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Home and Garden |
The Artful Home, also known as The Guild or guild.com, sells fine art, furniture, home decor, and handmade jewelry. Many of their items are  unique and literally direct from the artists, actually shipped from individual studios once the order is relayed to them. The Guild has thousands of original paintings, art prints, and photography prints in various categories such as figures, landscapes, abstracts, and still lifes. They also have just as wide a selection of ceramics, art glass, sculpture, and art in various other mediums. There is a nice selection of practicalitems, too, including lamps, furniture, and tableware. Website design is fine, withavailable pictures of sufficient resolution to display the works, although only a small number of items are shown in  category displays. Shipping can vary widely on different items, even originals, and the amount of time it takes before it is shipped is estimated for every product on its detail page. The "additional shipping information" states it as follows: "'Ships Within' dates are the artist's current estimate of when items will leave the studio after you place an order. Transit to you via ground transportation will take an additional 1-2 weeks. Selecting Next Day or 2nd Day transportation at extra cost will shorten transit time, though it will not affect the date the item leaves the studio." Shipping costs vary from very good to reasonable all the way to outlandish and appear to be set by the artists, some of whom must design the crate or box and packing materials from scratch for each work they ship. The photograph shown above left is "Will You Fade?" by Michael McAreavy, some of whose work is available for purchase on The Guild in the photography category, with a larger body of work on Flickr with his pseudonym of Lightchaser. McAreavy also permitted Online Shopping Review to use thumbnails of some of his landscape portraits for use as the rotating image on the top right of every page. |
A
Trendy Home offers products for the home and
garden including appliances, garden and outdoor supplies, bathroom accessories, kids  furniture, home electronics, air cleaners, home
improvement products, pet care, health and beauty
supplies, furnishings and much, much more.They
carry some of the more technologically advanced and,
yes, trendy, products often only found at small,
high-priced retailers. Where else can you find a
dog house air conditioner, Panasonic massage
chair, Robomower, fingerprint door lock, laser garage
parking system, wireless intercom system, Wild Zoo
kid's computer desk, Super Bark Free, and Buttkicker 2
home theater ground shaker all at the same
place? Shipping costs, when they are
significant, are provided with the "Add to
Cart" button when shopping so there are no
surprises. Customer service is excellent.
Sales tax charged only in California. Highly
recommended merchant. |
Smarthome features automation and technology products for the
home and garden. They specialize in remote
control and computer interfaces using X10, a
communications language that allows  compatible
products to talk to each other using the existing
electrical wiring in the home. This is often
used for home security and monitoring, plus control of
lights, appliances, and air conditioning.
If you are new to this technology and want to learn more, be sureto click on
the Getting
Started category on the Smarthome website and take the tour.
Smarthome also features automated pet care  products,
phones, pool supplies, and much more for the
home and garage, including a laser guided parking
system. For the yard and garden, they carry an
automatic lawn mower, water timers and rain sensors,
outdoor lighting and audio components, and pest
control. For the non-DIYer, they have an
installer locator to find contractors in your area who
install home automation equipment, although most
of it is quite easy to install oneself except for some
mechanical items like automated drape systems.
Shipping is based on order value and generally ranges
from $8 to $10 for ground shipping. |
Plow
& Hearth specializes in unique, high quality
products for country living.  This includes home
furnishings such as accents, kitchen accessories,
indoor furniture, rugs, and curtains, as well as deck
and garden furniture, planters, landscaping details,
birdfeeders, and tools. Plow & Hearth offers
a selection of garden art and statuary. Uniqueproducts include Forest Faces  which are mounted on
trees to make them look like something out of Lord
of the Rings, as well as a Toad House (no,
really), and illuminarie stakes, decorative
glow-in-the-dark globes representing either the sun or
moon. They also offer a couple of different
styles of all-weather prints, pictures which are
screen printed onto aluminum and made to display
outdoors. For winter and fall, they have a large
selection of fireplace and hearth tools and
accessories, as one might imagine. Website
design is a bit annoying with pulldown menus that may
persist too long. Shipping is reasonably priced
with 2 day express upgrade available for $7 more. |
Bionaire carries air cleaners, humidifiers, heaters, fans, ionizers, and other air filter products. The products they carry are manufactured by Bionaire so are supposedly priced  lower than air cleaner resellers. The prices do not appear that low, but they do make quality products. Popular are their humidifiers with what they call "Galileo", which is a wireless "climate center" - a remote sensing unit that measure humidityaway from the machine and provides feedback to keep the desired humidity. They also sell a small (but expensive) innovative ultrasonic room humidifier. Bionaire carries a line of   relatively energy efficient ceramic and quartz heaters, too. Their main line is air cleaners, though. They make a few HEPA filters plus a couple of ionizers, one similar in looks to the Sharper Image towers. But their most innovative air filter is called the EverFresh Fresh Air machine. It sits in a double-hung window sill and exchanges outside with inside air, but also exchanges heat/cool and humidity by an innovative method so that little energy it lost. A must-have if one has a tightly sealed home and is worried about buildup of VOCs and other pollutants. |
Vintage
Tub and Bath is the premier source for clawfoot tubs and reproduction bathroom accessories!
They feature a wide selection of cast iron and acrylic clawfoot tubs,  pedestal sinks, shower enclosures, towel warmers, curved shower rods, sink faucets, vessel sinks, toilet paper holders, bathroom mirrors, and
much more. VintageTub.com is thelargest single-point retailer of clawfoot tubs and faucets in the
US and features an excellent customer service department.
They also feature sections on clawfoot tub education and clawfoot tub resources. The price on clawfoot tubs falls mostly in the $1000
to $2000 range, but fancy tubs are available all the
way up to the Herbeau Creations Medicis copper bathtub
for just under $43,000 (faucet not included).
Shipping is free for all of their products except
heavy or oversized items - Just Kidding! Free
drop shipping is included with all tub
purchases. You still have to uncrate it and get
it into the house. |
House2Home is a furniture retailer that has two large showrooms in California but also sells all over the US since they have country wide distribution centers. They have a large selection of premium furniture lines for all rooms, and a good selection of unfinished furniture for excellent prices. Be sure to check the Clearance and Overstock sections - select at the bottom of the leftside menu bar - for other good  deals. The House2Home shopping cart is handled by Yahoo, which is generally used by smaller merchants. Shipping costs are provided on the first cart page and is flat rate depending on where you live. Currently, it is $59 for drop shipping to the Los Angeles area, $99 for west of the Mississippi River and $149 east for unassembled curbside delivery, and $199 for premier home delivery to any of the lower 48 which includes complete setup and cleanup, a good value if someone orders a number of large items. |
Just about everyone who has a TV has seen at least a part of a Little Giant Ladder infomercial. Despite this Ronco-type advertising that gives products a bad name in  some people's minds, the Little Giant pro grade ladders are actually well-made pieces of equipment suitable for professional use. Although there are other folding ladders, this is one of the lightest heavyduty ladders for the money. Although one might not realize it, Little Giant carries a large selection of ladders, most of them the multi-ladder type, including type 1, 1A, and 1AA models, plus safety step and "skyscraper" units. They now  make two models in fiberglass, too. Little Giant ladders tend to be on the expensive side, at least somewhat due to their marketing cost (it costs a lot to buy so many informercials!), but keep in mind that FedEx shipping is generally included free with the purchase and they will often throw in a free accessory with some models. Website design is fine with a good search engine, although since they carry so few products, it is really not necessary. |
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Links
Epinions.com is an online ratings service of products, services, and businesses which provides a review forum for consumers. Note that people are much more motivated to find a place to vent their feelings when they are dissatisfied than when they are pleased, so the ratings can certainly be skewed towards the unfavorable, especially for the items or vendors that have the largest number of reviews, but it still provides a useful measure for comparison.
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