First Home: A Decorating Guide and Sourcebook for the First Time Around
Consider the circumstances that most first-time home buyers find themselves in. For weeks or months, they've been assaulted by choices, ending with the biggest, most nerve-wracking purchasing decision of their lives. They've already spent enough dough to rival a hamburger-bun factory, and now they've got to figure out where, in the vast cavern that is their new home, to put the meager belongings they've accumulated. Suddenly the house that looked so wonderful with those other people's furniture just looks ... empty. Yet most new homeowners also don't want to go further into debt, nor do they want to live with the shoddy results of bargain-basement decorating.
Leslie Linsley comes to the rescue with First Home, written expressly for those furnishing and decorating a house or apartment for the first time. Linsley's room-by-room approach is focused, relaxed, and helpful, and she stresses repeatedly that it doesn't all have to happen at once: "Don't be in a hurry and don't be embarrassed if your house or apartment is filled with empty space for a while. Take your time." Thinking, planning, buying the pieces that are most important first--what Linsley dubs the "I-can't-live-without-a-bed" items--and living in the space for a while before deciding exactly how to fill it help ensure that each room will reflect your personal style and go easy on your overall budget.
Linsley covers all the practical aspects of choosing a room's permanent and semipermanent fixtures--wall and floor coverings, lighting, furniture, window treatments, storage, hardware, and accessories--thoroughly and sensibly, always making a case for both high quality and good value: "Comfort is more important than anything. If it looks good but feels wrong, it won't last."
She gives great rules of thumb for space planning and furniture placement (e.g., allow three feet for opening drawers, and two to three feet for pulling dining chairs away from the table). Small tips in the margins offer everything from where to find online advice for wallpapering to a list of the toll-free phone numbers for major appliance manufacturers. Perhaps the book's only weak point is the sidebar tips from professional designers, which are too brief and oblique to be truly helpful. But Linsley's own advice is so solidly on the mark as to make this a near-perfect choice not only for first-time decorators but also for those considering a new look for their living space. --Barrie Trinkle
Customer Review: Not very meat-y.
This book could easily have been half the number of pages for several reasons. Besides using larger print (which is okay by me) and lots of b&w drawings, she only uses about 2/3 of the page for text, so there's quite a bit of blank space. Mainly though, I got tired of her repeating the same information. For example, when she talks about cabinets, she tells you the same stuff in the chapters on kitchens and home offices. She repeats the information about lighting in the bathroom and living room chapters. Also, she likes to decorate with white and often recommends that color scheme, which doesn't seem very practical to me. Overall, I learned a couple of things about decorating and picked up a few tips, but unless you really don't know anything at all about decorating, I would keep looking for a book with more depth and detail.
Customer Review: This book sucks!
I ended up returning this very disappointing book. It's all black and white, with no color. How can a decorating book be effective in black and white? The advice seemed very outdated and the book was boring. Don't waste your money!