Trade Secrets from Use What You Have Decorating

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Redecorate in one day using what you have? It sounds too good to be true, but this was the basis of Lauri Ward's revolutionary and successful home-decorating business, started in 1981.

Ward thought that many people simply wanted a prettier place to live without spending thousands of dollars on new stuff and living in a construction site for months during the process. Then she took it a step further by training decorators in the one-day business, and so the Interior Refiners Network® was born.

Ward and her network are at your disposal in this how-to book, offering their best advice, tips, solutions for all rooms in the house. There are the ten most common decorating mistakes, a section everyone will turn to. They include ignoring the room's focal point, using upholstered furniture of different heights, using lighting incorrectly, and hanging artwork improperly. Once you've decided if you've committed any of these sins, move on to the room-by-room suggestions.

Among Ward's practical tips: For better visual harmony, correct the metal accents in every room of the house -- brass for traditional homes, stainless steel or brushed chrome in modern homes. Never use more than three colors in your kitchen -- and that includes steel or chrome, which "reads" as a color. For a great do-it-yourself desk, try using two 30-inch-high end tables and laying a piece of Formica or marble across the top. Instead of using a wallpaper border in your child's room, have a 6-to-8-inch wooden shelf mounted 12 inches below the ceiling all around the periphery of the room. It will be the ideal way to display toys and stuffed animals. Convert a large closet into a home office so you can close the door on your work life at the end of the day. There's black-and-white line art throughout, and a good resource section at the back. One caveat: Ward does have one tip that all book lovers would do well to avoid. She thinks you should remove the paper jackets from all your hardcover books for a more sophisticated appearance. Don't do that! (Ginger Curwen)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Lauri Ward has revolutionized the home-decorating business with her unique use-what-you-have philosophy introduced in her first book, Use What You Have Decorating.Now, Trade Secrets from Use What You Have Decorating, takes us behind the scenes and into the creative cauldron of one of the most innovative decorating firms in the country. From avoiding the most common decorating mistakes and creating a comfortable care-free home to dealing with storage, furniture, home offices, or art work, Trade Secrets provides hundreds of hints, tips, and ideas that Lauri Ward and her associates in the Interior Refiners Network have used successfully with thousands of clients over the past twenty years.

Author Biography: Lauri Ward, the author of Use What You Have Decorating, is the founder of Use-What-You-Have Interiors and the Interior Refiners Network. She has appeared frequently on television, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS Evening News, ABC-TV News, and programs on Fox, Lifetime, HGTV, and CNBC. She has been featured in The New York Times, House Beautiful, Ladies' Home Journal, and other newspapers and magazines.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times

Ms. Ward provides a foundation of unassailable basics, from decorating to streamlining a room overstuffed with paintings and photographs.

Publishers Weekly

In this follow-up to Use What You HaveR Decorating, Ward gives more advice as well as a reiteration of her ten decorating principles. The helpful-hints format is punctuated with real-life examples of the success of Ward's decorating approach from her clients as well as from guests to her web site. The lack of "before and after" photographs, which appeared in her previous book, is a disappointment, since they illustrated her ideas so well. A list of resources for products mentioned in the text concludes the book. For its wealth of practical decorating advice, this book is highly recommended for any size public library. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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