Monday, April 22, 2013

Spring Has Sprung!

Although we haven't hit record highs, the Spring season is back! Flowers are starting to bloom, birds of all types are singing their love songs and the weather is creeping higher and higher each day. This is a time when everybody has a little more pep in their step and their smiles are just a bit bigger than usual. Let's face it, even as New Englanders, the winters seem far too long at times. The team of DWP is happy that the weather is changing over for a few reasons:

  1. The flea markets are starting up and Dan is making his go-around with our stock pieces.
  2. Business in general will start picking up; which is always a good thing!
  3. Warmer weather also brings in new faces to our shop and it's always a pleasure meeting new people. 
With that being said, we have received a handful of phone calls from people all over the state of CT asking when Dan will be back at certain flea markets. The truth is, we don't know. Typically, his flea market visits are spur of the moment based on availability. He tries to circulate them so he makes at least one every six weeks, but sometimes that doesn't always happen. So, if you're one who is eagerly awaiting his arrival, thank you, but it's up in the air where he'll go and when he'll be there. I will try to update his next stops on here as much as I can, but sometimes he goes on a whim and I don't get the chance to fill everybody in.

So, let's talk about the various jobs we've had in house over the past few weeks:

We had one very enthusiastic couple in (Hi Chick & Judy!) to have a carpet, which was a wall-to-wall, re-sized to two different area rugs. They were redecorating a room in their home and wanted to expose their hardwood floors, but keep the carpet as an area rug under their furniture. We cut the carpet to approximately an 11 ft. by 14 ft. & a runner 2 ft. by 12 ft. It was a super thick carpet, so it also needed to be power beveled, then we finished it off with a nice polyester binding to match.
Coincidentally, I just received a phone call from a young woman who is looking to do the same exact thing! We can do it and it's a great way to reduce the cost of buying a new carpet all together!

We had a woman (Hi Judy!) come in with a very nice piece to cut down because it had gotten water damage. It was a woven wool she picked up from Pottery Barn and wanted to salvage. We cut it back after latexing the perimeter and serged all four sides with our cotton serging yarn. It came out lovely and she was able to remove most of the noticeable stains while keeping her carpet useful!

Two other gentlemen came in at separate times (Hi Mike & Mark!) to have remnants cut and bound with polyester binding. Both small jobs that we were able to complete while they waited, to save time and money.

Last, but not least, we had a gentleman (Hi Alex!) come in with a very complex job. He manages a local sky-diving company and needed replacement carpet for a plane that was being worked on. He brought in the old carpet as a template and the new carpet for DWP Carpet Binding to work on. It was a complicated job because of the intricate cuts that the piece had. The custom shape was because the carpet had to go around certain bolts for the seats and have slits cut and stabilized for seat belt buckles to come up through.
What we ended with was this:
Custom shaped carpet for airplane: cut & bound with polyester binding.
This was about a 4.5 - 5 hour project for us. The majority of each small cut-out was hand-bound (by yours truly) yet, even at the perpendicular angles that our binding machine was able to pass through, there were inside corners to put back together. Quite an extensive project, but luckily he was very happy with the end results!

On a side note: While I was finishing up the seat belt areas he and Dan were chatting. He kept inviting Dan to visit his place of business and check the whole operation out. Dan kept joking, "I don't know. I think I like it on the ground, personally." Haha. 


In just a few weeks we've already met several friendly faces on top of our regular day-to-day customers. As always, DWP would like to say THANK YOU to everyone who uses us for their carpet binding needs! We look forward to the "busy season" and the intricate work tasks that will come our way next!

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