Good thread indeed!
Yeh...
Good thread indeed!
Yeh some of it's extremely funny. Particularly like Josh's thread re the LCW 'splits'..sorry Josh had to laugh.
I still have the remnants of the 'Purple Panton'...the bit where it once proudly said it was a Panton chair...haha. If I find it I'll be sure to put it in a 'Who Made this' thread!!!
Very funny thread
I've been quite lucky so far, even my young lad and his friends have to respect the furniture (not just mine, but anywhere he goes - standard, isn't it?).
The worse culprits are the cats, who always seem to want to shread any fabric over 40 years old. I seem to be playing an eternal game of cat and mouse (excuse the pun) with the little buggers.
I wonder if I intended it
but when I assembled my furniture collection for my living room and dining room, I guess I chose sturdier pieces. I was very lucky to find 4 super-sturdy EC-127 Eames chairs for my dining room chairs with original vintage great condition blue hopsack fabric.
The only things that are fragile are my Bitosi ceramics and my Petal side table. Luckily, the cats haven't knocked any of them over.
I do have a McCobb Planner Group table and chairs in my breakfast nook and one of the black chairs' seat split right in half...along the center seam! (I like McCobb alot but being modest priced furniture, the seats were made of a couple of pieces of wood glued together, rather than a more expensive solid piece of wood.)
While one doesn't expect people to act as though they're in a museum,
it's astounding how badly the average person treats furniture-- they *plop* upon all chairs, thoughtlessly put wet umbrellas or sweaty drinks on wood surfaces, generally act as though the world's their disposable, laminated-particle board gymnasium.
On the other had, I think it's the height of rudeness to expect visitors to take off their shoes. If your floor can't bear the assault of shoe-leather, you've chosen a bad floor.
I expect everyone to take their shoes off
If you want to enter my home, you take 'em off.
I don't want your shoes dragging in all the dogshit, piss and whatever else all over my house. Especially as my son spends a large part of his day playing on said floor. Plus a friend also managed to leave machine-gun bullet type holes all over my last wooden floor, as the rubber part of her high heel had come off and the bare metal end of the stilleto did a spectacular job on my floor.
Heath, a lot of my friends...
Heath, a lot of my friends work in the design industry in some capacity or other -- graphic designers, architects, interior designers, etc. So I am very lucky in that regard.
Daniel, shoes are absolutely a cultural thing and it can turn into a huge debate! I live in a loft that was a former factory. The wood floors are over 100 years old and distressed beautifully -- my shoes and the shoes of my friends will distress them even more, which is just fine! I always take the cue from my host on whether or not shoes are removed before entering, but I do find it odd when people have dinner parties or cocktail parties and then expect their guests to walk around in stocking feet. But this is definitely normal in many parts of the world. We are a more "dressed up" household and so we wear our shoes all the time and expect our guests to do the same. But, it's your house! Different rules than mine.
I laughed when I read the poster who says he's at constant war with his cats. My cat loves our most expensive furniture, that's for sure. Luckily he's not a scratcher. I have to say, though I love the little guy, he will be my last cat. My 60lb dog is actually a lot lower maitenance and has a lot more respect for my furniture (he stays off of it!).
WHC, I'm with you on the way ...
WHC, I'm with you on the way people treat furniture and things, the way my grandparents lived (coasters, anti-macassars, hallstands) is closer to the way I do than my family do, perhaps it depends on how hard things were worked for.
But this is an agricultural/mining region with red volcanic soil and good rainfall, its inconsiderate to walk that stuff over other peoples carpet.
Good point about the soil of...
Good point about the soil of an area. I grew up with loamy dark soil (Midwest US) and it never seemed to stain stuff. Then I moved to MD and whoa---very high clay content and that stuff STAINS. It also cakes in the treads of shoes and then falls out in chunks later when dry, then is ground into the floor. Our new wood floors were really beat up after just a few years of that. (Thank you, menfolk of the family.)
W-H-C
As someone who's wife is Japanese, I am a convert. removing shoes is a sanitation issue. I am no germaphobe, but can attest to the significant lessening of dirt in the house. It is also another form of respecting your living environment. I suppose for this thread it equates to not throwing your wet coat down on leather furniture etc. Also, once you do it as habit, you become unable to justify the wearing of shoes inside.
leaving shoes at door
My problem is not the guests...it's the workers. I'm remodeling a mid-century home and I'm about ready to have the workers leave their shoes at the doors. The amount of dust and dirt they track in is just crazy.
To make things worse, one of them stole my knoll bird chair ottoman! I will never find one again to match the fabric of the chair. I'm sure whomever took it thought it was a nice stool to sit on and eat lunch. Almost a year later and I am still angry.
Germs, schmerms.
Seems like a modern superstition to think of indoor floors as sterile-- they're FLOORS, after all.
I don't see why invisible trace-elements of organic matter entering on the sole of a shoe should be more worrisome than the trace-elements of organic matter entering on the sole of someone's bare foot.
Icky-animal-matter on shoes? Solution: Remove thy shoes... the better I may sample the icky-animal-matter on your feet!
Wanna take off your shoes in my house? Be my guest. Wanna leave 'em on? Be my guest.
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