Home Therapy: Fast, Easy, Affordable Makeovers Book

Inspiring transformations from the author of Use What You Have Decorating®-with color photos throughout!

Lauri Ward has been a "home therapist" to thousands through her books, articles, and media appearances for more than two decade. This inspiring guide takes readers into the real homes and lives of 25 of Lauri's clients to show a wide range of decorating challenges and the solutions that Lauri offered to meet their needs and expectations. Illustrated with more than 150 full-color and black-and-white before-and-after photos and floor plans, HHome Therapy offers help in transforming living spaces for everyone from twenty-somethings to retirees, using the space and things they already have-and a budget they can afford.

Publishers Weekly

In this straightforward, practical guide to redecorating, Ward, founder of the interiors firm Use-What-You-Have, Inc., and author of Use What You Have Decorating, uses engaging real-life stories of home makeovers to demonstrate how to work with one's existing furniture, space and accessories to create great spaces. Diagrams, before and after photos, and bulleted lists that call out common decorating mistakes help to illustrate her points clearly-and give readers a peek inside other peoples' homes, appealing to the voyeur in everyone. Each chapter addresses a different decorating conundrum-moving to a smaller space, moving to a much larger space, dealing with an overstuffed home, childproofing, preparing to sell a home-and introduces the clients, their complaints, the diagnosis, the remedy and long-term recommendations. Descriptions of clients ("a leggy blonde with a huge, bright smile"; "a tall, slim man with boyish good looks") feel forced, but suggest the reality of the solutions described. (Oct. 3) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.