Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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".

I read the "Homes" section of our paper every week, and I am very tired of the cookie-cutter mentality in building. While it serves the purpose of providing shelter, most new home designs in the economic middle-range lack any vision beyond the two-car garage and a big entryway. Obolensky's newest book has more diverse design ideas packed in to it than any other publication of its kind. It serves up a tremendous collection of current building practices and materials. Obolensky clearly respects the ability of the imagination to find new forms in the house. This book is a great place to start generating your own ideas about how to shape the spaces you live in.

I loved this book. The author brings an artist's eye to her subject of beautiful, yet affordable homes. Although it can double as a coffee table book, once you pick it up you will be instantly inspired by the myriad possiblities for your own home--possibilities that just might be within your reach. Obolensky clearly knows her subject matter. Perhaps she'll turn her talents to television home remodeling and let me be her first client.

This book is one that really changes the notion of what we think we've

got to have in our houses--I loved these spaces, they are funky,

modern, traditional and cool--and they make me believe again in just

good ol plain resourcefulness. good message, beautiful photos, great book.

A wonderful selection of homes, a variety of spaces, innovative uses for commercial materials, and absolutely gorgeous photographs. One big drawback: no floor plans. I'd write more in my review (the house photos truly are beautiful and it does inspire you to think about innovative uses for materials) but I'm really not happy about no floor plans. I want floor plans in every book, every magazine. They leave out the floor plans; I leave out a more complete review. Seems fair.

I truly loved this book. It is inspiring and opened my thinking to a number of possibilities that I thought I would never be able to afford. The book shows that smart architecture and great design is within reach. It is beautiful to look at, extremely well written and informative. I particularly enjoyed seeing a range of homes and new housing ideas from all over the country. After I finished the first read I keep picking it up and finding new things.

The book title is a misnomer. If you are looking for inexpensive ideas to fix up your house, this book is not it. The author admits this much in the introduction when she says that the houses in the book are cheaper than a "typical builder house" but says you can't have a unique house without an architect and then says an architect bumps up the cost of your house by at least $10 a sq. ft. Ultimately the book is a book promoting architects and certain building products. IKEA must have given the author a special shout out for so zealously pushing their kitchen cabinets. The book is divided into chapters, each describing a particular house. Littered through the book -- almost in every chapter -- are numerous registered trademarked products. One chapter for a house called "Box" offers little to the homebuilder and is pretty much an advertisement for a new line of pre-fabricated houses a certain architect is promoting. You can find his contact information in the back of the book. That said, there are a few good ideas that these architects are coming up with that can be adapted by lay people to their own homes. For that, the book merits three stars.

Thank you, Kira Obolensky! This book does a great job of showing how people combined creative thinking and pragmatic spending to end up with beautiful, affordable homes in a wide range of styles. That's a huge accomplishment for the home owners, and the author and photographer of this book.

I've only had the book a couple days and already I've gleaned some excellent cost-saving ideas. I can't think of any other book that appeals to my sense of aesthetics and need for frugality in the way this book does.