Connect with us in the social media world

There is now another way you can spread the word about our website and blog, we have recently added Google+ to both our website and the posts within our blog. You can +1 each post, this will show in your +1 section within your Google+ profile so you can publicly recommend that post.

We have a google+ account and you can join our circles. We have also included an easy way to ‘Add to circles’ by a widget on the left side border on the website and the right side border on the blog.

You can also find all our other social media links on the ‘About this blog‘ page, we have added the Google+, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin so its easy for you to connect with us.

So, if your interested in decorating, DIY and industry news please ‘Add to circle‘ on Google+, ‘Like‘ us on Facebook, ‘Tweet‘ us on Twitter, and ‘Connect‘ with us on Linkedin.

VOC in 2011

Many of you may of heard about VOC’s but are unaware what they are and what it all means.

VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compound, what that you may ask, VOC’s are solvents within solvent-based paints such as gloss, undercoat and varnishes. These solvents evaporate into the atmosphere as the paint dries. You can tell how high the VOC’s are in a tin of paint normally by the distinctive smell you get off from them, gloss has a high VOC content where as emulsion has a low VOC content.
If you look at the side of the paint tin it will have a symbol and also some writing about the VOC content in the tin.
VOC’s contribute to environmental air pollution and in turn damage the ozone layer.

In the past year there has been a lot of news in the press about paint being ‘VOC Compliant’. From the 1st of January 2011 the sale of non-compliant products will be forbidden.

So can I still buy and use non-compliant paint

As from January 2011 you are unable to buy non-compliant paints, as it is now illegal to sell them. If you have older paint, say in the garage or shed, you are still allowed to use them. It maybe worth thinking about if you will need more paint than what you already have as the new VOC compliant paint may differ slightly to the older paints you have.

Search online for more information about VOC’s and the current law.

Useful links

Some related links:

• Dulux
• Crown Paints
• ICI Paints
• Wikipedia – Volatile_organic_compound
• British Coatings Federation

Continuing the social network

It was this time last year when we signed up to Twitter, you can read my experiences about my first year on Twitter in my recent post.

Property Decorating on Facebook

We are always looking at our site and blog for ways of improving things, bring more information to people like yourselves, and ways in which we can have contact with the public and visa versa, to this end we have signed up to a business Facebook account.

Social Media

We shall be using this account as another means to communicate what we do to people as well as a way of notifying people with news and blog updates.

You can see our Facebook page here.

Share, Like, Tweet

We have also added some ‘Share’ and ‘Like’ buttons on some of the pages on the site and all the posts on our decorating blog (At the bottom of each post).
We hope that if you find either a page, such as the calculator pages, or and post on the blog interesting or useful, you will use the share or like buttons, (and not forgetting the tweet button) to let your friends know about it.