Review of Terence Conran Kitchens: The Hub of the Home (Hardcover)

I love this book and found it very inspirational when I designed my kitchen. I had already thumbed through the various decorating house and kitchen magazines one might see at Barnes and Nobles. Most of those showed your typical cheesy American kitchen with lots of over-the-top materials badly paired together in one space. The kitchens in this book appealed to me because, as a generalization, they were a little arty, sophisticated and unexpected, without being kooky. I even borrowed a color them from one of the examples. Granted some of the kitchens didn't work but the majority did - and there was a lot of variation among those that did.

Product Description
Updated with all-new content for 2002, Terence Conran's invaluable reference on kitchens tackles the most complex design project in the house.

In many ways the heart of the home, the kitchen is a place where style and function can coexist magnificently. International style king Terence Conran shows us how to do just that in Terence Conran Kitchens. In terms of planning, the kitchen makes unique demands, and Conran covers both the overarching style concerns and the nitty-gritty practicalities of making your dream kitchen a reality. The book ranges from the basics of good design (whether you're starting from scratch or fitting new appliances into an old layout) to an encyclopedic look at all the materials (storage, lighting, worktops, and more) available to the kitchen designer today. As always, Conran provides case studies and floor plans, bring-ing the best kitchens within reach of every reader. No one embarking on the demanding task of redesigning a kitchen wants to do it without the right book for reference and inspiration. With up-to-date information on the latest styles and a thorough look at classic appliances and materials, Terence Conran Kitchens does it all.

From the Inside Flap
Updated with all-new content for 2002, Terence Conran?s invaluable reference on kitchens tackles the most complex design project in the house.

In many ways the heart of the home, the kitchen is a place where style and function can coexist magnificently. International style king Terence Conran shows us how to do just that in Terence Conran Kitchens. In terms of planning, the kitchen makes unique demands, and Conran covers both the overarching style concerns and the nitty-gritty practicalities of making your dream kitchen a reality. The book ranges from the basics of good design (whether you?re starting from scratch or fitting new appliances into an old layout) to an encyclopedic look at all the materials (storage, lighting, worktops, and more) available to the kitchen designer today. As always, Conran provides case studies and floor plans, bring-ing the best kitchens within reach of every reader. No one embarking on the demanding task of redesigning a kitchen wants to do it without the right book for reference and inspiration. With up-to-date information on the latest styles and a thorough look at classic appliances and materials, Terence Conran Kitchens does it all.

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Review of Spirit of the Home: How to Make Your Home a Sanctuary (Paperback)

This book pulls together a variety of spiritual concepts - feng shui, goddesses, purification/smudging, creating altars, use of stones and crystals, aromatherapy/scents in the home, and colors.It's really a great overview.Activities like spring cleaning and decluttering are covered as are specific rooms like bedrooms, kitchen, etc.There are some terrific photographs throughout the book which really inspire.I like that the author put all of this together into one book.I have other books that talk around all this - one on feng shui, one on crystals, one on potpourri, etc.This book ties them together and I feel like now I can go back to those other books and apply them better.

Product Description
For readers who want to go beyond feng shui to the nextlevel of home enhancement, this beautifully illustrated book looks tothe mythology and psychology of the home, while showing imaginativeand practical ways to use light, color, and sound to give any livingspace a welcoming and relaxing ambience.

Designing and arranging spaces that improve the quality oflife-spiritually, emotionally, and physically-can make a home, be it aspacious house or a single room, a refuge from a stressfulworld. Readers will find the process of improving their home to besimple and fun as they follow the book's formulas. For example, the"Loose Living" chapter shows how people with no sewing skills canenhance a room by swathing and draping furniture in fresh fabric as aninstant cover-up for a battered sofa-or use fabric as an ally tofilter the light atmospherically or conceal a dismal view. The "FoundObjects" chapter shows how finds from junk shops, flea markets, andother secondhand sources can be transformed into treasuredkeepsakes. Instructions for arranging the home to attract success andenergy and clear clutter painlessly are among the manyeasy-to-implement tips presented.



Click Here to see more reviews about: Spirit of the Home: How to Make Your Home a Sanctuary (Paperback)

Review of Spirit of the Home: How to Make Your Home a Sanctuary (Paperback)

This book pulls together a variety of spiritual concepts - feng shui, goddesses, purification/smudging, creating altars, use of stones and crystals, aromatherapy/scents in the home, and colors.It's really a great overview.Activities like spring cleaning and decluttering are covered as are specific rooms like bedrooms, kitchen, etc.There are some terrific photographs throughout the book which really inspire.I like that the author put all of this together into one book.I have other books that talk around all this - one on feng shui, one on crystals, one on potpourri, etc.This book ties them together and I feel like now I can go back to those other books and apply them better.

Product Description
For readers who want to go beyond feng shui to the nextlevel of home enhancement, this beautifully illustrated book looks tothe mythology and psychology of the home, while showing imaginativeand practical ways to use light, color, and sound to give any livingspace a welcoming and relaxing ambience.

Designing and arranging spaces that improve the quality oflife-spiritually, emotionally, and physically-can make a home, be it aspacious house or a single room, a refuge from a stressfulworld. Readers will find the process of improving their home to besimple and fun as they follow the book's formulas. For example, the"Loose Living" chapter shows how people with no sewing skills canenhance a room by swathing and draping furniture in fresh fabric as aninstant cover-up for a battered sofa-or use fabric as an ally tofilter the light atmospherically or conceal a dismal view. The "FoundObjects" chapter shows how finds from junk shops, flea markets, andother secondhand sources can be transformed into treasuredkeepsakes. Instructions for arranging the home to attract success andenergy and clear clutter painlessly are among the manyeasy-to-implement tips presented.



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Review of Apartment Therapy: The Eight-Step Home Cure (Paperback)

As a reviewer previously noted, there really isn't anything new here. But like a chef who takes ingredients we are well familiar with and combines them to give us a new experience, so too does Maxwell. There are the little gimmicks--calling people warm and cool, talking about the house like a body when he could just say he's writing about attending to repairs (bones), arranging and organizing the stuff in your space (breath), figuring out the functions of each room (head) and decorating (heart). But this is not a meal of last night's leftovers. Instead it is packaged into another gimmick: the eight week cure. There's a lot to do in your eight weeks: and the work seems unbalanced. It starts out slowly (throwing out one thing, making lists) and ends slowly (preparing for a party) but in the middle there's almost an impossible amount of things to do. But it's all laid out. There are worksheets and practical tips to begin. Maxwell has taken all the steps to transforming a living space and laid them all out sequentially. This book is about more than just fixing up your place however: Maxwell aims to change and enrich your experience of your home. And that's the spice that makes the book worth consuming.

This book is also something else. It's a primer for a web site and blog. It sets out the vocabulary and explains the aims of hundreds of people who have already participated in the first on-line cure. Like Marla Cilley's Sink Reflections, the book functions as a portal to the collective on-line experience. There are no lush photographs in the book.They are on the web site.

More than anything, though, Maxwell writes his prose well and in such a way that one feels inspired to tackle transforming one's home and experience in it. I'm not in a small apartment in the city---but a small house in a city whose burbs are ever expanding outwards. I don't need to start cooking at home--as he recommends--but taking those wonderful morning baths he advocates. It'll be a challenge to implement the cure for my home and it will take longer than eight weeks. Nonetheless, he has inspired me to do all he counsels and for that reason I recommend the book.




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