Customer Reviews

Recycled Home

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

 

 

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.

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!

Without the surprise in all of its pages, this book creates an atmosphere based on good photography and styling. Above this has nice and clever ideas for creation with unusual things that aren't easy to find or think.

I love vintage, shabby chic and recycled decorating, but there is a line between those things and...just plain junk. Although the book is photographed beautifully, it is contains nothing practical or even interesting objects that the average person can find, unless you like rusty gears, old pieces of rotten wood, etc. I don't see how you could have some of these objects in a home with children because of the safety factor. So if things are not useful or decorative, why have them? Unless you see your home decor as shock value, this book is not helpful at all.

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. I would think that when using too much of one thing in decorating, the result can seem rather flat in a way. When obviously distressed elements are used, well that rule would double in meaning because when one has a bed made out of unfinished and worn out wood with well-used bedding and then walls that look like they have been stripped of wallpaper and old paint and then left that way along with vintage throw rugs and the like, then the room is going to visually read as sloppy.

The photographs are beautiful. Some kind of filtered light effect was used. However, made me wonder if these rooms look beautiful ALL the time or in person, or if the lighting and photography is a key factor in capturing the charm of these spaces. Some of the most stunning applications of using these "wabi-sabi" items (to me, anyway) are when they are mixed with "new" or completely finished/unmarred objects, say, a weathered wood table with a brand new brushed stainless sheet of metal permanently affixed to the top, a new LCD TV on a distressed wood board, or a shiny chrome lamp on top of an old desk, etc. The kids rooms ideas aren't really appealing to me, kids are all about putting their mouths on things or jumping all over them, and having unfinished wood, especially in a baby's cradle (!) doesn't seem practical, nor safe, even if it is lined in shearling.

Anyone who's familiar with the Brokeback Mountain movie might find a correlation style-wise to the bedroom of the deceased character's childhood home near the end of the movie...kind of like Dustbowl Decorating, if you will. Everything has a whitewashed, bleached-out, various-shades-of-white kind of comfy to it that can quickly cross over into unkempt if there's too much of it.

That said, though, this book was really fascinating to me, I love the very idea of using well-loved objects for decorating. It kind of has that Paris flea market/boho loft vibe to it, but can, perception-wise, come off as cheap and lazy (unrefined) if one isn't careful in their execution or leaves too much unfinished. Yet, I found some of the ideas really inspiring and motivating. It makes me look at objects that might not appear special and wonder, "How can that be used again in a creative way?"

I was EXTREMELY disappointed with this book. The cover photo is WONDERFUL but that is the only thing good about this book. As for all the other photos, I'm sure they must have gone to one or more condemned buildings to take the shots that were in the rest of this book. I wouldn't let my dog live in the run down mess they showed. Everything looked old and dirty, and not in a good way. If you like pealing paint and I mean a lot of really bad pealing paint then you MIGHT like this book. Unfortunately, I could not see anything that looked like it had any merit or worth. There was very little designing or decorating in this book and what there was of it was soooo boring. There were too many photos of really gross walls and wood work but they could have taken these dilapidated walls and wood work and decorated them but really they didn't. What a waste of time and money. Take as much inspiration from the cover as you can and imagine what might or should be in the book. You will save $20.

The only reason anyone would give this a good review is if they work for the publisher or are a friend of the writer or photographer.