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Good House Cheap House: Adventures in Creating an Extraordinary Home at an Everyday Price
 
 
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Good House Cheap House: Adventures in Creating an Extraordinary Home at an Everyday Price [Hardcover]

Kira Obolensky (Author), Randy O'Rourke (Photographer)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)


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Book Description

October 4, 2005
The 27 homes in "Good House Cheap House" prove that good design doesn't have to cost a fortune. What goes into making a good, cheap house? As writer Kira Obolensky discovers, there are three main ingredients: adventuresome homeowners who are actively involved; cutting-edge architects and designers who can solve tough design challenges; and an array of innovative uses of materials. Industrial bridge washers make for gorgeous mantelpiece rosettes, old concrete subflooring is given new life with rich-hued stain, and glass sliding doors make for windows that are oversized and affordable.
From a Texas farmhouse to a loft in St. Paul, to a prefab cabin on the Wisconsin prairie, these houses, in which anyone would feel at home, display a wonderful mix of design smarts and budget savvy. ""Good House Cheap House" is chock full of great ideas and creative solutions for those of us on a budget-but even the less financially-challenged can learn a thing or two about stylish and innovative design."
--Charles Burbridge, designer, HGTV's "Design on a Dime" "The cookie-cutter house trend has been around long enough. With its outside-the-box ideas and great resources, "Good House Cheap House" proves you can build a unique space without emptying your bank account."
--Amber Jones, Editor, "do! Magazine"


Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kira Obolensky has written for print, film, and stage. She co-authored Sarah Susanka's national bestseller, The Not So Big House. Kira's book, Garage, was published in 2001. She has received a number of writing awards and fellowships, including the Kesselring Prize and a Guggenheim fellowship. She lives in Minneapolis.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 185 pages
  • Publisher: Taunton Press (October 4, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1561587524
  • ISBN-13: 978-1561587520
  • Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 9 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #186,775 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

23 Reviews
5 star:
 (13)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (23 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Should add to title "And Owners who did a lot of work themselves", July 12, 2006
By 
This review is from: Good House Cheap House: Adventures in Creating an Extraordinary Home at an Everyday Price (Hardcover)
Lovely book, love the idea, got some great ideas for my remodel. However, the author makes clear that one of the most cost-savings measures the owners took, house after house, was to do the work, or some of it, themselves. That's great, if you already work with concrete or metal or can use autoCAD, but for the rest of us, it makes some of the ideas as expensive as before. In addition, the author relied on pictures in the book, which is always great, but the text didn't really cover all of the cost-savings ideas seen in the pictures. Going through the book, I kept wanting more and more detail.

Also, the plywood, IKEA cabinets and concrete are used over and over. Now, I love and plan to use all three, but it's not like the author shows us new ideas with each house.
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42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars OK, but . . ., February 24, 2006
By 
A. Kuyper (Shonto, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Good House Cheap House: Adventures in Creating an Extraordinary Home at an Everyday Price (Hardcover)
Good pictures and layout. This book does give some good ideas, still, like many home picture books, it's a great photo portfolio and not entirely practical for the ordinary person. Also, lack of room/house plans makes it difficult to see how everything works and makes it difficult to copy a particular layout.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Good House Cheap House Great Book, October 13, 2005
By 
J. Folina (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Good House Cheap House: Adventures in Creating an Extraordinary Home at an Everyday Price (Hardcover)
This is a lovely book both in its content and its presentation. Each of the homes selected has unique, intriguing features, about which Obolensky writes with flair and enthusiasm. The writing style is uniformly crisp and elegant; and the content moves at a lively pace between different interesting details in different houses. The photographs are gorgeous, showing a variety of perspectives in beautiful light. The presentation and organization (choices of colors for borders, varying the shapes of photos, written inserts) are also visually pleasing and inviting. It is a great coffee table book, but it is not just a "picture book". It provides useful information, in that it provides examples of inexpensive, creative ways to improve our own living spaces - useful, especially, to those of us who are not so creative ourselves. The optimistic message is that almost any house can be made "good".
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Inside This Book (learn more)
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I don't spend much time dreaming about a country estate or a marble bathroom. Read the first page
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New Mexico, Btu Dot, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Whidbey Island
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