From simple upgrades that improve the appearance and value of your home, to incredible makeovers that transform your garage into the greatest fantasy, this book has it all. The garage is often the predominate feature of the home, and its appearance directly effects curb appeal and the value of your investment. Explore the latest technology in floor, wall, cabinet, and door options to upgrade your garage. There are dozens of great ideas for getting storage off the floor and out of the way, if not out of sight. Then go beyond, exploring dozens of beautiful garages that will inspire you to turn yours into a showplace, and maybe even the neighborhood hang-out!

From the outside in, explore exquisite timber frame homes at your leisure. Floor plans serve as your tour guide, while leading architectural photographers illuminate the astonishing spaces and intimate detailing of authentic homes. Each evokes the grandeur of the inherited barn-style form, while expressing the individuality of the owners who took part in designing their one-of-a-kind homes. In all, 30 homes are presented for your inspection, with imagery of exteriors, great rooms, kitchens, dining areas, intimate studies, dens, and formal living rooms, as well as spacious master suites and beautifully appointed bedrooms and baths. This book will inspire all who hope to build or furnish a unique post and beam home of their own.

This book is guaranteed to inspire.\nThree-way flip panels allow you to create unique combinations for your home dA (c)cor. All color wallpaper swatches in country patterns illustrate barnyard motifs, floral patterns, pastoral landscapes, and gingham galore. Youll find Tuscan, French, British, and Americana country inspired patterns, for a global perspective on classic rural design. The book features 30 complete room shots for inspiration, 37 borders and 250 wall and trim designs, and thousands of possible combinations. Color variations of each pattern are shown on the reverse sides of the flip panels, and you can add paint chips and fabric swatches for your custom dA (c)cor .\nThis is a playbook that doubles as a seriously useful tool for dedicated professional designers and do-it-yourself home decorators. The historic and contemporary designs are all currently available from companies under the umbrella of the F. Schumacher & Company, making it possible to create your combinations in full-room scale.\nHours of fun.

Outdoor Wood Works is a collection of ideas for improving the environment around our houses. From the fences that frame our homes to the walkways that lead to our front doors, this book explores ways in which wood can improve our little stake in the great outdoors. Hundreds of ideas are presented in full-color photographs. Permanent outdoor fixtures like benches and gazebos make the outdoors more comfortable while flower boxes, retaining walls, and other accents add beauty. There's something for everyone in this book, from play sets for the children to bird and doghouses. Ten complete project plans range from the simplest of constructions-a screen around a utility box, a mailbox stand with planter, and a bench-to more advanced projects including a chair, a picnic table, and an outdoor storage shed. Designers and homeowners alike will love this idea-filled compendium of outdoor plans and projects.

Outdoor living is heating up the marketplace today, and more and more people take their leisure time outdoors. Toward that end, they're bringing the kitchen with them, along with a blazing fire to warm and illuminate their yards into the later hours. This book offers the largest collection of images of landscapes, outdoor kitchens, and fireplaces available on the market today, and with those gorgeous photos come hundreds of ideas. Live vicariously as you leaf through these pages, and then make the dream come true in your own backyard with some of the many inspirations found here.

This is the first and only book of its kind, picturing hundreds of colorful, creative children's playhouses, from fancy Victorians to neo-classical creations, all built in a child's scale. Half a dozen of the nation's leading manufacturers are profiled, with both inside and outside images of their creations. The fanciful works pictured vary from the wildly colorful to the scale-model imitations of Mom and Dad's home, from all-askew assemblies of antiques and found objects to a sleek, abstract nautilus designed for a charitable fundraiser. For the do-it-yourselfer, plans and blueprints for half a dozen playhouses are provided, as well as images with plenty of fodder for creating something exquisitely new and unique. This is a dream book for parents, grandparents, and their little pals to pour over, with more than 200 beautiful images to spark the imaginations of young and adult alike. A resource guide will help them make their dreams come true.

This incredible collection of stunning images will inspire anyone who dreams of creating their very own timber-frame home. Thirty-eight custom-built homes are featured, inside and out, complete with floor plans. Packed with 275 gorgeous color pictures, this book provides furnishing and decorating ideas, including inspirations for decorating the great room, master bedrooms, cozy sitting rooms, elegant dining rooms, and outdoor living spaces. Gorgeous kitchen photos will help you whip up your own culinary creation center. And there are lots of ideas for creating quiet escape nooks, home offices, luxurious baths, and lofty hideaways. This is a must-have for anyone who owns a timber-frame house or remodeled barn, and all who want one.

More than 60 of today's top lighting designers from the United States and Europe are showcased here, along with up-and-coming talents. Over 300 color photos of hundreds of funky, fun, classic, far-out, retro, and whimsical designs, including chandelier and ceiling fixtures, wall sconces, and table and floor lamps are featured. This is the ultimate shoppers' guide for anyone hunting for the unique and special. An index provides contact information for each design studio. Also, items shown have suggested retail prices in the captions. This is a must-have for professional interior designers, and an invaluable tool for any homeowner shopping for something truly fabulous.

Dots of great variety, in all their minuscule glory, are depicted in 540 color photographs of historic fabric swatches. Dots are among the most useful tools available to today's more sophisticated designers, providing background for any number of motifs or standing alone in a pointed fashion statement. A must-have reference for the professional textile historian, textile designer, fashion designer, and costume designer, this book is an invaluable encyclopedia of dotty design ideas.

Todays leading interior designers are absolutely enamored with concrete. Innovators and artisans are enthusiastically exploring the ever-expanding uses for concrete as an artistic medium, and the potential seems endless. New permanent colors for concrete are infinite and the textures limited only by the imagination. Concrete can imitate any surface, from expensive marble and granite to slick glass or worn and faded terracotta and brick.\nThis book takes you on a visual tour of amazing concrete applications indoors, from floors and countertops, to fireplace surrounds. It highlights groundbreaking artistry in concrete that is opening the doors for craftsmen, and even do-it-yourselfers, to create murals on floors, walls, and ceilings.\nA companion volume explores decorative applications for the homes exterior.

Enjoy an incredible collection of 128 images showing the fleeting, effervescent beauty of young geisha apprentices captured over a century ago. This keepsake, fan-shaped book captures a moment now lost to history, when Japanese girls were indentured as young as 6. Dressed like dolls, they were paraded through parties and celebrated for their beauty, charm, and innocence, all the while learning the music, dance, conversational, and gaming skills expected in a master of their craft. Here is a wonderful opportunity to see these girls in the glory of their colorful regalia, posing before a newly introduced invention, the camera. This treasury of hand-tinted postcard and real-photo images is a unique book you will treasure forever.

A beautiful gallery of luscious backyards and exquisite entryways will inspire you to terrace and sculpt your lawn. Step-by-step instructions will walk you through the process of creating these showpieces using concrete products widely available on today's landscaping market. Over 250 color images display outdoor kitchens, front entry courtyards, water features, patio settings, flower beds, and raised seating that provide curb appeal and creature comforts to the residential environment. The potential for enhancing and reshaping the landscape is as limitless as the imagination, and this book serves as an excellent launching point. Simple, clear graphics clarify the process of retaining wall construction, making it a wonderful tool for training and inspiring amateur and professional landscapers alike.

Take a tour of high-end log homes in this inspiring compendium. Photographer Roger Wade focuses on the finer features of 25 very fine log homes found throughout the United States. More than 200 full-color photographs and detailed floor plans act as a guide in negotiating these exquisitely designed, expansive residences. Charming as only a wooden home can be, these images will inspire you to plan and design a future log house of your own.

Choose a picture-perfect pool to complement your landscape. Home design can be as easy as browsing through this collection of 200 pools from some of the worlds top builders. This book presents a broad range of pool designs, from garden-like settings to integrated outdoor living areas. You will find hundres of ideas for: Fountains, spas, and fire Bridges and decorative additions Landscaping and hardscaping designs Edge treatments The swimming pool has never been more alluring! Find your picture perfect pool!

An art form often ignored gets its due in this collection of historic prints. The abstract genre, as it has been applied to the textiles of everyday life--from upholstery fabrics and curtains to the wearable art we don daily--is explored through photographs of 300 fabric swatches from couture houses in Italy, France, and the United States. This colorful volume is a must-have for up-and-coming textile and fashion designers ready to take a lesson from their anonymous predecessors in the everyday gallery of art.

This lavishly illustrated book explores the beautifully decorated homes, cottages, and hotels of New Jersey's historic Ocean Grove. This charming little seaside hamlet has been listed by the National Register of Historic Places as the richest concentration of Victorian architecture in the nation, and this book helps to illustrate why. One avenue after another, uncover the wealth of lovingly preserved homes that make up this still-active Methodist revival camp town. Picket fences and rose privets frame absolutely lovely homes, dripping with preserved wooden scrollwork, carefully highlighted in eye-catching colors, most of them historically accurate. The town, and this book, are treasures for all who love Victorian architecture and seaside charm. It is the perfect souvenir for anyone who has visited, and attempted to take in the whole of "God's Square Mile" during a brief stay. This book will allow you to linger.

The surf isn't the only thing turbulent in these shoreline images of over 100 nubile beauties. Women dressed in the period's latest beach fashions charmed first their photographers, then the world. Their fascinating, playful, and sometimes evocative images were transformed into postcards and sent with holiday vacation greetings to friends and family worldwide. Take a dip back in time, to an era when women were joyfully expressing an emerging sense of equality and freedom.

More than 350 photographs of historic fabric swatches explore design variations in foulards, the small motifs printed on silks and related fabrics that were intended for men's ties and dressing gowns. Take an inspiring visual tour of designs, from the traditional to pop art, in foulard prints. An invaluable guide for the historian and student, a treasure of ideas and inspiration for designers.

Most are modest, some dare to smoke and strike suggestive poses. Others go so far as to expose an inch of flesh as they coyly wring seawater from their swim dresses. Enjoy over 100 hand-tinted postcard images, snapped at the turn of the 20th Century. It was an era when women may have been clothed from head to toe, but they were women nonetheless. Dressed in the period's best beach fashions, bold Victorians flirt with the camera, creating charming and beguiling images.

If eyes are windows to a person's soul, doorways reveal the nature of a place and the people who inhabit it. Welcome to Cape May, New Jersey, home to the nation's largest concentration of historic Victorian architecture! Filled with 65 charming color photos, this book welcomes you to explore some of the most picturesque and historic doorways. They feature wooden scrollwork and bright coats of paint, as well as Cape May's notable custom screen doors, advertising to all a pride of ownership in front porch appointments. This book is the perfect souvenir for Cape May visitors, lovers of Victorian architecture, and homeowners looking for distinctive ideas for their front doors.

Reflecting the trends of wartime, with an emphasis on the ever-changing roles of women in society, this book illustrates the movement towards more masculine styles and patriotic fashions and colors, while still representing the tailored and restrictive styles that had once dominated the lady's closet. Government rationing and limitations on everyday fabrics and textiles resulted in fashionable new creations. This book, drawn from the pages of the Sears-Roebuck catalogs, has over 400 images with thousands of items of clothing pictured. It gives the reader an insightful look at the fashions perspectives of the mid-1940s.

This rich compendium of color photos shows interior and exterior shots of sunrooms, conservatories, greenhouses, and great glass walls will help homeowners, architects, and remodelers choose the perfect addition. These images will help you select the right style for your architecture, as well as your lifestyle. There are plenty of ideas for furnishing your indoor extension into the great outdoors, from formal dining areas to comfy family gathering spots. There are tub and pool rooms, patio rooms and indoor gardens, even kitchens and fanciful Florida rooms. If more than two people will use a new home addition, it's important that both agree on styles and furnishings. Here's a great, one-stop planning resource to help mesh your individual tastes, with resources listed to help you make your vision a reality.

For those who dream of living in a log home, this treasure trove of images will be a welcome delight . Now in its second edition, the book has been expanded to include images of 18 new homes. The first edition inspired thousands of would-be log home builders. Nearly 50 homes are pictured in all, complete with floor plans as well as gorgeous imagery of both interiors and exteriors. This is a gold mine of visual ideas for designing, building, and decorating log homes. Study these dazzling ispaces and compare house profiles, room layouts, and decorating and furnishing ideas for great rooms, bedrooms, home offices, kitchens, and baths. This enchanting resource showcases log home living and the distinctive decorating styles that so greatly complement it.

Do you enjoy making sandcastles? Do your mashed potatoes become fine art before you eat them? If you enjoy working with your hands and being outdoors, youll love sand-casting with concrete. Veteran concrete creator Bo Atkinson shares his passion and experience in this wonderful step-by-step pictorial. Starting with a pile of sand, a pile of gravel, some water, cement, and reinforcement, he demonstrates how simple it can be to create anything you fancy from concrete. His projects include a fairy lantern, a birdbath, a toadstool seat, a bench, and even a small footbridge.

Take a visually rich tour through a burgeoning community on Mexico's Baja Penninsula, and learn how the dream of visionaries is shaping the community of Loreto Bay as a model for the future. Indigenous materials and culture are helping to shape the physical makeup of this new resort community near Loreto, and the city's inhabitants are reaping the benefits of development dollars. What is being imported is an exciting vision of a sustainable future, a shared goal of community, and a love of place. That place is wonderfully illustrated here, from the colorful adobe architecture and Spanish mission furnishings, to the scenes presented by the white sands of the Sea of Cortez and the fertile desert beyond.