I am crazy about this little book. Put together by the editors of the now defunct Budget Living Magazine, Home Cheap Home is a guide to inexpensive improvements to your home. How inexpensive? Well that depends on the project. Whether you need a new lampshade or a new kitchen, this book is full of ideas for how to do it with style for less.
They take a room-by-room approach - living rooms, kitchen and dining, bedrooms, bathrooms, home office, and outdoor living. For each room they do 30 - 40 pages of vignettes of clever spaces with details about the style, storage, design, and color that makes the space work. Some of these ideas are truly retro, maybe even bohemian, in style. Others have the feel of Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware, so there's something for everyone.
One of my favorite ideas is on page 85 in the Kitchen and Dining section where they suggest making a shiny stainless colander into a pendant light fixture. Do I need a pendant light fixture in my kitchen? Not at all. But I want one like that anyway!
And since the cheapest improvement involves using stuff you already have, Home Cheap Home spends a few pages on improving the flow of your home by re-arranging your existing furniture and re-purposing unused items. Cheap and green, what could be better?
I believe this little gem is out of print, but fear not! If you visit Amazon.com and enter Home Cheap Home in the search box, you'll see that there are many used copies available, some for as little as $4... a steal for so many good ideas.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment