often find the answer in an unfinished basement area. For contractors, this has become a great source of lucrative work. New advancements in high quality fasteners and application techniques can make this basement-refinishing trend even more profitable by reducing installation time and cost, and getting you and your crew quickly to the next job without negatively impacting quality of work.

As the mercury rises, so does the stack of construction orders for outdoor decks. Daily living changes as the weather breaks, and the only place people want to be is OUTSIDE. Today’s customers are willing to pay for a high quality, beautiful deck, but they want it to be flawless.

It’s that time of year again. That time when we spend more time sitting outside on a patio or deck listening to the kids playing, setting up for a barbeque, or just enjoying a cool drink. And if you have spent winter inside with the heat on, you've been waiting for this opportunity for a very long time. Whether you own a deck, a patio or just a tiny piece of grass, you need furniture in place to eat that barbequed meal you've slaved over, and relax in the sun. Or maybe you're not the one relaxing. Maybe you're the one who makes the wooden furniture so someone else can relax. Either way, that furniture is the center of your outdoor leisure space and it should be worthy of the attention it will receive.