Go “Under the Tuscan” sun

at Buffalo Home Show

TIME CHANGE: Show has changed hours to weekends only, including March 12-14.

By Michele DeLuca

michele.deluca@niagara-gazette.com

Jennifer Rase has spent the last week or so decorating a Tuscan villa. The home is lush and romantic and rich in jewel tone colors. And it is sitting smack dab in the middle of the Buffalo Convention Center.

The villa is the centerpiece of the Buffalo Home and Garden Show and Rase, an interior designer from Wheatfield, was selected to decorate the living space with Hamburg designer Julie Cutolo.

“We came up with a very electic view of what we thought classic European Tuscan decor would be,” she said recently. The results are a room with a mix of traditional and contemporary styles. A sleek leather couch is matched with a hand scraped wood floor and a heavy wooden chandelier borrowed from a Buffalo antique dealer, she added. The house, which is decorated by selected designers from the Interior Design Association of Western New York, has jewel tones throughout, including plum, terra cota, orange, deep chocolate browns and sage greens.

“It’s always very exciting,” she said of the home show project. “But it’s a lot of work. Essentially we’re putting up an entire home in four days, complete with pain and accessories.”

The show planners are trying a new format this year and changed the hours to two weekends only.

The show opened Friday and will continue today from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The show will resume next weekend from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

New this year will be the presence of a team of local architects on hand to discuss home challenges. There will also be 74 new exhibitors this year, along with the many home design and renovation specialists typically in attendance. Celebrities will include “Design on a Dime” host Summer Baltzer, Christoper Straub of “Project Runway,” and Animal Planet’s Jarod Miller.

Vendors from the Niagara region include:



Custom Curb Appeal, Wheatfield

Kevinn Garlock of Custom Curb Appeal will be displaying his company’s concrete landscaping edging. His product is made from recycled glass and can be made in custom colors.

“Most people that install curbing use a rope light,” he said. “I use a polycarbonate light, the same material bullet proof glass is made of, so it doesn't turn yellow and is much stronger. It's absolutely gorgeous at night.”

“I also run a 4,000 pound breaking strength piece of cable down the middle of my curbing to keep it from breaking, he said.

For more information visit ccaofnewyork.com.



Cornerstone Concrete, Niagara Falls

Joe Molinaro of Cornerstone Concrete said that at last year’s show he got more than 100 visitors asking him about stamped concrete sealer. Many complained that their concrete decks were discolored after they resealed them.

“The sealer had ruined the look of their stamped concrete because new sealers don’t conform to old sealers,” he said.

Molinaro said he was kept pretty busy last summer stripping, recoloring and resealing stamped concrete decks. “They look brand new when we’re done,” he said, noting the re-do costs about $800 for an average deck compared to about $4,000 for a newly installed stamped concrete deck.

Molinaro’s exhibit will include versions of the stamped concrete decks, which he said provide a more decorative and artistic “hardscape,” to a back yard than traditional decking.

Big Bob’s Flooring

Niagara Falls



Big Bob's Flooring

Niagara Falls.



“We kind of laugh because everybody in the area syas they’re an outlet, but we really are,” said Warren Payne, owner of Big Bob’s flooring which will have a small booth at the show.

“It's more as a n opportunity to talk to perspective cutsomers and tell them what we have,” he said. “We’d need a thousand square feet to show them everything.”

Big Bobs, which sells carptet, vinyl flooring, cermaic tile, and many other flooring products, buys manufacturer’s discontinued colors, overruns and overstock.

“We buy in very large quanitifes, typically full truckloads,” Payne said of his store at Shawnee Road and Niagara Falls Boulevard. The savings, he said, is passed on to the customer.

For more information visit bigbobsflooring.biz

Other Niagara business at the home show include Custom Covers and Canvas and M&M; Iront Art.

Contact reporter Michele DeLuca at 282-2311, ext. 2263.