Product Description

Ty Pennington and the millions of people who watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition know that you can not only transform a home in seven days, you can transform someone's life. If he could, Ty would renovate every home in America, but even he doesn't have that much energy! So he's written Good Design Can Change Your Life: Beautiful Rooms, Inspiring Stories and filled the book with proof that you don't need a bulldozer and a million bucks to realize your dreams.

Focusing on the three most important parts of your home -- sleeping spaces, living spaces, and working spaces -- Ty offers low-cost, high-impact ideas for every budget. You'll learn how to express your personality and your passions in your design and how to get the most out of small spaces and limited time. Whether you want to create a welcoming living room that helps you connect with friends and family, a restful bedroom that lets you face the day energized and optimistic, or a streamlined home office that keeps you productive, Ty has some great ideas to share. From the elegant to the funky, the whimsical to the restful; from walls, floors, and lighting to storage, wallpaper, and fabric -- it's all here, infused with Ty's vitality and great style, along with the emotional stories of the people who changed his life as much as the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition crew changed theirs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #163475 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
If you want to inject light, energy, and optimism into your life, making over your home—or even just a single room—is a good place to start, maintains Ty Pennington, the spiky-haired host of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and designer of a home goods line for Sears. With that credo in mind, Pennington sets out to help average homeowners redesign their home—and presumably their life—one room at a time. The book focuses on the three high-impact areas of the house: the bedrooms, living spaces and work spaces, and includes lists and special sections such as Balancing a Room with Art and Big Ideas for Small Spaces. The text relies heavily on personal stories and design experiences from the families that have appeared on his show. In the end, Pennington, with his off-the-wall personality, provides a solid and basic design manual. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Pennington, host of the television series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (EMHE) and author of Ty's Tricks, explores over 20 EMHE projects, giving practical advice on how an amateur can achieve similar results. Fans of the show will be interested in the background stories of the families and their design challenges. In addition, Pennington offers concrete advice on accessing needs, defining personal style, and selecting furniture and color for every room of the house. Although the text is a bit wordy, Pennington's writing style makes the advice easy to absorb. Because his TV series is so popular, this book will find a readership in many public libraries.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Ty Pennington is the host of ABC's hit series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He has won awards in graphic design and worked as a set designer and as a model before being cast as the carpenter in The Learning Channel's series Trading Spaces. Ty has developed his own line of home products for Sears, Howard Miller,and Lumber Liquidators and has launched Ty Pennington at Home magazine.

Customer Reviews

Host of Extreme Makeovers Shares His Secrets
As a designer, I read all the new home decorating books, and I really enjoyed this.

Ty Pennington, the host of Extreme Makeovers, shares his talent and enthusiasm for makeovers and design in Good Design Can Change Your Life: Beautiful Rooms, Inspiring Stories. This full color book is sure to inspire.

In the introduction, Pennington writes of his heartwarming successes at making over homes on Extreme Makeovers for people in need: "The experience of creating warm, inviting sanctuaries for families who really need them has made me a true believer in the power of positive thinking."

He believes that a makeover can transform your life. He is also adamant about decorating to suit your own sense of style.

Good Design concentrates on the bedroom, living spaces and work spaces.

Part I
The 12 steps to take to prepare for a makeover include smart ideas like taking before photos of the space.

In Prep Work, he has a quiz to take to discover your style. The styles include: minimalist, traditionalist, maximalist, ethnologist, naturalist, and "You're Me" (all of the above.)

There is a very good section on color and how it affects mood.

Part II Sleeping Spaces
Includes a section on art as a focal point, rooms with high contrast, the importance of lighting, and natural features.

About recycling, Pennington writes that he employs "Reincarnation," which is "giving something that you might otherwise throw out or give away a completely new life." One example he shows takes posts from a front porch and using them for the posts for twin beds. Brilliant!

There is also a nice section on kid's rooms.

Part III Living Spaces

Pennington writes about the importance of the flow of traffic, especially for the entryway, which should always be inviting. He says in Feng Shui the flow of energy is importance, but his flow is that furniture should be positioned so that people have plenty of space to walk around. (Another terrific design book that also discusses the importance of energy flowing is the award winning book, HARMONIOUS ENVIRONMENT: BEAUTIFY, DETOXIFY & ENERGIZE YOUR LIFE, YOUR HOME & YOUR PLANET. Read these together and see some magic happen!)

He also writes about accessorizing.

Part IV Working Spaces

He impresses the importance of having a clean and simple office.
In the appendix, he includes projects for reader to make, including a stacked bench, shade lamp and a cool shelf.

If you need to be inspired to makeover your home or part of it, this book will do it!

Charming and Informative
This is a nice book. The photos and the stories about Extreme Makeover Home Edition are really great, and the information Ty gives is fresh. Ty is right--sometimes all it takes is changing a room to give everything a fresh perspective. Some of the ideas in this book are really simple and easy. But the best thing by far is the hilarious quiz.

The Guidelines For Designing a New Room
This book was phenomenal!! It really showed me the guidelines to creating a masterpiece room. I now have now have a lot of good ideas for designing my new bedroom. I even asked my Mom if I could fix some other rooms in our home. I now have a lot more inspiration and confidence for creating new rooms!! Thanks Ty!!