As the largest piece of furniture you are likely to buy for your living, we are taking a look at sofas, and how they fit into modern spaces. This collection from Vitra is a menagerie of contemporary shapes and colors to inspire your next decorating scheme, enjoy!

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For the year ending Dec. 31, True Value revenue increased 3.4% to $1.86 billion, as the co-op is riding a wave of consecutive quarterly sales increases that now extends to five. Full-year earnings for the co-op were $60.3 million, down 0.7% from $60.7 million in 2010.

“Our goal is to generate $60 million of new business growth each year — that’s right, $60 million of new business growth.” That’s about how much the co-op gained in 2011. So how do you keep it up? Heidemann pointed to farm & ranch products; new bill-through vendors such as Benjamin Moore; international business, expansions and relocations, “and of course,” he said, “new True Value stores.”

Regarding this last point, Heidemann unveiled a new option he described as “an offer you can’t refuse.” It includes a 10-year equity loan and 100% free opening stock order based on the co-op’s Destination True Value planogram assortments and recommended inventory levels.

Heidemann said the new option can reduce the investment in a new store by almost 60%.

Following the event, Heidemann told Home Channel News the proposal will change attitudes about retail expansion.

“The obvious targets are the retailers who are already running a hardware store, but this should also change the interest level for some of the people who want to open their first store,” he said. “We had a lot of interest. It was a surprise announcement. We’re trying to take the cost out of opening a hardware store. It’s very capital intensive between the inventory, fixturing, computer and finishing up the store — for a 10,000-sq.-ft. store its about $850,000 to open.”

For the quarter, True Value revenue was $441.9 million, up 5.8%. Quarterly earnings were $12.4 million, up 39.3% from $8.9 million in the prior-year quarter.

Red and white is a striking color combination for home interiors, and the Celio Apartment, in Rome, Italy, is a perfect example that shows how to pull it off in style. The project by Carola Vannini Architecture is a luxurious space, located near the Colesseo area, which underwent a detailed redesign to recognize the clients desire to open out the space in order to breathe in the outer landscape, resulting in expansive airy rooms pooled with light.

Recommended Reading: 28 Red and White Living Rooms

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The home improvement giant reported fourth-quarter sales of $16.0 billion, up 5.9% from the same quarter last year. Comparable-store sales were positive 5.7%, and up 6.1% in the United States.

“We had a strong finish to 2011, and with favorable weather, our business delivered results that exceeded our expectations,” said CEO Frank Blake. 

The performance also exceeded the expectations of most of analysts on Wall Street, where expectations had called for about $15.5 billion in sales for the quarter. 

Net earnings for the fourth quarter were $774 million, up 31.9% from the fourth quarter last year.

For the full year, Home Depot’s sales increased 3.5% to $70.4 billion, as comp-store sales increased 3.4% in total and increased 3.0% in the United States. Earnings for the full year were $3.883 billion, up 16.3% from earnings of $3.338 billion in 2010.

Looking ahead to 2012, Home Depot expects sales growth of about 4%, including an extra week in the upcoming fiscal year. The company also plans 11 new stores in 2012.

If only walls could talk! Well, they almost do with these beautiful illustrative wallpapers from Colombian born, Barcelona based, Catalina Estrada; they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and these designs certainly speak volumes!

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Working with designers IDFL, leading Austrian newspaper Wirtschafts Blatt set out to create a workspace that embodied their brand throughout its architecture, furniture design, color palette and interior graphics. The key brief was to ‘Change to a new spirit”, requiring dynamic use of space and introduction of fresh ambiance for a motivational and quality environment in which to collate the latest economic, finance and financial market news for daily issue, and digital application, by the Vienna based news team.

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Housing starts increased to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 699,000 in Januray, according to the latest report from the Deparment of Commerce.

The “solid housing starts report indicates that builders are putting more of their crews back to work, and adds to the growing field of evidence that the overall housing market is gradually but consistently moving in the right direction,” said Barry Rutenberg, chairman of the NAHB and a home builder from Gainesville, Fla. 

The NAHB’s David Crowe, chief economist, said: “The fact that the three-month moving average for housing starts has now increased for nine consecutive months and is approaching the 700,000 mark for the first time since October of 2008 is indicative of a solid recovery in housing activity stemming from recent firming in employment and consumer confidence measures. That said, housing production is still far from what would be considered normal in a healthy market, and many challenges remain for home builders in terms of tight credit conditions, difficult appraisals and the continued flow of foreclosed properties on the market – all of which are certainly slowing the pace of improvement in both housing and the overall economy.”

Following significant upward revisions reported for both November and December, single-family starts held virtually flat in January with a 1.0 percent decline to a 508,000-unit rate. Together with the revised December number, this is the best pace of single-family starts since April of 2010, when the home buyer tax credit was active.

This gallery-like space vibrates with exciting use of vibrant color, against expanses of brilliant white walls, ceiling and floors. Konstantin Andreev splashes an artists paint palette of colors over textured brick wall, paintings, and dining chairs to create a space injected with personality and youth.

Recommended reading: Loft Designs

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The U.S. Census Bureau’s Monthly Retail Trade Report for December 2011 — the latest month of available data for hardware stores in the NAICS 44413 classification — hit $1.777 billion on an unadjusted basis. That’s up from $1.732 billion in November.

The unadjusted full-year sales for NAICS 44413 rose to $20.21 billion, up from $19.27 billion in 2010.

The full-year 2011 figure was the highest since 2008, when hardware store sales were $20.26 billion. 

As one of the better known Italian kitchen companies, turning out designs since 1969, Cesar produce some pretty cool stuff, and this selection gives a taster of their current offerings should you be in the market for a new culinary space.

As usual the range is shown in a way that the majority of us would not be able to achieve in our houses, ie. enviable huge scale rooms, with unbelievably high ceilings, above vast seam to seam windows, but we can dream and still get the gist of how it might fit into a rather more modest ‘homely’ home!

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