Discover the potential of rescued objects with "Recycled Home". In this beautiful book, Mark and Sally Bailey share their passion for the simple and well-made things in life. The look they love is stripped back, focusing on the integrity of the materials and surface quality - perhaps chipped paint showing the layers beneath, combinations of rough textures with clean lines or old materials with stainless steel or concrete. The book begins with the Elements of the Baileys' style. Here they demonstrate key components, including Textures, Storage, Walls & Floors, Lighting and Display. A section on Rooms shows how well the look can work throughout the home, including offices and children's rooms.
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About the Author
Mark and Sally Bailey's style has been evolving for over 25 years in both their home and business, which includes a large showroom and shop located in the Herefordshire countryside. They live near Ross-on-Wye and this is their first book together.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If you like refined and finished, this book is not for you. However, if you prefer exploring the potential of abandoned objects and the possibilities of reinvention, then Recycled Home is a worthwhile purchase. Endless photos of eclectic design elements, found bits and pieces, and quirky accessories give us lots of ideas on how to add character and to pair what we have with the unexpected. The book inspires us to create unusual and highly individual spaces while making the words "rescue" and "recycle" seem downright stylish.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is an inspiration to all thrifty, recycled, vintage antique lovers. It gives insight into how to make the shabby-kinda-chic look can work in a variety of ways and spaces. Visually so beautiful - I wish I could take some of the treasure filled rooms and plant them in my home. Great coffee table book. I pick mine up for a quick read or visual often!
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By College Kid
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you want to pay oodles of money to get a look that says "I live in an artistically stylized movie set that is supposed to look like a romanticized factory that was abandoned for 75 years and then re-colonized Swiss Family Robinson style by pauper-electrictians who washed up with a truckload of antiques from France and a huge selection of power tools, but no paint, and please don't ask awkward questions about asbestos and lead," then this is your book. And it does a decent job of being that book for you. But I think that if they wanted to be 'honest' about what they were selling, they should have used a different title and a different cover image.
I am giving this book 3 stars because it's just OK, compared to what it marketed itself to be. This book could have been a five star book if it were marketed 'honestly' as a different book. I suggest the title should have been 'Stripped Plaster Decor' or 'Movie Set Decor: That House from Fight Club,' or 'This is how it looks when you live in an unfurnished 100 year old Victorian mansion-warehouse while changing as little as possible.' The problem is that the title and the cover represent the book as a much more mainstream, popular, shabby chic, cottage-vintage, Etsy kind of looking decor book, and it is not very good at that, at all. It is really something far stranger and more radical. I bought the book because I wanted a 'recycled' home like what is in the cover photo - and they don't let you browse images from the inside of the book.
What they do is much more radical and artistic than just recycling objects, or even recycling entire homes. They go over the top. They push the decor so far that it would be more accurate to say that they use old things (mainly old walls in old houses) to MAKE ART. Yes, they use old things to make art but their work is very, very transformative and even weird and it is totally driven by the decor asethetic, not by recycling. For example: it's not just that a door is salvaged from someplace and shows age, it's that the door was salvaged and then purposely stripped of its paint, going down to different layers in different places, so it is a huge statement piece with 5 contrasting colors of paint in a very artful and contrived chippy and scraped down pattern, PLUS the book's idea of 'honest repair' means that a destroyed edge of the door will be nailed over with a huge shiny piece of copper, PLUS that door will be placed in a wall that is similarly unevenly stripped of its layers of paint and wallpaper, so you see stripes from the wallpaper and different colours of paint that contrast. PLUS the lighting in that room will be a single bulb dangling from a single black wire with the exposed wire running along the wall down to the special-ordered reproduction old fashioned wall switch. You see what I mean? They take everything really, really far. This has gone way beyond 'recycling the door' - this is decor art. Radical, weird art.
They have a big philosphy about 'honesty' in design elements. It basically means they don't want anything to be smooth or a single colour. They want to show the structure and what was there before, all at once. This means that wiring is exposed, some old wallpaper is stripped away while some is left, upholstery is mended inside-out so the raw seams show, and patches in furniture and textiles are purposely made really contrasting and obvious. For some reason, this also means that architect lamps from the 60's (they tell me) are very 'honest.' I think that the 'honesty' thing crosses the line to be too self-conscious and even becomes fake in some places. If you have to try really hard to make things look honest on purpose, you are not being honest. If the text of your book has to suggest to me what 'looks honest,' you are trying too hard to fake it. I thought that in their quest to LOOK recycled and 'honest,' the designers had to try really, really hard to have special decor custom made or shipped in, imported from antique stores in other countries, scuffed up and turned inside out on purpose, or made new. They are decor designers who are trying to create a look, and create art. That is different from actually recycling objects, living in a home with them, and being honest about it.
Their obsession with 'honest' decor especially rubbed me the wrong way given the book's title and cover not honestly representing what was in the book. If you are going to show the seams, because that is honest, why not show us what is really inside your book?
I am giving this book 3 stars because it's just OK, compared to what it marketed itself to be. This book could have been a five star book if it were marketed 'honestly' as a different book. I suggest the title should have been 'Stripped Plaster Decor' or 'Movie Set Decor: That House from Fight Club,' or 'This is how it looks when you live in an unfurnished 100 year old Victorian mansion-warehouse while changing as little as possible.' The problem is that the title and the cover represent the book as a much more mainstream, popular, shabby chic, cottage-vintage, Etsy kind of looking decor book, and it is not very good at that, at all. It is really something far stranger and more radical. I bought the book because I wanted a 'recycled' home like what is in the cover photo - and they don't let you browse images from the inside of the book.
What they do is much more radical and artistic than just recycling objects, or even recycling entire homes. They go over the top. They push the decor so far that it would be more accurate to say that they use old things (mainly old walls in old houses) to MAKE ART. Yes, they use old things to make art but their work is very, very transformative and even weird and it is totally driven by the decor asethetic, not by recycling. For example: it's not just that a door is salvaged from someplace and shows age, it's that the door was salvaged and then purposely stripped of its paint, going down to different layers in different places, so it is a huge statement piece with 5 contrasting colors of paint in a very artful and contrived chippy and scraped down pattern, PLUS the book's idea of 'honest repair' means that a destroyed edge of the door will be nailed over with a huge shiny piece of copper, PLUS that door will be placed in a wall that is similarly unevenly stripped of its layers of paint and wallpaper, so you see stripes from the wallpaper and different colours of paint that contrast. PLUS the lighting in that room will be a single bulb dangling from a single black wire with the exposed wire running along the wall down to the special-ordered reproduction old fashioned wall switch. You see what I mean? They take everything really, really far. This has gone way beyond 'recycling the door' - this is decor art. Radical, weird art.
They have a big philosphy about 'honesty' in design elements. It basically means they don't want anything to be smooth or a single colour. They want to show the structure and what was there before, all at once. This means that wiring is exposed, some old wallpaper is stripped away while some is left, upholstery is mended inside-out so the raw seams show, and patches in furniture and textiles are purposely made really contrasting and obvious. For some reason, this also means that architect lamps from the 60's (they tell me) are very 'honest.' I think that the 'honesty' thing crosses the line to be too self-conscious and even becomes fake in some places. If you have to try really hard to make things look honest on purpose, you are not being honest. If the text of your book has to suggest to me what 'looks honest,' you are trying too hard to fake it. I thought that in their quest to LOOK recycled and 'honest,' the designers had to try really, really hard to have special decor custom made or shipped in, imported from antique stores in other countries, scuffed up and turned inside out on purpose, or made new. They are decor designers who are trying to create a look, and create art. That is different from actually recycling objects, living in a home with them, and being honest about it.
Their obsession with 'honest' decor especially rubbed me the wrong way given the book's title and cover not honestly representing what was in the book. If you are going to show the seams, because that is honest, why not show us what is really inside your book?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beyond Shabby -Different decorating, interesting ideas!
OK, I totally "get" negative reviews of this book when they describe some of the photos in this book and I agree to a certain extent. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Jersey Reader
1.0 out of 5 stars
WTF decorating?
I love vintage, shabby chic and recycled decorating, but there is a line between those things and...just plain junk. Read more
Published on March 29, 2011 by LuWanda Witchfield
1.0 out of 5 stars
Very Deceptive Cover
I was EXTREMELY disappointed with this book. The cover photo is WONDERFUL but that is the only thing good about this book. Read more
Published on February 5, 2010 by Blue
4.0 out of 5 stars
clever enough
Without the surprise in all of its pages, this book creates an atmosphere based on good photography and styling. Read more
Published on September 6, 2009 by Evagelia Topalidou
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