[.ca] Trade Secrets From Use What You Have Decorating (ISBN 039952861X)

Mere placement:
While this book may offer good ideas on placement of furniture and wall hangings, what it doesn't consider is that many of us are restricted by outlets, cable hookups, windows, etc. There's only so much we can do to a room with these restrictions. So putting the tv on one wall may look better, but you may not be able to plug it in. Plus, it's all living rooms or family rooms, no bedrooms or office space. If you're looking for a book to help you maximize space and look like you know how to decorate, this isn't the book for you.

Wow, what a difference!:
This book has lots of easy, inexpensive tricks that only professional decorators know about. I purchased it along with Use What You Have Decorating because I wanted to fix up my house but could not afford a designer. The results were amazing! Now my home looks more open, feels more comfortable and is really pretty! Even my husband says it looks great, which is a first. The best part is that the only purchases I needed to make were new pillows for my sofa and a big urn for my dining room. If you are short on money but want to give your home a whole new look this book along with her first are must-haves.

Useful but flawed:
Ms. Ward once again presents a useful tool for those struggling with such basicdecorating dilemmas as furniture placement, window treatments, light & color, and floor coverings. In her first, invaluable, book she noted the ten most common decorating mistakes and how to solve them. This book recaps much of what was said in her first. The best points in this book are her true-life examples of problem solving. The primary flaw is the lack of photographs or detailed illustrations. Ms. Ward prides herself on giving useful decorating advice, which she does extremely well, as opposed to those coffee table decorating books that require huge outlays of money to achieve anything like the proposed results. Nevertheless, photographs would greatly enhance the text and the reader's understanding of the principles she espouses. Another flaw with the book is the title "Trade Secrets" - it is hardly a trade secret that Hold Everything sells organizers. A better title would be "Tips from Use What You Have Decorating." This book reinforces whot one has learned from the first, and I must say that "Use what you Have Decorating" is one of the best books in this genre.

The Best Book!:
This is the most useful home decorating book yet! It explains how to correct the most common mistakes (I made them all!) and how to make a home look just like the ones in magazines. The chapters about furniture placement, lighting and accessories are real eye openers and supply loads of fast and easy ways to make rooms look really pretty. Anyone who loves decorating will love this book. (My living room, dining room, foyer, kitchen and master bedroom all look amazing now!)

Great book! For anyone who wonders why something won't work:
I am not a decorator by nature. I'm constantly frustrated by decorating magazines, TV shows, and friends with the decorating gene who babble on about breaking "the rules" as if a person like me knew what "the rules" were in the first place. Before you can successfully break rules, you have to know what they are in the first place. All these decorator types had me frustrated and angry. They knew something, but were either unwilling or unable to share their ability to make stuff work. Laughing off a serious question about placement or colour choice with "go with your gut instinct-- it's OK to break the rules" doesn't work if your gut instinct consistently leads you in the wrong direction. I can singlehandedly prove to any designer born, that you CAN'T successfully "break the rules" at all times. I have made more than my share of mistakes that leaves my decorator friends stunned in disbelief that ANYONE could DO that!!!! NOW I'm happy! Lauri Ward's 2 books, this one and her first one TOLD ME THE RULES!!! NOW I KNOW WHY SOME ROOMS WORK AND OTHERS DEFINITELY DON'T. All I needed was someone to explain it. Lauri did. I highly recommend both books. I really don't care if some decorator types don't like people finding out the rules, or feel that someone like me will slavishly produce vanilla bland spaces. This is a book about sharing decorating tools, showing people how it works, then expecting them to go off and make their own stuff look better in their own place. BTW it's not about colour. It's all about placing furniture in a room to make it serene, calm and pleasing. People who know the rules instinctively might not care for this book but for the rest of us who keep saying HUNH??? this book is for you and me. It's going to give us the edge to put a room together and have it look good enough that our decorating friends will back off and quit giving us that pitying look. For colour and life and so forth, I recommend the Pottery Barn books, they are great. I also recommend Dylan Landis's book Elegant and Easy Rooms which I also like for the paint "recipes" for rooms that work.