Review of Use What You Have Decorating : Transform Your Home in One Hour With Ten Simple Design Principles -- Using the Space You Have, the Things You Like, the Budget You Choose (Paperback)

A better title for this book would have been "How to Rearrange Your Single Purpose Living Room If You Have a Fireplace And Nice Furniture to Create a Comfortable Conversation Area".She talks exclusively about living rooms and 90% of the problems she shows are solved by moving the furniture closer together so people can hold a conversation comfortably.And not just any living room but a certain kind of formal living room.Almost every room she shows has a fireplace and has a very regular geometric shape.How do I create a focal point if my living room is an octagon with windows on almost every wall and no windowless wall is big enough to put a couch under?Only one room she shows has a television in it.How do I create a comfortable conversation area that also lets me (and my guests) watch television?How can the fireplace be the focal point of the room if I also have a television in it?What if I live in a 800 square foot apartment and don't have the space for the strict separation of duties that she seems to advocate?What if I don't have a family room to put the television in?What if I don't like my furniture or want to add to my collection?While I find her low-cost use-what-you-already-have approach a nice alternative to the spend-$20,000-and-change-everything approach, sometimes just rearranging your furniture and art isn't going to cut it.

Instead what we get are 10 basic design guidelines.And I do mean basic.I honestly have to wonder about all of these people who have fireplaces and don't use them as the focal point of the room.While it seems like what she says is just common sense, I suppose there is some good in having it written down.It just seems like it isn't really enough information to fill an entire book and then charge $16 for it.

I didn't find the lack of color as annoying as some other reviewers but that's because Ward's design consists primarily of physical arrangement; the use of color wouldn't have helped make things much clearer but definitely would have added to the cost of the book.Towards the end of the book she gives some lip service to the use of color and in that part of the book color photographs would have been useful.

It is also somewhat surprising that a book published in 1998 (my edition was published in October 1999) doesn't have a single URL to any of the sources she provides at the end of the book.



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