Princeton Community High School will be spending $601,051 on kitting out the new school with furniture.

Supt. Brian Harmon recons that’s a $265,000 saving on the pre-estimated bids, the new school needs a lot of furniture. He credited Principal Abbey with making the bidding competitive with nine of the fifteen furniture suppliers winning contracts.

Abbey when to special lengths to get the kids involved in the process by testing out computer tables, desks and other furniture.

The new school project is costing a staggering $37 million to complete and is hoped to be ready for the new 2012-13 school year.

Tradesmen are working on improvements to the old school by adding metal walls, roofing membrane and fitting new heaters.

Furniture companies awarded the low base bids included Business Environments ($79,615); Educational Furniture ($52,947); Hudson Office Solutions ($289,029); Laundry City Equipment Co. ($14,125); Memmer’s Truevalue ($14,698); Paxton Patterson ($13,468); School Specialty ($14,725); and a low alternate product bid to Versa Products ($91,520) and Wenger Corp. ($4,993).

The money comes from a $45 million bond issue.

When questioned about all the different type of music chairs required Abbey said, “Heck, I didn’t know music chairs were even available,” Abbey told the board, explaining the chairs are ergonomically designed for musicians.

The furniture’s price tag was approved Wednesday night by the school district’s board of trustees.

Furniture from rural churches worth thousands of pounds has been stolen in North Yorkshire.

A number of churches were targeted in Kirkby, Arncliffe, Sicklinghall and Appletreewick. The thieves took off with a number of renowned 20^th century furniture pieces known as ‘Mouseman’.

‘Mouseman’ furniture as it is called is items designed and carved by the renowned 20^th century wood carver Robert Thompson.

All Saints church in Kirkby was the first church targeted in October, with an octagonal oak Mouseman table was stolen valued at around £600.

There was a second theft on the 9^th November when a Mouseman table valued between £2500-£3000 was stolen from the Church of Immaculate Conception, Sicklinghall.

Then on 20^th November the thief’s struck again stealing a Mouseman’s bishop chair from Burnsall and Appletreewick Parochial Church, the chair was worth nearly £2000. Police suggested that it would have required at least two people to move the chair so assume they are looking for more than one culprit.

PC Claire Brown, from North Yorkshire Police, described the thefts as “pretty callous and heartless”.

She appealed for antique dealers and second-hand shop owners to contact police if they were offered any of the stolen items.

Walker Capital, owners of online bathroom retailer Victoria Plumb paid £250,000 for the rights to the brand MFI and are now set the relaunch its website later today.

MFI went into the administration some 3 years ago leaving nearly 30,000 outstanding customer orders which beg the question of how much customer affection remains for the brand.

MFI was famed for selling cheap flat-pack furniture, but earned the nickname ‘Made For Idiots’. When they went bust in 2008 he was claimed that a slowdown in the housing market causing fewer sales in fitted kitchens and bathrooms. The new website will not be selling any of these and with the lower costs involved with a website Adrian Storr, a former MFI director who is commercial director of the relaunched business said, “Furniture retailers saddled with high property costs sadly find it very difficult to operate,”

Mr Storr suggested that in this economic climate customers are looking for cheap prices and they’re prepared to wait to get those cheap prices. This would enable the new company to operate on very small stock levels or even manufacturing to order keeping costs down.

He added that the new website would be concentrating on furniture, beds and bathroom suites as these were some of the best sellers for the former MFI brand.

The relaunch of MFI’s website comes at a particularly difficult time with companies such as Focus DIY and Habitat having recently gone into administration due to the continued economic downturn.

With the US mission in Iraq coming to an end and many soldiers due to come back home soldiers based there often take a short spell in Kuwait before the return journey. However, conditions in Camp Buehring are less than adequate suggests Cpl. Bobby Scott, a container yard foreman with the 310th ESC and a Mooresville, Ind., native.

Scott says, “It’s not too bad for a few days, but when you have to stay for a long time, it makes it more of a comfortable living condition to have beds.”

With this in mind Scott and his team got together to create Operation Bunk Beds which coordinates the collection of furniture, in particular beds and mattresses from the many newly vacated US bases across Iraq.

With a dramatic increase in the required number of beds from 350 to a staggering 12,000 the project hasn’t been an easy one but thanks to the best efforts of Scott and his team Operation Bunk Beds has already made a difference to 5,000 US troops based in Kuwait.

Capt. Dustan Owens, also involved in the project said, “We were also able to collect several items to include games, card tables, a lot of MWR-type items that [simply] help pass the time,”

All of the soldiers involved in Operation Bunk Beds feel it has been a worthwhile project giving a better quality of life for the soldiers there.

Scott ends by saying, “We’ve had a lot of soldiers that are tickled with living on the beds,” he said. “It’s satisfying: it beats living on a cot.”

Welcome to the new Kingshall Oak Furniture blog. Here you will find many useful articles relating to the various funiture we have on offer. It is not just oak furniture we supply here at Kingshall Oak but ash and pine as well as painted furniture too. Feel free to look around the site and if we can be of any further help just drop us an email or give us a call.