Product Description

In this follow-up to the popular Bungalow Details: Exterior, Jane Powell and Linda Svendsen go inside the bungalow, to identify and explain the wonderful details that make a bungalow authentic, from wood floor to beamed ceiling!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #146295 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 216 pages

From the Inside Flap
Jane Powell is the proprietor of House Dressing, a business dedicated to renovating and preserving old homes, particularly bungalows. She is a frequent lecturer and consultant, and is the author of Bungalow Kitchens, Bungalow Bathrooms, and Linoleum. Linda Svendsen is a renowned photographer who specializes in architectural interior and exterior photography. Her work has been showcased in books-Camp and Cottages, Bungalow Kitchens, Bungalow Bathrooms, Bicycle, Bungalow Details-and magazines-Old House Journal, Old House Interiors, Victorian Decorating, and Lifestyles Magazine.

About the Author
Linda Svendsen, a graduate of Music and Art High School and Parsons School of Design in New York, has been a renowned photographer for more than thirty years. Her work is showcased in numerous magazines and books; she is the author of Bicycle: Around the World.


Jane Powell is the proprietor of House Dressing, a business dedicated to renovating and preserving old homes. She is a frequent lecturer and consultant, and is the author of Bungalow Kitchens, Bungalow Bathrooms, and Bungalow Details: Exterior.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Room to Move
Bungalows by and large are laid out informally, with rooms often opening into one another for the illusion of more space and a minimum of hallways. Though there is no typical plan, a lot of bungalows, especially on narrow city lots, have the living room, dining room, and kitchen on one side and the bedrooms and bath(s) on the other. Though many bungalows have entry halls, many lack them and the front door opens directly into the living room. Dining and living rooms are often open to one another, separated by an arch or colonnade, or possibly by a wide doorway with pocket or french doors, or sometimes only by half-height walls or a colonnade, adding to the illusion of spaciousness in a small house. Dining rooms may also have doors to the front porch or to a separate porch, part of the blurring of indoors and outdoors that bungalow designers considered essential. The kitchen is usually near the dining room, although it may be separated by a butler's pantry, even in a modest bungalow where they were not likely to have had servants. Bedrooms may open directly off the living room, dining room, kitchen, or other rooms, or there may be a hallway. In a one-and-a-half-story bungalow, the stairway to the second floor may start in the entry hall (if there is one), or in the living room or dining room. Occasionally, stairs will come up from the back of the house instead, near the kitchen. Breakfast rooms or nooks are generally off the kitchen or dining room. Other rooms, sometimes of indeterminate usage (study, library, music room, sewing room, nursery, etc.), as well as the occasional half-bath, were fitted in where space was available.
Coming directly after the Victorian period as they did, bungalows hadn't entirely lost the excessive numbers of doors to which Victorian houses were prone. In Victorian houses, doors allowed rooms to be closed off when not in use in order to save heat. Although bungalows had moved away from this custom as central heat became more common, they could still be pretty door-happy. Kitchens especially may have three, four, or even more doors leading into them. Bathrooms may also have a lot of doors, as they were often placed between two bedrooms (sometimes known as a Jack-and-Jill bathroom), and those may have even had a third door into a hallway. A bathroom opening off a hallway may also have a door leading into one of the bedrooms.

Customer Reviews

A New Genre?
In her Bungalow books Jane Powell has come close to inventing a new genre: the architectural book that is actually fun to read. The latest (Bungalow Details:Interior)is no exception. The illustrations by Linda Svendsen are stellar, as always, but sometimes I think they distract from the best part: Ms. Powell's writing. Jane Powell manages to combine extraordinary erudition with a real sense of fun, two things that virtually never go together. Her knowledge is encyclopedic, her humor unending, her love of puns totally scandalous. She is also wise, with a real sense of what should and should not be done with old houses and the resources they represent. The writings in her Bungalow (and Linoleum) books deserve to be excerpted and presented in a smaller, less expensive edition: the Sayings of Chairman Jane, if you will, devoid of distracting pictures. I highly recommend this and all of her books.

A conversation with one who understands
The reader might well develop a relationship with this book. Jane Powell takes you on an in-depth tour of the American bungalow. As she talks, her writing is conversational, the details are often interrupted with a pun, other humor, or an outburst revealing her biases. Readers who are looking for an academic study should go elsewhere. This is an enjoyable light-hearted "Open House" without a salesperson but rather a builder-decorator-owner. Powell knows this subject from being there and having done that. Behind her puns you find a seriousness based on an emotional bonding with bungalows. If the reader is thinking about rehabbing a bungalow this book is a necessity. If the reader has rehabbed a house meet a friend.

Bungalow Details:Interior
If you are interested in restoration this is a WONDERFUL book! Both of my daughters have purchased homes built around 1920-1927. They are using this book as their bible!