Let the festivities begin, Thanksgiving day is around the corner! We thought we’d share some of our gravy stain removal techniques with you. Hopefully you won’t have to use them; however, there’s always the possibility thatsomeone may drop their plate full of food on your carpet. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Century Tile!

Solvent - A non-flammable spot removal solution, or dry cleaning type solvent, is preferred. Exercise caution when using a solvent. Never pour it directly onto the carpet or allow it to reach the backing, because it can damage the latex that holds the primary and secondary backings together. Acceptable solvents include Carbona®, Energine®, K2R®, Goof-Off®, etc.

Detergent Solution - Mix one fourth (1/4) teaspoon of a liquid dishwashing detergent per one (1) cup of lukewarm water. NEVER USE A STRONGER CONCENTRATION! Thorough rinsing is necessary to remove detergent residues that may cause rapid soiling. It may be necessary to rinse with warm water several times to completely remove residues. (See Residue Precautions.) Care should be used in selecting a detergent. Never use a laundry detergent of any type, because laundry detergents may contain optical brighteners (flourescent dyes) that dye the fiber. Do not select an automatic dishwashing detergent because many contain bleaching agents that destroy dyes and some fibers.

Vinegar Solution - Mix one (1) cup of white vinegar per two (2) cups of water. White vinegar is a 5% acetic acid solution. It is used most often to lower the alkalinity caused by detergent solutions or alkaline spills.

Warm Water - Lukewarm tap water should be used in most cases to rinse the cleaning solutions from the fiber. Failure to completely rinse the solutions from the fiber may cause accelerated soiling.

Ammonia Solution - Mix one (1) tablespoon of household ammonia per cup of water. Please note: Be aware that ammonia, if used improperly, can cause a color change. Be sure to test a hidden area.

When in doubt, call a professional - Professional cleaners have the ability and the equipment to use more aggressive cleaning solutions to remove stubborn spills. Always consider consulting a professional cleaner regarding any spot removal question. Carpet and Rug Institute - 1-800-882-8846.

We all want to feed our families less processed foods, so we have been experimenting with making meals and dishes, using as many natural ingredients as possible. Cooking with crockpots this time of year is easy and nice to have a hot meal waiting for you when you get home, as the weather is cooling. Using a crock pot requires little prep and is easy to clean up. All of this lead to the creation of our honey glazed carrots; which are a perfect side to meals on any occasion!

Ingredients:
2 Pounds Baby Carrots
¼ Cup Honey
½ Cups Brown Sugar
¾ Tsp. Ground Cinnamon
½ Cup Orange Juice - *Note, Squeezing fresh orange juice is a way to cut back the amount of preservatives in this dish.
¼ Cup Melted Butter
Instructions:
In a large mixing bowl add the baby carrots and then the honey. Mix well so that the carrots have an even coating of honey. Then add the brown sugar and cinnamon and mix contents well.
Transfer the contents of the mixture into the crock pot. Lastly add the orange juice and butter and mix. Cook on high for 3-4 hours; until the carrots are tender and easy to bite.

Enjoy!

Do you want your bedroom to make a statement? In a bedroom, the focus should be on the bed as it is the feature of the room. When designing a master bedroom, builders often create one long wall to accommodate a king-size bed and nightstands. If you tour older homes there may not be such an obvious place for a bed in the room. This is also the case for standard bedrooms. Creating a focal wall in a bedroom will anchor the bed in the room.

This bedroom has a dramatic wall of padded leather panels behind the bed. The black leather creates a bold statement in the space and can help for sound control to ensure a full night’s rest.  The padded panels replace a standard headboard so that the entire wall feels like one great big headboard.  Neutral bedding and wood floors keep the eye on the feature wall.

One idea is making the entire wall behind the bed padded leather panels. If padded leather panels are too strong of a design statement for you, consider using paint, fabric, wallpaper or even tile to create a focal wall behind the bed. You can coordinate the wall and linen colors or use a contrasting color for the walls to help it really stand out. Pattern, color, and texture can all be used to create a fantastic feature wall.

Sometimes the best place for a bed in a room is in front of a window. The old rules of design said you should put a bed in front of a window, but today’s design rules are more adaptable.  If you do put a bed in front of a window, use the curtains to frame out the bed and window to create a focal wall.

To our Century family, customers & valued business partners:

It is with deep regret and sadness that we are writing to inform you of the passing of our business partner and co-founder, Frank Parks Sr. yesterday at the age of 92. He was beloved and an integral part of our business success and growth over the years and will be missed. He is survived by his children – Frank Parks Jr., Elaine Carlson, Cheryl Leach, Tom Parks as well as numerous grand-children & great-grandchildren.

Frank partnered with Paul Spiewak Sr. in 1947 to start Century Tile & Supply Company. Over the years, both grew the business from a little store on Austin Avenue in Chicago to twelve locations covering the Chicago-land area and becoming one of the largest floor covering retailers & distributors in the Midwest. Frank was a respected leader in the industry and had a great eye for product and industry trends. Frank continually brought new and innovative products into the Chicagoland market and wasn’t afraid to
push the envelope with what he thought would be a great seller. He was very dedicated to Century and the flooring industry.

While Century has changed over the years, our management team is committed to continuing the legacy that both Frank & Paul created over those years. Frank’s guidance and enthusiasm will be sorely missed, and we are all thankful for the opportunity that we had to work and learn from him. Due to the current pandemic and ever-changing COVID restrictions, the family is in the process of trying to determine how all of us can pay our respects and give thanks to someone who had such a large impact on so many lives. We will be continually updating the link below with the most up to date information we can provide.
www.century-tile.com/frankparks

Keep Frank’s family in your prayers,
The Century Tile Management Team
Corporate Office
747 E. Roosevelt Rd.
Lombard, Illinois 60148-4791
Phone: (630) 873-8200
FAX: (630) 495-8645
1-888-T-I-L-E-Y-O-U
http://www.century-tile.com

If you’re like most families, you probably have a large stack of artwork that your children have created. Many people choose to display children’s artwork on their refrigerators however, this can get cluttered and messy fast. There are several other ways that you can incorporate your kids’ artwork right into the rest of your home’s décor, creating a much neater and more stylish way to show it off.

Picture Wire

Picture hanging wire is usually strung across the back of a heavy piece of artwork to enable you to hang it on the wall. This doesn’t mean, however, that this is the only think you can use it for. By inserting two eyelet screws into your walls, you can string the wire between them. Now just invest in some mini-clothespins or other clips and you can hang your children’s artwork on the wall anywhere in your home. There’s no tape or additional nail holes, and you can swap things out easily once the line gets full.

Temporary Frames

Purchase several unfinished photo frames. Now have some fun painting them in a variety of different colors. Hang them in a nice grouping on the wall and swap out your kid’s artwork in the frames. This helps show off their current art work and adds to your décor at the same time.

Posters

If your kids are particularly prolific, and you hate to take anything down, try scanning everything that they create into your computer. Now head to a photo printing site and arrange all of their artwork together into a large poster collage. Print the poster and have it framed; now you can show off hundreds of pieces of art work all at once. You can make several of these posters to hang around the house, and they all make excellent pieces of abstract and interesting art. Because you can’t quite tell what they are at first glance, they make great additions to gallery walls and other areas. Once you see them for what they are, they also become excellent conversation pieces as you discuss the many different elements within.

Seasonal decorating is a tradition many families will integrate into their homes.  When winter comes, the Christmas tree and lights go up, and when spring comes, flowers are planted around your house.  Autumn is a great season filled with holidays, festivities, and seasonal amenities which are fantastic to include in your home design.   

It’s also a great time to spice up your space with new floors and countertops. In fact, flooring and countertops can set the stage for your design. From hand-scraped to wire-brushed trends to marble looks, the design possibilities are endless in 2020. Plus, with innovations in the industry, you do not have to settle for only one type of flooring in your home.

We put together a list of five Autumn décor ideas you will want to include in your home to express your festive-side:

Plaid

Fall has a sense of being cozy when you are indoors and a sense of adventure when out and about.  Adding plaid blankets or a new area rug to your floors will give your house a nice warm and cozy feel.  You can try adding plaid designs outside through welcome mats, outdoor pillows, and blankets. 

Fall Plantation

Including fall harvest inside your home is another excellent way to make a statement.  Outside your home, you can add straw, autumn flowers, or corn stalks. Inside your home you can take these same elements and create an arrangement for your countertop to set the mood for fall.  Add pumpkins as a centerpiece on your table or you can even have a basket filled with fall foods like corn, squash, and baby pumpkins.  Including faux wheat is another excellent decor piece to add to vases or pitchers around your home.  Go a step further and add fall scents. You can incorporate things like cinnamon soaps or cider scented candles to help capture the fall feel.

However, if you notice that your countertops are not as pristine as they once were, you can have your countertops replaced. Currently homeowners love the natural, one-of-a-kind beauty of marble and quartz countertops. Marble countertops feature an authentic, beautiful veining that is unmatched by any other countertop. However, if you are looking for a more durable & low maintenance countertop, quartz is a great option, you can opt for beautiful quartz countertops. Quartz is composed of natural crystals, which makes it an insanely gorgeous countertop option. Plus, quartz countertops are perfect for homeowners who love to cook because they are scratch-, stain-, and heat-resistant.

Wood

Adding pictures with wood or incorporating wood into your home design can add to the overall warmth of a room.  You can start using your fireplace more and decorate your mantle with festive fall décor.  Put fallen leaves into picture frames and display the beautiful countryside colors of fall for an added touch.

Think Rustic

Rustic colors will make a substantial impact on your home’s decor and what you are trying to convey.  Adding rustic display items and antiques will help fully encapsulate the fall spirit.  Woven baskets are great to use in your home and can hold your plaid blankets.  Adding warm reds to your home through curtains, throw rugs, area rugs and floral arrangements can give a rural influenced aesthetic in the fall season. Try adding rustic display items as a centerpiece to your kitchen island!

Pillows and Pictures

A simple, cost-effective task you can add is swapping out your current pictures and pillows.  This is an easy tradition you can do for every season.  Plaids and stripes with autumn hues can help bring your room full circle, but you do not have to commit to the look year-round fully.

Autumn can have so many fun decorations to add to your home.  Try including some of these tricks and tips this fall season to your home.

Most parents-to-be today find out the sex of their baby before the baby’s arrival.  However, there is a strong minority who wait to know if they are having a boy or a girl until he or she arrives. Whatever camp parents-to-be fall into, decorating the nursery for baby is an exciting process.  And with all exciting projects, it can also be a little daunting.  Do you choose classic pink for a girl? Blue for a boy?  Or do you decorate in a more gender neutral color like yellow or green for future babies who may occupy the nursery? What if you have fraternal boy/girl twins?

While pink for girls and blue for boys continue to be the most popular choices for nurseries, there is a rise in gender neutral decorating in the nursery.  Princess pink can be replaced by yellow with gray and white accents.  Baseball blues might be exchanged for purple and apple green.  There is no limit to the colors you can choose for a baby’s room.  Keep in mind that it is easier to change paint color than replace flooring so you might want to stick to neutral carpet colors or wood floors for the nursery.

If you go neutral on the walls and floor, you can always bring in feminine and masculine touches with the crib bedding, curtains and accessories.  Toys and games as well as art are great ways to personalize a space to fit baby’s personality as well as gender. Neutral will also allow the room to grow as baby grows into a big kid.

Why is it that this room is so successful in its design, with so little in it to impress? Modern styles always seem to pull of that effortless grace that to someone unsure of how to achieve the look might feel intimidated into giving up. But this room has a lot of those modern touches in it and serves as a map to decorating modern.

To begin with, the room itself has almost no color. It lets different shades and textures of neutrals to do the talking instead. There is a gray rug for some softness, light gray wood flooring with wide planks. It also employs white flowing curtains and a rock wall that adds another layer of color and texture. Color is very important when you are trying to achieve a modern look, it’s just a matter of how you are using color in ways you hadn’t before.

Another important aspect of designing in this style is to juxtapose metals and glass with nature. In this picture, there are minimalist chairs with smooth metal legs. The coffee table repurposed as a side table for the bed has a decidedly unique look. The vases holding plants are clear and clean. All of this in a room dominated by an entire wall of rock that brings us back to nature. The wall is surely the crowning jewel, it is powerful but not overbearing as the owners chose to use a lighter rock to keep things like in a room that could easily be bogged down by too much use of darker materials.

And finally, using minimalist principles will help you achieve a modern look. Notice how there isn’t much frill and instead it lends itself to a more utilitarian approach. This allows all of the small details, such as the vase on the ground next to the chair be appreciated. It keeps clutter out and keeps the modern in.

These are a few tips to help guide you on your road to modernism in your home. Take the time to chose pieces carefully because you won’t have a lot to work with if you want to keep it modern. Good luck!