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When it comes to major home improvement items from cabinets to flooring, a study by The Integer Group and Decision Analyst says that 70 percent of remodeling shoppers are not brand loyal.Because of the length of time between purchases for these major items, customers are open to new brands and products, according to “The Complex Shopper” study, which looked at eight home improvement categories, including flooring, furniture and windows and doors.

“However, home improvement brands can turn shoppers into loyal brand advocates,” said Frank Maher, The Integer Group COO and president of its Midwest office, “by understanding their shopping behaviors and committing to long-term communication in between those purchases.”The new study looks at a variety of shopper behaviors including the amount of product research they do online as well as the importance of talking to a salesperson and seeing the product in-person.Maher says that brand loyalty can be increased by understanding the customer, their needs and knowing how to connect with them long-term.

“Knowing who wants to engage with you, and how, will help brands develop successful communications and loyalty strategies that encourage their shoppers to become brand advocates.”This rebound in demand comes on the heels of a 5-year period of decline during the Great Recession. From 2005 to 2010 U.S. demand dropped 6.7 percent, from 13,430 billion square feet to 9,510 billion square feet. However, with the improving economy, including lower unemployment and slight upticks in the housing market, U.S. demand for decorative laminate is expected to reach 12,400 billion square feet by 2015, however, still not quite matching the 2005 level.

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Colleen Venables, a 15-year-old violinist from Armstrong, has been invited to participate in the 10-day Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition and Festival at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing this April.One of 20 participants in the junior section chosen from over 200 applicants from 28 countries, she is the only representative of Canada.As well as developing her musical abilities and advancing her career, this trip to China will give  Venables a unique opportunity to explore her roots.Venables’ mother, Jan, is Chinese by birth and grew up in the ancient city of Xi’an, the eastern terminal of the Silk Road and home to the Terracotta Warriors that guarded the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang over 2,000 years ago.

Jan will accompany Colleen to Beijing and once the competition and related activities are over, the two will stay on for a few extra days so the young violinist can meet her extended family. (Xi’an is a mere 1,200  kilometres and 11 hours by train from Beijing.)Venables says it will be her first trip to her mother’s homeland and she looks forward to enjoying its beauty and history as well as “fine-tuning” her Chinese. She’ll also renew friendships with fellow participants, many of whom she knows through previous international events.Of course, all this will cost money – in the region of $8,000 to $10,000. So Sparkling Hill’s manager, Hans-Peter Mayr, has offered the resort’s Austria Ballroom for a benefit concert organized by Sylvie Lange of World of Music.

An accomplished viola player and member of the Okanagan Symphony, Lange will also participate in the concert, titled An Evening Amongst the Stars, taking place Thursday.Among those performing will be world renowned violinist Yi-Jia Susanne Hou, playing her Guarneri del Gesu violin. Celebrated soprano Melina Moore will sing, and multi-talented Okanagan Symphony music director Rosemary Thomson will emcee and play piano. The lineup will be completed by cellist Audrey King, pianist Arnold Draper and, of course, Venables.In acknowledging the generosity of the event sponsors and the artists who have all donated their professional services, Venables says, “I’m really grateful to everyone.  And I’m grateful to my teachers and my parents who have done so much for me.”

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Mondo, a global leader in the contract flooring and sports markets, at the American Society for Healthcare Engineering 2012 Planning, Design and Construction Summit next week (booth 610), will be showcasing Mondo Idea, a unique commercial rubber flooring system perfect for hospital and healthcare environments. The innovative indoor flooring also comes in colors and designs patterns embedded into the vulcanized rubber during manufacturing, which is an industry first. The summit is March 4 to March 7 at the Phoenix Convention Center.Mondo Idea has a number of features and characteristics that make it ideal for a wide range of healthcare environments, such as emergency, operating and patient rooms; triage; post-anesthesia care and neonatal intensive care units; surgery preparation and recovery environments; laboratories; radiology units; and corridors and common areas.

The rubber flooring also has exceptional acoustic properties that effectively reduce the sound of foot traffic, which helps to facilitate patient healing and reduces noise pollution for staff and patients.Long lasting and non-porous, Mondo Idea is resistant to stains, wear, abrasions and chemicals, including those in most cleaning products. It also is low maintenance–it doesn’t require stripping, waxing or sealing.The slip-resistant surface is comfortable underfoot yet has high dimensional stability, so it can withstand high static and rolling loads, such as gurneys, imaging equipment, carts, tables and chairs.

In addition, the flooring is safe for the environment, since it does not contain any plasticizers, heavy metals, formaldehyde or asbestos. It also was designed to have a low emission of volatile organic compounds.The Mondo Idea flooring system features coordinated, complementary colors and flecks that are embedded into the rubber flooring. Based on colors and textures found in nature, and created for every design need, the color collection provides the best hues and ideal levels of color saturation and transparency. Mondo Idea marks the first time patterns have been embedded into resilient flooring during manufacturing.

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When it comes to lawmakers, many just hope for a representative who will champion the region and help boost its economy.Many Southern California business leaders will tell you that Rep. David Dreier, R-San Dimas, has done just that.Dreier, who was first elected to Congress in 1980, was involved in bringing about the closure of the BKK Corp. Landfill in West Covina. He has also secured millions of dollars in federal funding to help clean up the San Gabriel Valley’s contaminated groundwater, and he helped orchestrate an extension of the Gold Line light rail system.in water – his efforts to bring money here for the cleanup. The San Gabriel Basin is one of the largest underground water reservoirs in the state … but it’s also one of the most contaminated.”

Gabriel Monares, a consultant to the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority, said the basin is, in fact, the nation’s largest Superfund site.”There are billions of gallons of water that became polluted over decades. A lot of it is left over from the defense industry, things like rocket fuel, industrial solvent and de-greasers,” he said.Cleaning it will take $1.2 billion, and about $650 million has been spent so far.”The federal government has provided $85 million, and if it wasn’t for Dreier a lot of that wouldn’t.In the area of transportation, Dreier helped pursue the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to include an extension of the Gold Line as part of its long-range transportation plan.

The work is currently under way.By extending the Gold Line light-rail tracks from east Pasadena to Azusa and eventually to Montclair and maybe even to Ontario International Airport, it will remove many commuters from cars, put them into trains and reduce congestion on the 210 Freeway.Dreier announced his decision to not seek re-election Wednesday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. He said he had contemplated leaving Congress three years ago but opted to stay on to accomplish some key objectives.One was to reverse an 82 percent increase in non-defense discretionary spending that occurred in the previous two Congresses, and another was to pass job-creating free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

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Open your closets, open your drawers, pull out your old clothes and recycle them. That’s the message at the SMART convention being held today at the Hotel Del Coronado.SMART is an acronym for Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles. Sixty vendors representing the used clothing, wiping materials and fiber conversion industries are gathered to get the word out that they even want your rags.Jackie King is SMART’s Executive Director.”People say, ‘I can’t donate that because it’s out of style. It’s clean but I spilled wine on it and I can’t get the stain out and it can’t be used.’ It’s not true at all, people can recycle all of it,” King said.”If they donate it, if the charity’s not going to use it, they’re going to sell it to one of our members.

Then they’re going to use the money they get from our members from the sale to do all the good things they do.”If good used clothing doesn’t get sold in the U.S., it’s recycled to Third World countries where people can’t afford to buy new clothes.Damaged clothing is reclaimed for shop towels or rags.Even shredded rags can be converted to fibers that are used in carpet padding or insulation.Picture the standard Southern California day-off dress code: jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of flip-flops. When they get worn out, instead of throwing them away to die in the landfill, they can go on to find new life.

The T-shirt can be used as several cut up rags. The jeans can be shredded to become home insulation. The flip-flops, even if one is missing, can go to a Third World country to be used to patch up a shoe. Yes, there is even a single-shoe market for recyclables.It’s not just clothing that can be reclaimed. Belts, bedding, pillows and carpeting are also in demand. As long as the textiles are not wet or mildewed, they can be used.The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 5 percent of landfill waste can be reduced by recycling clothing.Jackie King said: “Don’t throw it away, don’t put it in a landfill, because there’s a need for it. Right now, everybody’s talking about being green, saying, ‘what things can we do?’ This is an easy thing for people to do.”

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Dumbarton Concerts consistently offers the city’s most engaging mix of high-quality artists in eclectic programming, andSaturday’s performance by the genre-bending string quartet Brooklyn Rider certainly fit the mold. The concert surrounded Beethoven’s Op. 131 quartet with Romanian gypsy music composed or arranged by Lev Zhurbin, some film music by Philip Glass, and an ear-tickling opener, Seven Steps, composed collaboratively by the foursome themselves.The members of Brooklyn Rider cut their teeth in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and have sought to apply that group’s loose, all-embracing aesthetic to classical music’s strict and demanding genre.

That they enjoy themselves and put on a great show while doing so is beyond dispute. But their overarching artistic goals are harder to pin down. Other than the Beethoven, nothing they performed needed to be played by a string quartet; the Glass didn’t even need to be played by humans. Zhurbin’s newly composed quartet, heartfelt and appealing, sounded a lot like his traditional arrangements. The group channeled this and other world-music styles in their opening mash-up, which alternated sections of pure sound effects with foot-stomping dance music that suggested Janacek wandering into a bluegrass festival.Of the Beethoven, the less said the better.

Though in the program notes the group paid homage to several iconic early-20th-century groups like the Busch and Capet quartets, Brooklyn Rider’s rendition wavered between a parody and refutation of that style. Attempting to play this music without vibrato cuts off at least a third of a string quartet’s expressive palette. If you imagine the Hammerklavier sonata on a harpsichord (or “The Wizard of Oz” entirely in black and white), you will have an idea what this performance sounded like. But for the rest, Brooklyn Rider was never less than zestful and entertaining.

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Eighteen months after the launch of its award-winning pointSIX Durastrand Flooring, Ainsworth Engineered announces it is extending the product’s no-sand warranty from 180 days to one year. The revolutionary OSB flooring, whose tapered edges offset the effects of moisture, also retains the industry’s only limited lifetime warranty against delamination.PointSIX Flooring features patented tapered-edge technology in which a thin layer of the highly compressed fiber along all four edges of the OSB panel is milled off, removing the part of the subfloor that’s most prone to swelling.

With moisture, the wood fibers expand to essentially “fill up to flush” the micro-taper. If no moisture contacts the engineered subfloor, it does not require any filler or mastic.PointSIX Flooring was launched following extensive research and performance testing, including subjecting the panels to repeated wet and dry cycles to simulate severe, wet jobsite conditions. In one rigorous test, the engineered panel was flooded for 14 days; after drying out, the average edge swell was contained to 0.01 inch, not much more than a sheet of paper.”Industry response to pointSIX has exceeded even our highest expectations, with positive feedback from customers and noticeably few callbacks due to edge swell or other moisture-related problems,” said Mark Sutherland, general manager, marketing for Ainsworth.

“Building on its extensive testing and continued field-proven performance, pointSIX Durastrand now carries a longer no-sand guarantee and what is still the only lifetime warranty against delamination.”Positive reception for pointSIX Durastrand Flooring includes earning Architect magazine’s prestigious R+D Award, which honors architectural systems technologies that exemplify innovation. The 2011 awards jury singled-out pointSIX for “elegantly resolving problems that [they] have found in the field.”APA-approved pointSIX products are priced competitively, with no additional cost for the new technology. Along with pointSIX Durastrand, pointSIX technology also is offered with Ainsworth’s commodity Sturd-I-Floor panels, which carry a 25-year limited warranty.

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Acting U.S. Deputy Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank was in Savannah Tuesday for a briefing on the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project and a tour of the port with U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss.The Department of Commerce is one of four federal agencies that must sign off on the project before it can receive the final OK to deepen the channel to 48 feet.”I had seen the statistics on this port,” Blank said. “I knew it was the fourth largest in the country and the second largest in terms of exports, but to tour the terminal and see it on-site is to really understand its size and scope.”

A modern, state-of-the-art port is vital to creating an economy that’s built to last, she said.”Getting more Americans back to work means helping more American businesses sell their products and services in markets abroad,” Blank said. “The Port of Savannah is an important part of that bipartisan priority.”That was music to the ears of Isakson and Chambliss.”I appreciate the deputy secretary’s willingness to come to Savannah to learn about the need to prepare this port, and all our nation’s ports, for the future of global commerce,” Isakson said.Chambliss said the port is an export-dominant port, which Blank was able to see, and contributes to the commerce deparment’s national export initiative, which he supports.”The Georgia congressional delegation remains committed to seeing this critical project through to completion, because it will have a huge impact on the both the state and national economies,” Chambliss said.

“Deepening the harbor at the Port of Savannah is in line with the nation’s priorities, including our focus on increasing American export capabilities,” he said.”Continued federal support for the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project is crucial to achieving the goal of doubling U.S. exports.”Blank’s visit comes on the heels of recent announcements of $5.8 million in new federal funding that will allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prepare for the construction phase of the harbor deepening, which is planned to begin in fiscal year 2013. The additional money comes in part from a fund created by Congress and in part from a $2.8 million line item in the president’s latest budget proposal.

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We read with interest your recent remarks about chipboard flooring. Our bungalow was converted to a chalet bungalow five years ago – a couple of years before we bought it – with chipboard flooring installed in the new upstairs bedroom, en suite and study area. The floors creak badly. Can you point out the sort of issues we need to consider when looking at replacing the flooring with proper floorboards? For instance, would the extra weight involved be a consideration, or would the building standards required at that time be likely to suffice? And are there other considerations we haven’t thought of?

A Tongue-and-groove chipboard flooring is notorious for creaking, and replacing it with proper softwood timber floorboards is a worthwhile home improvement.There will be no problem with extra weight, as chipboard is a very dense material, so the replacement floorboards will actually be lighter.The major problem you will encounter is if internal partition walls have been built on top of the chipboard, rather than directly over supporting walls below. If that is the case, then you might have to leave the chipboard in place adjacent to the partitions, and just replace the other sections (which will actually be the walkways causing the creaking issues).

Another problem will be drying shrinkage of the new timber. If possible, have the new floorboards cut to length and screwed loosely in place, and leave them for a year to acclimatise (you can cover them with loose rugs as a temporary measure). Only then have the boards wedged tightly together and nailed with floor brads, before laying your permanent floor finish.I own a semi-detached Victorian property with a two-storey rear extension that houses the ground-floor kitchen and first-floor bathroom. The extension is of single brick. I want to fit a new bathroom suite and as the room can get a bit chilly in the winter, with occasional condensation on the painted walls, I would ideally like to take this opportunity to have some form of internal insulation panels fitted.

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