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The House Always Wins

Create the Home You Love-Without Busting Your Budget

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
More than 7 million readers of Marni Jameson's weekly home design column have already discovered how Jameson entertains and inspires, while imparting well-researched and personally validated DIY advice. Now, in her first-ever book on home improvement, she offers a compulsively readable, zanily humorous, yet also completely practical guide to a headache-free home makeover for everyone decorating a new house or updating an old one.Jameson has designed, built, and decorated three homes from the ground up. In The House Always Wins, she brings us along as she decorates, furnishes, and landscapes her current home. Though rooted in her own experience, this is no navel-gazing memoir. Rather, Jameson is like a favorite sister who has learned it all the hard way and is now here to prompt and inspire you to figure out your own personal style, make a design plan, and create your (almost) perfect dream home-one step at a time. With Jameson as our guide, we navigate through the seemingly endless maze of choices and decisions every home improver faces: wall color, flooring, cabinetry, window treatments, furniture, bargain hunting, home accessories, rugs, kids — spaces, special purpose rooms (like the garage and guest, laundry, and mud rooms), landscaping, outdoor living spaces-and that's just to start. Along the way, Jameson injects insights into the relationships and realities that dog every home improvement project. She also pauses to share hard-won secrets and money-saving tips distilled from her own redecorating experience and from interviews with dozens of renowned home-design experts.For anyone dealing with budgets, time constraints, unreliable contractors, a cheap spouse, kids, and pets-and who would appreciate having someone to commiserate with about the unattainable perfection featured in glossy magazine spreads-The House Always Wins will comfort (it can always be worse), inspire (who knew?!), and be absolutely indispensable.
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  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 21, 2008
      Readers gain the benefit of Jameson's experience—along with laugh-out-loud anecdotes—in this informative home-improvement guide. Jameson, a home improvement columnist, has consulted for, at various times, a $100-an-hour interior decorator on what knickknacks to place in the space between the kitchen cabinets and the ceiling; an interior designer to artfully rearrange her bookcase; and a Christmas tree decorator to fill her home with holiday spirit. She shares what she learned from them, as well as her own experiences designing, building and decorating three homes from the ground up. And, like most of us, she's had to complete her home while dealing with money shortages, time constraints, a skeptical husband and wisecracking kids. With real-life in mind, Jameson talks her readers through design basics such as finding a personal style, then moves through every room in the house and the yard, always maintaining a sense of humor and a scrupulous talent for detail. She even exposes the tricks design magazines use to create those envy-inspiring rooms, and dishes dirt on how home design shows cheat to create their masterpieces on time and under budget. Even readers with no immediate designs on redecorating their homes will find Jameson interesting and amusing.

    • Library Journal

      May 15, 2008
      Syndicated home-improvement advice columnist Jameson here relates her own experience of purchasing and decorating a newly built home outside of Denver. Starting with the selection of the lot and continuing on to the final touches, she humorously describes all the pitfalls and successes encountered when trying to create a pleasing decor to suit her family's lifestyle, including just about every aspect of decorating and maintenance from how to hide electronic cables to party hosting. Throughout, Jameson packs her narrative with advice elicited from professionals, including her local plumber and Lisa LaPorta of HGTV's "Designed To Sell", which makes for a practical as well as amusing tale. Recommended for public libraries.

      Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      March 15, 2008
      The only question to ask after finishing newspaper columnist Jamesons highly personal, achingly realistic, and snickeringly funny introduction to home decorating is, Why is she read by only seven million readers in 30 markets? Through a series of real-life scenarios and authentic conversations with husband Dan and a host of interior-design experts, the author investigates every aspect of buying then transforming a house into a home. Along the way, she destroys such myths as Why your house will never look like a model and still look great. She dispenses lots of practical advice, such as knowing when the repair is a job for someone else and avoiding builder gouges on upgrades. She offers a wealth of creative solutions, whether starting a vision bag (which gathers magazine decorating clippings in one place) or providing ideas for holiday ornaments and designs. Her easy-to-read sidebars are generously situated throughout the text, capturing how-tos in one place. Pragmatic humor is no longer an oxymoron.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

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  • English

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