Home Is Where You Make It: DIY ideas and styling secrets to create a home you love - whether you rent or own

by GENEVA VANDERZEIL

Add style and individuality to your home with DIY, even when you're renting. Home Is Where You Make It channels the simplicity and beauty of modern living. This is your room-by-room guide to making and DIYing your own place, with hundreds of clever styling hacks, repurposing and upstyling ideas, and easy weekend projects to create the home of your dreams.

• ISBN13: 9781911632351
• Publish Date: 5 March 2020 (first published 3 March 2020)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Murdoch Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 224
• Language: English
• URL: https://murdochbooks.co.uk/browse/books/9781911632351

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Home Is Where You Make It is a tutorial, decorating, and ideas book for home decor by Geneva Vanderzeil. Due out 3rd March 2020 from Simon & Schuster on their Tiller Press imprint, it's 224 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

This is an upbeat DIY volume aimed at modern cottage style re-do's. There is a fair bit of content devoted to surface updates which would be particularly relevant to renters or would-be decorators on a strict budget. I liked the emphasis on upcycling and repurpose/repair. The author uses a room by room tutorial format which allows the reader to pick and choose menu style, or browse through the book cover to cover.

The chapter tutorials are interspersed with Q&A type sidebars with good short takes on particular decorating problems (what to do if others who share the space don't agree with design choices, how to redecorate on a severely anemic budget (or zero budget), how to pick small pieces (baskets, mirrors, framed art), and more.

I enjoyed reading the book and paging through the beautifully done photographs (seriously, the photos are wonderful). I found a few particularly good tips for my own use. The vibe of the book is younger and somewhat feminine and 'shabby chic/cottage'. There were some decidedly quirky and whimsical features (a half painted, half raw wood front door), but the whole book has a kind of bouncy upbeat vibe that it never degenerates into pretentiousness or stuffiness.

Four stars. Some good stuff here.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.