Customer Reviews

Bungalow Details Interior

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The reader might well develop a relationship with this book. Jane Powell takes you on an in-depth tour of the American bungalow. As she talks, her writing is conversational, the details are often interrupted with a pun, other humor, or an outburst revealing her biases. Readers who are looking for an academic study should go elsewhere. This is an enjoyable light-hearted "Open House" without a salesperson but rather a builder-decorator-owner. Powell knows this subject from being there and having done that. Behind her puns you find a seriousness based on an emotional bonding with bungalows. If the reader is thinking about rehabbing a bungalow this book is a necessity. If the reader has rehabbed a house meet a friend.

If you are interested in restoration this is a WONDERFUL book! Both of my daughters have purchased homes built around 1920-1927. They are using this book as their bible!

In her Bungalow books Jane Powell has come close to inventing a new genre: the architectural book that is actually fun to read. The latest (Bungalow Details:Interior)is no exception. The illustrations by Linda Svendsen are stellar, as always, but sometimes I think they distract from the best part: Ms. Powell's writing. Jane Powell manages to combine extraordinary erudition with a real sense of fun, two things that virtually never go together. Her knowledge is encyclopedic, her humor unending, her love of puns totally scandalous. She is also wise, with a real sense of what should and should not be done with old houses and the resources they represent. The writings in her Bungalow (and Linoleum) books deserve to be excerpted and presented in a smaller, less expensive edition: the Sayings of Chairman Jane, if you will, devoid of distracting pictures. I highly recommend this and all of her books.

I loved the author's sense of humor... very candid about what IS acceptable for a truely historically accurate home... although my 1914 home was remodeled by not-so-accurate "carpenters." I loved the pictures (so many rooms that look like mine!). Great for ideas, but remember this is not a DIY book. Just a pretty picture book.

With doing renovation on our "new" 1906 home, found this to be a great for inspiration. Well written with great pictures!

There are several good books on Arts & Crafts and Bungalow homes, but I love Jane Powell's books. I have almost all of them.

If the intention of this book is to be a coffee table book, it has failed. There are some nice pictures, but no more than you would find in an issue of Fine Homebuilding. I believe there are only about a handful of houses presented in this book and one of them appears to be the author's own house. Out of all the beautiful craftsman homes in this country I find it surprising that she could only find that many willing to be put in a book. The book does not have the usual interior items you'd expect, but is organized by wall details, fire places, ceilings and "support groups??". The worst parts of this book are the obnoxious puns and comedic writing. I just picked up the book from my shelf hoping to find some dining room ideas. I didn't find one dining room but there are plenty of cute phrases describing pipes.

I suppose if you want to read about craftsman homes and not actually see them and your funny bone is easily tickled by groan inducing prose, this book may be perfect for you. But if you want ideas or just want to look at nice houses, try something else.

Some of the most off-putting writing I have encountered. Nice pictures but not worth encountering the unpleasant ego in every sentence. I sent this back immediately.