Customer Reviews

Beautiful Built-ins: Plans for Designing with Stock Cabinets

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have a new home in Dallas and found this book to be just what I was looking for to help with upgrades in my home. I like that built-in look and used the book to design a television cabinet in the family room and a window seat in an upstairs bedroom. The instructions were easy and I could buy everything I needed at the Home Depot.

I'm sure this book would be a good investment for anyone who wants to upgrade their home on a do-it-yourself budget.

The only color photograph is on the cover. This is a big book with 500 pages, hundreds of drawings depicting many layouts and a clear list of cabinets needed along with additional materials required to complete each layout. Each of the twelve chapters focuses on a specific area such as bedrooms, baths, beverage centers, entertainment centers and utility areas. The author offers many design variations for each area.

The strength of this book is the huge variety of designs shown for each project area. The author illustrates many clever ways to use stock cabinets to create a variety of custom looks. The weakness for me is the lack of any color photographs to help visualize the results in a finished projects. This is a great resource of concepts for professional designers or decorators who have the imagination to know how drawings translate to finished results.

I am a designer and recently moved to a loft in Atlanta. Connie Edward's book will be such an asset to me in utilizing my space. Having a very small closet, her ideas and suggestions will be so valuable and easy to follow. This book is for everyone who likes to do projects themselves. Ms. Edwards is an expert in Cabinetry and her book should not be missed. It is an excellent book and tool for Interior Designers to illustrate different looks for their clients.

This book seemed meaningless to me. As others have noted, it is basically a very long sequence of rather poor line drawings and very little else. Very few low quality pictures are included; that is a pity because they could help provide some inspiration or guide your design. And fairly little know-how information is provided for do-it-yourself folks - the author recommends using professional installers. For most people, cabinet manufacturer websites and/or a visit to your local Home Depot or Lowe's kitchen design center will be much more useful than this book.

It is my own fault for not reading the entire description of this book, but it is not what I first thought it was. This book simply has different layouts for stock cabinets your could buy (for example at Home Depot). I should think that manufacturers of these cabinets could give you a book like this for free to help you decide layouts. So, you have a book of hundreds of different arrangements of cabinets, and you'll probably find 1 or 2 that you actually like or need. It does seem to leave a lot of the figuring, ie measuring to fit, to you. If not free, this book should be like $9. I gave 3 stars because if you want lots of ideas on how to arrange cabinets for all areas of the house, this book serves its purpose. However, if I really rated its value to me, I'd say 1 star, maybe half. Can I return this??

500 pages of cabinet designes in line drawing format! If you get one idea from this book it is worth the price, and believe me, there are many ideas you can use. I have been designing cabinets for a year now and this book has added to my ability to generate good designs for my clients.

This book has lots of plans, developed in CAD. Plans are in black and white. Having color pictures of finished installations as well would make it more useful. 99% of the book will never be used, and for the 5% that may be used, the usefulness is limited since it is dependent on the size of the area you're working with and where you can get the cabinets. It is just as easy to email a picture of the area you're working with to a cabinet designer and have them come up with ideas. I wouldn't recommend spending the money on it - it is easy enough to do the planning on your own.

I am a kitchen designer and I found this book to be an invaluable tool. I highly recommend it to others in my profession or those "do-it-yourself-ers" out there.

This book contains almost no photographs of finished projects. There are hardly any diagrams of the intermediate steps, and the instructions are minimalistic at best. This book assumes a reasonable knowledge of cabinet installation techniques; however, persons who possess such skills would largely find this book unnecessary. What you do get in this book is lots of line drawings of how to stack and arrange cabinets in different configurations, but these drawings are much like the ones you can get through the design services that are provided by Lowe's, Home Depot, and other major home supply stores.
A better choice would be "Built-In Furniture: A Gallery of Design Ideas".