The House Always Wins: America’s Most Trusted Home Columnist’s Guide to Creating Your (Almost) Perfect Dream House [Hardcover]

Marni Jameson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 26, 2008

More than 7 million readers of Marni Jameson’s weekly home design column have already discovered how Jameson entertains and inspires, while imparting well-researched and personally validated DIY advice. Now, in her first-ever book on home improvement, she offers a compulsively readable, zanily humorous, yet also completely practical guide to a headache-free home makeover for everyone decorating a new house or updating an old one.Jameson has designed, built, and decorated three homes from the ground up. In The House Always Wins, she brings us along as she decorates, furnishes, and landscapes her current home. Though rooted in her own experience, this is no navel-gazing memoir. Rather, Jameson is like a favorite sister who has learned it all the hard way and is now here to prompt and inspire you to figure out your own personal style, make a design plan, and create your (almost) perfect dream home-one step at a time. With Jameson as our guide, we navigate through the seemingly endless maze of choices and decisions every home improver faces: wall color, flooring, cabinetry, window treatments, furniture, bargain hunting, home accessories, rugs, kids’ spaces, special purpose rooms (like the garage and guest, laundry, and mud rooms), landscaping, outdoor living spaces-and that’s just to start. Along the way, Jameson injects insights into the relationships and realities that dog every home improvement project. She also pauses to share hard-won secrets and money-saving tips distilled from her own redecorating experience and from interviews with dozens of renowned home-design experts.For anyone dealing with budgets, time constraints, unreliable contractors, a cheap spouse, kids, and pets-and who would appreciate having someone to commiserate with about the unattainable perfection featured in glossy magazine spreads-The House Always Wins will comfort (it can always be worse), inspire (who knew?!), and be absolutely indispensable.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers gain the benefit of Jameson's experience—along with laugh-out-loud anecdotes—in this informative home-improvement guide. Jameson, a home improvement columnist, has consulted for, at various times, a $100-an-hour interior decorator on what knickknacks to place in the space between the kitchen cabinets and the ceiling; an interior designer to artfully rearrange her bookcase; and a Christmas tree decorator to fill her home with holiday spirit. She shares what she learned from them, as well as her own experiences designing, building and decorating three homes from the ground up. And, like most of us, she's had to complete her home while dealing with money shortages, time constraints, a skeptical husband and wisecracking kids. With real-life in mind, Jameson talks her readers through design basics such as finding a personal style, then moves through every room in the house and the yard, always maintaining a sense of humor and a scrupulous talent for detail. She even exposes the tricks design magazines use to create those envy-inspiring rooms, and dishes dirt on how home design shows cheat to create their masterpieces on time and under budget. Even readers with no immediate designs on redecorating their homes will find Jameson interesting and amusing. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The only question to ask after finishing newspaper columnist Jameson’s highly personal, achingly realistic, and snickeringly funny introduction to home decorating is, Why is she read by only seven million readers in 30 markets? Through a series of real-life scenarios and authentic conversations with husband Dan and a host of interior-design experts, the author investigates every aspect of buying then transforming a house into a home. Along the way, she destroys such myths as Why your house will never look like a model and still look great. She dispenses lots of practical advice, such as knowing when the repair is a job for someone else and avoiding builder gouges on upgrades. She offers a wealth of creative solutions, whether starting a vision bag (which gathers magazine decorating clippings in one place) or providing ideas for holiday ornaments and designs. Her easy-to-read sidebars are generously situated throughout the text, capturing how-to’s in one place. Pragmatic humor is no longer an oxymoron. --Barbara Jacobs

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; First Edition edition (February 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1600940676
• ISBN-13: 978-1600940675
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #377,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Decorator's Dream Book, April 5, 2008

By 

Eileen A. Roth "Eileen R" (Mission Viejo, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The House Always Wins: America’s Most Trusted Home Columnist’s Guide to Creating Your (Almost) Perfect Dream House (Hardcover)

What a wonderful, witty, informative and engaging book. There is something for everyone within the covers of this book. It takes you from the very earliest stages of decorating your home to the completed look without the expense of a decorator, all done with a wonderful sense of humor describing the perils we have all experienced. If you have ever had to deal with contractors, painters, no-shows, budgets and calamaties here is the help we all need to prevent those costly mistakes. I loved the feeling of familiarity with the experiences of the author and had many a laugh along the way. I can think of no better way to chart a course to a warm, personal touch in my home than to use this book as my decorating bible.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Encouraging read, but financially on another planet, February 16, 2009

By 

P. Wiles (California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The House Always Wins: America’s Most Trusted Home Columnist’s Guide to Creating Your (Almost) Perfect Dream House (Hardcover)

It's rare for me to pick up a decorating book which is all text and no pictures, so I was surprised to thoroughly enjoy this book and can warmly recommend it. It's well-written, entertaining, yet full of sound advice from experts. The best part for me was the realization I am not the only one whose spouse sees no point at all in decorating!

I understand the main point of the book is that we learn from Ms Jameson's mistakes and get things right first time. But her description of glibly tearing out the hardwood floors already being installed in her new home, to go with an upgraded option, really made me blink. Her aforementioned spouse must truly be very laid back. In addition, paying $200 for a designer's suggestions for what to put on top of her kitchen cabinets seems way extreme. You can read for yourself the cost of the flower arrangement that didn't work out for the entryway. One final gripe on finances - in a couple of places, Ms Jameson suggests buying things out of state to avoid paying the sales tax. I have to point out that, at least in California, the IRS would be very interested in that tactic - you are supposed to declare those items on your filing and stump up the cash at the end of the year.

So, although I feel this book is not quite 'of our times' in terms of the funds she clearly sinks into her own projects, I will take it in the spirit intended, and hope that I can save a couple of costly mistakes because of it. Moreover, knowing it's OK for my house to be un-magazine-worthy, and recognizing it's absolutely normal for men to be essentially color-blind, made it a worthwhile read for me.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll be right at home with 'The House Always Wins!', June 19, 2008

By 

Erin McNeely "EKM" (Dallas/Fort Worth, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The House Always Wins: America’s Most Trusted Home Columnist’s Guide to Creating Your (Almost) Perfect Dream House (Hardcover)

This is the book you will wish you had written. Haven't we all felt like we were in the Tom Hanks movie 'The Money Pit' a time or two when trying to dress our nest?

Marni Jameson takes you through her journey of learning how to find your true style, develop a workable (and affordable) plan of action, and, most importantly, how to both learn from AND laugh at your mistakes.

You'll cry from laughing and commiserating with her over things that you may have experienced in your quests...but you'll also gain the confidence to get going again.

From yard sale finds to antique stores, close-outs, cast-offs, and special orders...won't it feel good to do it right next time? Or at least be able to have a glass of wine and laugh over your follies? The best part is that Marni infuses the laughs with specific help to make your next attempt a success.

You'll learn why "it never looks as good as in the magazine" but why that is actually A-OK! You'll learn that everyone makes the "cheapskate" mistakes and has contractor "issues" now and then. You'll get some great ideas from Marni...to help you find your OWN ideas. Brilliant concept!

You will enjoy this book and I predict you will see yourself and others in it. In fact, I predict, like me, you'll order a few more copies for those buddettes of yours. Go ahead...make their day!