Product Description

Inspiring transformations from the author of Use What You Have Decorating®-with color photos throughout!

Lauri Ward has been a "home therapist" to thousands through her books, articles, and media appearances for more than two decade. This inspiring guide takes readers into the real homes and lives of 25 of Lauri's clients to show a wide range of decorating challenges and the solutions that Lauri offered to meet their needs and expectations. Illustrated with more than 150 full-color and black-and-white before-and-after photos and floor plans, HHome Therapy offers help in transforming living spaces for everyone from twenty-somethings to retirees, using the space and things they already have-and a budget they can afford.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #536274 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780399532795
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In this straightforward, practical guide to redecorating, Ward, founder of the interiors firm Use-What-You-Have, Inc., and author of Use What You Have Decorating, uses engaging real-life stories of home makeovers to demonstrate how to work with one's existing furniture, space and accessories to create great spaces. Diagrams, before and after photos, and bulleted lists that call out common decorating mistakes help to illustrate her points clearly—and give readers a peek inside other peoples' homes, appealing to the voyeur in everyone. Each chapter addresses a different decorating conundrum—moving to a smaller space, moving to a much larger space, dealing with an overstuffed home, childproofing, preparing to sell a home—and introduces the clients, their complaints, the diagnosis, the remedy and long-term recommendations. Descriptions of clients ("a leggy blonde with a huge, bright smile"; "a tall, slim man with boyish good looks") feel forced, but suggest the reality of the solutions described. (Oct. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The design recycling movement has many names, including staging, interior refining, and using what you have. Ward, one of its major proponents, offers her ideas for the third time. Rather than expounding on color, design, and arrangement principles, she instead concentrates on 25 clients and their befores, afters, and longer-term solutions. Each represents a life event of some sort, whether it's a coast-to-coast move, a new career, the addition of pets, or the arrival of a baby. Challenges are introduced first, usually in the voice of the client; then they're shown in diagrams and photographs, with solutions revealed in the same manner. Most decorating issues can be summarized into a list of 10, including poor furniture placement, ineffective use of accessories, and incorrect lighting, among others. The [design] doctor is in. Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Lauri Ward, pioneer of one-day redecorating and founder of Use-What-You-Have Interiors(r) and the Interior Refiner's Network, has appeared on Oprah, CBS Evening News, ABC-TV News, Fox, Lifetime, HGTV, and CNBC. She has been featured in the New York Times, House Beautiful, Ladies' Home Journal, and Budget Living.

Customer Reviews

Same over and over - not enough How To
Her top 10 decorating mistakes in the first chapter are good info. But then the rest of the chapters are about different clients and their makeovers. Too much time is spent describing the room (this lamp here, this picture there) both before and after....and not enough description of HOW she knew to put what where to make them better. The before and afters are dramatic, and it's amazing what can be done with what one already has. But she doesn't impart enough direction to the reader on how to know what would go good where.

Not My Favorite Lauri Ward Book
I own Lauri's two other books and am a big fan of "Use What You Have" decorating. The things that I did not like about her latest book, "Home Therapy," for one, are the use of black and white photographs in her "before" pictures. It was really hard to see the details in these shots. Second was the use of too much description. (I know what you're thinking-how could there be too much description?)Lauri goes into lots of details about the clients' rooms and I found myself flipping the pages back and forth to try to see everything she was pointing out. Very confusing. If I were going to recommend one of Lauri's books it would definitely be her first one.("Use What You Have Decorating.")I love it and have bought it for friends.

Not as good as as her first book
I did not like the layout of this book at all--particularly annoying was the fact that you had to turn pages between the "before" and "after" room drawing layouts-they should have been either put on facing pages or on the same page.

Also, her first book worked well because it seemed to focus more on average people with decorating issues, this book was definitely skewed towards people with scads of money like the people with the view home in Laguna Beach, who practically had walls made of windows--hardly what the average person is looking to showcase!

I would borrow this one from the library, but buy her first book.