Revolutionary in it’s time the CircOlectric Stryker Bed !!

One of the first dentist chairs to be made in Canterbury – more comfy than it looks !

Polished steel ships search light

Mahogany double sided display cabinets from the Natural History Museum -  great for collectors of the rare and beatiful  but with easy adaption use as storage and display within contemporary store  settings  -  womens and mens clothing – homeware  ……………

Fabulous large double ceramic sink on legs – width 138cm x height 80cm

A retro pine kitchen cabinet with space saving enamel work surface  overall height 60″ x width 34″

Find lots more on the masco website  www.mascosalvage.com or call in and be amazed   open mon – fri  8.30am – 5pm and saturdays 10am – 5pm

Rogeat & Lyon Bateau Bath fully restored and ready to install.  These baths were originally made in France in the mid 19th Century.

Large Ceramic Bath removed from a property in Stourbridge

French double ended Roman baths ready to be refurbed.

At Masco not only discover lovely baths  but you’ll also find a vast array of sinks, stamped with makers names such as Royal Doulton, Twyford, together with reclaimed  French mixer taps and some reclaimed Barber Wilson.

If you are looking to buy or sell original pieces do give us a call or  visit our large Cotswold Showroom.  Look at our website for bathroom stock.

We also have some great wood in at the moment, some lovely reclaimed chene, waxed & oiled ready to go http://www.mascosalvage.com/Category/New-and-Reclaimed-Flooring

Unusual items have started to appear in our showroom. An 1848 original dentists chair,  cabinets from The Natural History museum with some great signs on them ‘ animal remains westray orkney neolithic’ a CircOlectric Stryker bed and some great gothic style hardware. Follow this link to see our furniture page. http://www.mascosalvage.com/Category/Furniture

Our next Business Biscotti free networking meeting is on Weds 28th November 9:30am-11:30am. We’ve twinned with Swindon Biscotti in order to increase the number of people doing business between Swindon and Stroud area. This is creating new opportunities for business. It’s free to come along and promote your business and a great informal way to make new connections. Here’s a link to our Biscotti group page. Have a look at some of the member benefits, all you have to do is sign up on line and why not come along to a meeting. http://www.businessbiscotti.co.uk/gloucestershire/stroud.html

We’ve just rebranded and are now part of The Reclaim & Reuse group.

This group incorporates Masco Architectural Salvage, The Old Radiator Company and The Vintage Floor Tile Company. We’re refurbishing our showroom upstairs and Andy has bought a cinema to put up in the showroom, watch out for our first film evening invite in January!

The Vintage Floor Tile Company, our newest business in the group is going from strength to strength. We now have a dedicated tile room and we’re filling our large cabinet in the upstairs showroom with the encaustic tiles. The company website is almost finished, still some work in progress but take a look. http://www.thevintagefloortilecompany.co.uk/ 

We can supply tiles for patching or make up complete floors for you. The tiles are all reclaimed original and are cleaned and sorted prior to being sent out.

If you need any more information on anything above don’t hesitate to contact Lizzie on 01285 760886. Why not come along and visit us in the south Cotswolds. We have Masco Salvage and The Vintage Floor Tile Company at this site and a good range of original cast iron radiators to view, polished, painted and ornate.

As we move into the Baroque period (1625-1714) the theme of using wood on the upper levels continues, except around the East Midlands where lime putty on laths (thin strips of wood) was used. More expensive wooden floors were laid in patterns using woods of several colours. A less expensive way of creating the same effect was to paint patterns on the floorboards.

In early Georgian times, the finish below stairs was stone paving. Wood plank floors, laid over joists were used elsewhere in the house. The most common was oak, and later houses used Elm and by late 18th century pine was more common. These planks were often about 12 inches wide rather than 24 inches, but mixed boards were often used. They were left untreated and often scrubbed or scoured with sand. Boards began to get narrower as time went on, down to 8-10 inches and in some large expensive houses they began to stain and polish the margins of the room to provide a  framed carpet look.

Also by the 18th century the upper classes began to install wooden block floors such as oak, elm or yew in their houses.  In the 1820′s tongue and groove boards were beginning to be introduced and were  increasingly machine made and of a more uniform width using well seasoned wood.

In Victorian times, wood flooring was very popular in ‘masculine’ rooms, such as billiard rooms, libraries and studys.  The wooden floors were often accompanied by wood pannelling on the walls or imitation leather paper. The masculine scene was completed by brown leather armchairs, bottle green velvet curtains and antique armour or stag heads adorning the walls. This was in complete contrast to rooms used by the whole family which appeared more feminine and elegant.

Chene Ancien is our traditional oak flooring and is indistinguishable from genuine reclaimed boarding. Carefully prepared over many weeks in deep ammonia vats, before re-kilning and machining to give a finish appropriate for listed buildings or heritage work, giving an old original look. We can also provide reclaimed oak floorboards when available.

In these modern times that we live in we’re looking at ways to increase the comfort of our homes yet keep the style and design. So engineered board has been introduced for those of us thinking of installing under floor heating. This board is resistant to swelling, twisting, warping , shrinkage and movement that comes with the constant change in temperature. It looks the same as the solid oak as most engineered boards have 4-6mm of oak on the top. Masco provides boards which have 5-6mm on top of the engineered. Below is an example of engineered board available at Masco.

Reclaimed boards, either in oak, pine or elm are very popular now as people start to patch wooden floors in renovation projects. Many carpets are being pulled up these days to reveal original wooden floors, which with a bit of TLC can be restored to a beautiful floor. 

Download our pdf technical guide to wood flooring for some help and inspiration.  Wood Flooring Technical Guide

Trade day went well, although we were still doing some set up, but it was busy and some good contacts were made. It rained on and off all day, but this didn’t deter anyone and the weather cleared nicely for Saturday. Outside of our tent we had garden items such as benches, chimney pots, quarry tiles, flagstone and an old stone window.

Andys Showmans wagon was also on display. This was filmed during the day by George Clark (The Restoration Man) & his team for his new channel 4 series. George has been following the restoration progress of the wagon.

Inside the tent we had original cast iron radiators, hardware, geometric flooring, fireplaces, reclaimed wood and various other interior items.

All sorts of people attended including garden designers, interior designers, builders and customers renovating their homes. There was a lot of interest in the original cast iron radiators which were displayed on top of the geometric floor.

Follow this link to see Salvonews site which features the Period Living article on Salvofair. http://www.salvonews.com/story/grand-day-out-at-salvo-fair-x67000x9.html

Now it’s back to normal at the yard, after we accepted a whole load of new stock in at the same time as the lorry brought the stock back from Salvofair. A couple of days of tidying up was needed to make sure chaos didn’t reign and now the yard and showroom are looking full of stock and tidy!

We also managed to host another Business Biscotti networking event in our showroom at the end of June. It was good to hear how businesses were getting on and see some now regular faces to our networking. Check out what Business Biscotti is all about and perhaps turn up to the next event on 25th July. http://www.businessbiscotti.co.uk/

Since then the boss has been buying up more tiles and we now have over half a million tiles on site. These are being sorted into colours, shapes and sizes, which is quite a big job! We are now in a position to match tiles to your request.

At our Cotswold showroom there is now a seperate tile area set up to display the thousands of tiles. We will also be taking an example of a made up floor to Salvo Fair later this month.  These tiles could be used to replace broken or missing tiles from existing floors or you could be designing a completely new floor to lay. One enquiry we had last week was whether we have enough tiles to lay a 4m2 floor in a new conservatory being built, to give it that element of difference. Yes of course we can lay 200m2 if you wish!

Next week we’re preparing for Salvo Fair and will be on a large exhibition stand with our sister company The Old Radiator Company. For those of you who don’t know, Salvo Fair is an annual exhibition of architectural salvage, garden antiques and reclaimed building materials. Its an outdoor event with marquees and loads of different traders selling lots of different things. 2012 is the twelfth Salvo Fair and it’s very well attended, lets hope the weather holds for us. This year there has been a change of venue from Knebworth to Stubbings Estate, Henley Road in Berkshire.

It’s a great venue in a lovely part of the country and we’re all looking forward to 3 days out of the office! A little history of Stubbings, straight from the Salvo Fair website;

Stubbings is a Georgian house in Maidenhead Thicket, site of an ancient Celtic farmstead, that became the home of Sir Guy Carleton, first Lord Dorchester, until his death in 1808, to where he retired after a military career in North America culminating as governor of Quebec. Stubbings was then home to the Skrine family, descended from a secretary of Sir Francis Bacon. From 1941-45 it was home to Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands. Stubbings was then bought by Sir Thomas Merton, where he lived until 1969. He was a scientist who helped devise aircraft radar screens during the Battle of Britain. He was also a collector of Italian Renaissance art.”

For more information on Salvo Fair, follow this link; http://www.salvo-fair.com/2012/Home.html. Photos of last years fair courtesy of Salvo Llp.

Come and meet us either at Salvo Fair on 22nd, 23rd or 24th June or at our beautiful Cotswold showroom and garden yard which is blossoming in the summer sunshine!

We’re open Monday to Friday 8:30am-5pm and our NEW Saturday opening hours are 10am-5pm.

Visit our main website www.mascosalvage.com

01285 760886 email; masco@mascosalvage.com

Our wood flooring has proved to be very popular, with the new character solid oak and reclaimed pine boards moving very quickly. Encouraging customers to take away wood samples has helped them make that important design decision for their property.

When it’s pouring with rain our showroom is warm and dry and an oasis of interesting architectural pieces. Two items which have created excitable interest are the reclaimed oak church doors and the geometric floors.

 The above picture shows the back of the doors, which are about 9ft high and made of oak. As you can guess they are extremely heavy!

Masco now have half a million tessellated floor tiles in stock, after a new delivery last week. There are several examples of the assembled floors on show for viewing. Once these floors are laid and cleaned they look amazing.

Masco has made its first flurry into hosting local business network meetings on its premises. Last week we launched the first Aston Down Business Biscotti FREE networking event. It was so successful, we are now holding one on the last Wednesday of every month from 9:30am-11:30am. There’s no need to book, you just pitch up and network!

See details of this at http://www.businessbiscotti.co.uk. Its all about promoting local businesses, networking and building contacts in an informal, but slightly quirky and different environment, compared to the run of the mill hotel foyer or conference room. We did have birthday cake for the founder of Business Biscotti last week, but don’t expect this every week! However do expect coffee and biscuits. We would love to see you there and remember to bring along plenty of business cards, and guests, if you would like to promote or introduce your business to Stroud, Cirencester and surrounding areas. All types of business are welcome as this it’s about growing all businesses not just architectural salvage. The next meeting is on Weds 30th May.

We will be OPEN on Bank Holiday Monday 7th from 10am to 4pm, even if its raining, come along and visit. After the bank holiday we’re going to start preparing for our stand at Salvo Fair in June. This is held at Stubbings Estate in Maidenhead, follow this link for further info, www.salvo-fair.com. It should be a great few days and we hope to see you there.