The House Always Wins: Create the Home You Love-Without Busting Your Budget

by Marni Jameson, Dominique Browning (Foreword by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738212654
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	05/01/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Marni Jameson is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, and serial home improver who writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times, Woman's Day, and other publications. She lives with her family in Colorado.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Preface: Come On In xiii

Part I Let's Get Real

Design basics: Finding your dream house and discovering your style

1 Pick the Right House in the Right Place: What to look for when buying an old or new home 3

2 Background Check: The importance of homework 12

3 Reality Check: Why your home will never look like a model home, and how it can still look great 15

4 Find Your Style and Create Your Plan: Think like Plato: Who are you and what are you doing here? 20

Part II Decisions, Decisions

Selecting wall treatments, flooring, counters, tile, and cabinetry

5 The Big Picture: Start with something certain 33

6 The Color of Indecision: Finding the right wall color 37

7 Floored by the Options: A sane person's guide to choosing carpet, pad, and wood flooring 43

8 Set in Stone: The fine art of picking creative tile, granite, and other stone 50

9 Cabinets Are Like Cabernet: The more you know the more you spend 55

10 Buyer Beware: Avoiding builder gouge on upgrades: A word from the wary 60

11 Moving Pains: What to pack, what to let go of, and how to put your old stuff in a new place 64

12 No More Reality Television!: Covering windows with style 72

13 Calling It Curtains: Drapes from the sublime to the simple 82

14 It's Not Your Grandma's Wallpaper: The brave new world of wallpaper: For some it's a passion 96

15 Character Development Begins at Home: Building character one doorknob at a time 105

16 Honey Do, Honey Don't: How to know when a home improvement job is for someone else 109

Part III The Goods On The Goods

Furnishing your home: Copying good looks, usingwhat you have, finding what you need, getting deals, buying quality

17 What Do-It-Yourself Decorators Don't Get: Basic Design advice from top pros 115

18 Four Places to Find Inspiration (and Rip Off Ideas): What to take away from home design books, shelter magazines, TV shows, home tours, and the color conspiracy-and what to ignore 121

19 Pulling the Trigger: Why furniture shopping is so hard, and how to start 139

20 When Something's Got to Go: Dealing with furniture mistakes and deaths 149

21 Bargain Hunting: Finding deals, insisting on quality 156

Part IV The Finishing Touch

Putting home accessories in their place

22 Home Accessories Are Like Dessert: It's not the first thousand dollars you spend that matter, but the last hundred 173

23 Selecting Artwork and Area Rugs: Rule #1: Buy what you love 180

24 Arranging Books, Collections, and Other Knickknacks: Turn a hodgepodge into an artful display 193

25 Flowers and Houseplants: Getting good fakes, and helping what's alive thrive 202

Part V Rooms For A Reason

Kids' rooms, home theaters, offices, guest rooms, laundry and mudrooms, garages

26 Kids' Rooms: Where decorating and parenting clash 213

27 Home Theaters for Household Drama: The makings of a home theater widow 220

28 Home Office Is an Oxymoron: A warning to all those who say they want to work from home 230

29 Company's Coming and the Guest Room Needs Gutting: They're he-ere 238

30 Utility Rooms and Garages: Note to men: Say it with tools 242

Part VI Taking It Outside

Tackling the yard: From design to maintenance, decks to patio furnishings

31 The Not-So-Great Outdoors: Taking on weeds, sinkholes, Mother Nature, the HOA, and bad landscapers 257

32 All Decked Out: Building and finishing outdoor living spaces 274

33 Color Me Floral: An idiot's guide to flowerpots 283

34 Yard Maintenance: Managing the lazy mow-blow-and-go lawn service, first frosts, and the amazing matters of mulch 289

Part VII Homes For The Holidays

Create festive tables, deck the halls, and get ready to party

35 Thoughts on the Table: Tasteful table settings for festive feasts 303

36 Christmas Tree Olympics: And other holiday décor sports 307

37 Party Time!: Whose idea was this? 317

Part VIII Home Economics

Make your household dollars go farther without feeling the pinch

38 Thirty Ways to Patch Money Leaks at Home: Start cutting energy, food, and yard bills now 323

Final Thought: You Can Take This Home 335

Acknowledgments 339

Index 340

Editorial Reviews

Deseret News, 3/14/09
“Jameson offers budget-friendly advice on how to spruce up the house you’re already in. Jameson focuses not only on how-tos and design options but the personal interactions with contractors, spouses, children and friends. She provides strategies to get started, pointers to make things easier and tips to keep you entertained while you work.”

Tucson Citizen, 3/18/09
“Filled with advice for those who need to spruce up their homes but do not have an unlimited budget. There are simple strategies to get started, practical pointers to make every step easier, expert advice on everything from new tax laws to custom flooring, and tips to help survive almost any home remodel project."

InfoDad.com, 3/26/09
“Especially in the current economic environment, when families are far more likely to contemplate creating a comfortable home for themselves than moving to another one, a book such as The House Always Wins offers comfort to the cocooning…Jameson provides both large-scale advice and small-scale information…Jameson’s relentlessly upbeat, chatty hints will reassure you that you are not alone and that home decorating and redecorating is by no means an impossible task.

From the Publisher