Furniture Books

Why stumble along and question yourself, not knowing how to price, run a business, organize your life or plan your dreams when you have Lynette Harris so kindly opening up herself and all she has learned and experienced in her book, "Making Money With Your Creative Paint Finishes". I turn to her book regularly when pricing out a job or just doing my books. She even tells you what supplies you will need on your site.....why make mistakes when you have her experiences to guide you around them.

This book contains valuable information on how to make your business profitable. It includes sample contracts (a must for the professional) and tips on accurate record keeping. I have an MBA and feel that my skills in business are high however, I was able to get information from this book that was very useful. It is comprehensive, covering everything from starting your business, marketing, partnerships,and more. There is even a section on the importance of honing your craft. The author includes information on continuing education, recommended reading as well as resources for supplies. I highly recommend this book to anyone considering starting a business of Decorative Painting.

Many thanks to Lynette Harris for making this advice available! Good sound suggestions for marketing the business, pricing, as well as advice on contracts and suggestions on how to choose your business name and much more. Good food for thought! I highly recommend this book for anyone who may be considering going into this field of business!

I bought this book before "officially" starting my decorative painting business and I am very glad I did. I constantly refer back to it when I need tips. A must have for anyone who is considering going into business in this field!

I am planning to go into the business of faux finshing. This book answered every question I had and more in regards to starting in that business. Lynette shares her expertise in a very organized, entertaining and easy to read manner. She covers everything from naming your business, managing it, pricing your work to contracts and mastering your craft. What a treat to find a book specifically aimed at starting a faux finishing/stenciling business! If you're thinking of going into business for yourself, this book is a must read and great way to get started. Thank you Lynette for sharing what would have taken me years to learn on my own.

The thing that I love about not only this, but but both of Taylors books is that he has a great sense of humor. I tend to think that in real life, Taylor and I would clash rather strongly on some issues, but that's OK. I will buy every book he comes out with (and here is hoping it isn't just these two) simply because the man has a gift for telling stories. I have read tools of the trade probably 25 times since I bought it years ago at a B&N, and I anticipate reading it another 25 times!

I was given this years ago, read it in a week and loved it, then forgot the title when trying to describe it to a friend. It is a shame it is out of print.

Everyone should read this book, and anyone you know who likes to build things should get this for Christmas.

I picked up this book about 6 years ago at a B&N store...and finished reading it in one sitting in my yard. Trust me when I tell you that it is not often when I feel overwhelmed by anything. But this book, with its simple prose, made me gulp several times. Keep in mind that it is not a depressing read. On the contrary, it can be funny as heck at times!

It's a shame that this book is now out of print and likely to become scarce, as I have given it on several occasions and have always received many thanks in return.

The author fills the reader, even a reader with minimal knowledge or interest in carpentry, with a true respect for the tools, their usage, and the history behind them. Not just the history in a greater sense, but also the history these tools have in the author's life.

I'm now reading this book for the third time. I usually like to pick it up when my office job is making me dream of a life building and remodelling houses.

(From Don Simmons, Jr., Check, VA)

Burning the Furniture, by Dan Smith, stands up easily against Rick Bragg's All Over But the Shoutin' as a classic memoir of growing up in the South.

As a Western North Carolina native who grew up in many a small Southeastern town, Smith's voice and rhythm bring my childhood and youth to life as surely as the smell of sawdust and varnish from a furniture plant.

The chapter titles alone are worth the cover price. There's "Cut Me a Switch," My Favorite Ex-Wife," and "Driving Drunk: A Love Story," to name a few.

Especially if you grew up in the `60s/'70s South, his stories -- shenanigans at the municipal pool, getting hot-foot walking on the asphalt under the merciless Southern sun, sandspurs in your feet, his mom's attempts to keep her young-uns in line or being called a nigger-lover for having black friends - will bring it all back to life with humor, sadness, fear and hope.

I highly recommend this less than 200-page jewel. Bragg may have just lost his bragging rights.

Don Simmons Jr.
Check, Va.

I loved this book from cover to cover and when I finished it I wished there had been twice as many chapters. The book has both a big heart and a funny bone. Dan Smith's hardscrabble upbringing and elegantly rendered appreciation of his momma's grit make it stand out as a gem in the genre of southern literary memoirs. His tales reminded me of what a joy -- and a challenge -- it once was to be a young boy growing up in the South, surrounded by oddball family members and offbeat neighbors. Burning the Furniture chronicles childhood baseball games, wars fought with BB guns amid the kudzu, and summer days at the local pond, as well as encounters with racism, tough days at the mountain orphanage, football injuries, awkward encounters with nubile young girls, the practical jokes of daffy newspapermen and lessons on how to use alcohol to lose jobs as well as women. Burning the Furniture is in the same vein as Rick Bragg's memoirish "Ava's Man," only better.

Fans of biography and memoir frequently have to slog through 400 pages or more of exhaustive detail about the subject's life -- not all of it necessarily enthralling. Which makes "Burning the Furniture" a refreshing change of pace in this genre. In a lean 175 or so pages (made leaner but all the more engaging by over two dozen nostalgic photographs) readers are whisked along on a whistle-stop tour through the author's very colorful life. From his impoverished childhood in a family of eight children to his serendipitous start in the newspaper business, through multiple marriages and the horrors of alcoholism, "Burning the Furniture" is a Southern gothic story where the author comes out not only alive, but with humor and perspective very much intact. Whether you relate to Smith's experiences or are amazed by them, his stories are funny, sad, strange, revealing, and always well told. If you love picking up a book and getting so wrapped up in it that you cancel the rest of your day, you'd do well to give this little gem a try.

One of the best qualities that anyone can possess is the ability to laugh at oneself. In "Burning the Furniture" even amidst a childhood filled with poverty and a turbulent adulthood, Dan Smith is able to laugh at his many precarious situations and have the reader laughing right alongside him as well.

This book will surely delight you as it did me, although it's no fairy tale. You're as likely to be fond of the man at the end of "Burning the Furniture" as you are to be disturbed by the younger version.

Sometimes, a walk down memory lane takes you to overgrown paths full of kudzu.

Though the setting in Burning The Furniture takes you back six decades (timely book release date on the author's 60th year), it is no shortcut path for juveniles in a Ozzie and Harriet neighborhood. All the props are there, but the young chap scurries and scattles between them like the kid we only caught glimpses of growing up in southern suburbia. And just like television then, we read the first part in black and white.

But of course, we grow up--bumps and all--and color comes. This memoir lets color creep in by various hues. Some we like. Some we would prefer to shrink away from. Nonetheless, the author's story is a compelling one. Pure nostalgia at moments. Poignant, with philosophical undertones if you want to experience it that way.

Some people tell their life stories better than others... Dan Smith writes a screen play here, placing you as an "extra" so you're in the act right along side a fully developed character. A character with flaws to be sure - but a character you'll be glad to cut through the kudzu to meet.

Anyone interested in making any kind of a table should get this book. This book covers it all. There are so many things you think you know but are not aware of. This book shows how to design and make tables with ease. I read it and went on to make a table. This is a must for every woodworker.

I bought this book to learn about dining table construction.
The instructions are clear and concise and includes ALL the steps required to make 9 tables.
Kim Carleton Graves is obviously a very good teacher and it really comes across in this book.
I found this book a great learning aid and I'm sure I will refer to it time and time again.
Please publish a book on chairs.

Dining room tables are different in complexity than smaller tables, so its apropos that Taunton chose to put these tables in a separate book from their Tables book. I have both, and have built projects out of both. The Dining Table book deals has a nice layout and design section in the beginning where it describes the minimum and ideal dimensions for tables built for certain numbers of people.

The book contains a nice selections of projects, including a trestle table (pictured on the front cover), a shaker style kitchen table (which I built), various expandable tables, and a boat table constructed using a torsion box.

I would also recommend reading the Tables book by Taunton, as it has a dining room table designed by Frank Klausz which is awesome.

Taunton puts out great books with great authors, this book is no different. Great layout and information.
I can't add much to what was already stated in the earlier reviews except that Kim Carleton Graves was easy to contact through email. He responded quickly, professionally and was very informative.
In summary, buy the book you wont be disappointed.

I bought this book looking for a design I could use for a dining room table. What I found was not only a design that I loved, but clear step-by-step instructions, drawings, and great photographs. The section on table building basics which covers table size and clearance, wood movement, and torsion box construction was extremely informative.

I own many of the Better Homes and Garden books and have never been disappointed in their style.

This book, as the title states, is about "Garden Style. It is a hardback book filled with many colorful photos.

The book is divided into different areas regarding either living with the "garden style" or creating the "garden style" in your home.

There are a few BEFORE and AFTER photos included in the last chapters, but mostly, this is a pictorial book showing how to use garden accessories, and/or garden structures in your home , your porch, your shed, and/or your garden.

I have a single favorite place for soul restoring. It's a local plant nursery, but this one is more than that. The owners frequently change and update and relocate plants, garden items, things that hang on walls, in trees, nestle against fences, dangle from ceilings, embrace the earth, cozy in planters with fellow plants and dazzlingly different plants. The place has so many cubbyholes. After I wander this fairy world of greenery and flowery boudoirs, I leave refreshed, my mind ready for more of the knocking about that the world outside brings.

A second choice is a book like "BH&G Garden Style." I can sit with a book like this and imagine life in one of these pictures of garden comfort, inside and out. This is not plant gardening but the comfort of resting and entertaining and playing next to a garden, in a garden setting, just being outdoors or indoors with the ambience of outdoors. I have numerous books like this, but "Garden Style" is really special because it has such rich, imaginative, calming, creative rooms inside and out that are "garden style."

The important selling point for a book like this is how doable are the looks. There are actually affordable decorating tips here. Let me show you what I mean. Randomly opening to p. 38, I find a wicker chair with a side wooden stool, simple design, with a potted pink geranium and a colorful birdhouse. These items are available at local do-it-yourself stores or as is in others. Then surrounding the chair and stool are containers and containers of more potted pink geraniums, pink petunias, junipers, broadleaf plants--all in blue or white or clay pots, creating a calming scene to sip tea and read a book.

Here's another on p. 79. Take a small drop-leaf table, paint it white, put it in a nook or empty corner or wall, add matched botanical prints, two mismatched but coordinated chairs, and top the table with an assortment of plants for a quiet garden look in the midst of indoors.

One more: a mini-greenhouse in wrought iron filled with potted flowering plants set against a large window, anchored by two wicker chairs upholstered in green and white. A lovely garden look (p. 105).

I am currently creating a cottage garden outside my patio where I feed the birds. Some of my ideas come from this book. See you later outside for tea and Pennyroyal dumplings from my herb book, or maybe herb scones from a scone book.

This inspiring book is a wonderful guide for incorporating the pleasure of nature and garden accessories into a welcoming home decor. The author provides a wide range of possibilities to blend with the wishes and desires of any home decorator. Within the pages of this beautiful resource, the reader will uncover whimsical, country, cottage, mountain, old world, British Colonial, and a bounty of other styles that are adapted to the nature lovers vision of tranquility or fun. The interiors of the vistas that have been photographed are each the product of real people who have opened their homes to the author. The author also includes a visual display of home gardening boutiques and shops from around the country which present their lovely wares to assist this enchanting approach to home decorating.

This has quickly become one of my favorites. Every vignette has ideas popping off the page. I'm a designer in a small design firm and we have used it with clients. The other designers got excited about it as I did. Clinets are asking us to bring the outdoors in and indoors out. This book is loaded with ideas that are practical and don't break the pocketbook.

This book has inspired me to redo many of our rooms usingsimple and easy to find garden-style accessories. ............... the fabulous sequel to this book, Garden Style Projects. I may need a new house now so I can keep using all these ideas.

This wonderful Book has really great patterns and the basic information in the front is very complete. I would and will recommend it to any beginners or woodworkers that want to improve their skill at Intarsia. The 21 patterns are well worth the price of the book. Kathy's designs are bringing intarsia to a new level of art, way beyond the craft stage. It is absolutely the BEST book on Intarsia available in the marketplace today, can't wait for her next book!

Refreshing! A friendly guide into the world of intarsia... not at all intimadating or patronizing. Kathy's book gives me confidence to try projects that I otherwise may have thought too advanced for my skill level and as a result of this... My skill level is advancing too!!! Thank you Kathy! Please write more books!!!

The author covers in detail step by step projects and the types of woods used and patterns are wonderful! I would recommend this book to anyone interested in doing Intarsia.

I have been doing Intarsia for nearly 10 yrs now. I had ordered a couple of patterns from Kathy in the past. It had been awhile since I had been on Kathy's website and then one day I was looking for new patterns. Wow did her work ever take off to another level. She had just been featured with her animal jungle scene in a wood magazine. I was blown away by that work of art. Well her book had just been published as well, so I had to purchase this book. Whatever tips I could get from this book I knew I needed. I only hope that someday my work can be as good as Kathy's is. Great deal on this book, you get a lot of very cool patterns. Plus all of the tips to go along with it.

Kathy Wise breaks down the sometimes difficult art of intarsia into easy-to-follow steps so that any beginner (with a little knowledge of power tools) can achieve satisfactory results. Each step is explained in detail and there are many photographs in the "Get Started" section that show clearly what to do next to create your own piece of wood art.
Kathy's included patterns range from simple to a level that can be appreciated by any experienced intarsian.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this very intriguing style of woodworking.

This is a book good for beginner has step by step guide how to make the individual items. IT is a value for money book for beginner.

My son used his sister's copy of this book and loved it. He asked for it for Christmas and I bought it and received it so quickly, I was impressed. I can't wait to give it to him. It looks very impressive to me, also.

I made myself a miniature drugstore since I am a pharmacist and I had trouble finding things like mortars and cylinders. Thanks to this book I managed to make the most beautiful look-alike mortars with pestles and all, also a little turn-of-the-century (last century, of course) telephone. The directions are precise and you can really get what you are looking for (and I had never touched polymer clay in my life!)

This book is so full of good ideas for creating items in perfect scale for a dollhouse that I don't know where to start.

How to make your own tools and formers, making dishes and pots that are more realistically thin-walled than the commercially-available items, mimicking china, a ladies' vanity set, a desk set, baskets, metal, wood, flatware, foods, fireplace tools - even the kitchen sink! Way too many different items to name them all. If I was to be forced to give up all my dollhouse books but one, this would be the one I'd keep.

Excellent intro to using the clays - basic information. Trouble-shooting tips along the way.

And her videos are fabulous, too. :-)

The variety of projects in this book and the step-by-step explanations, make it a great resource for beginners and experienced miniature makers.
I would recommend this book to anyone who's interested in making their own dollhouse miniatures!

This is the best book on chairmaking. Period. Everyone knows that, which is why the price for the used books is so high. Go to Drew Langsner's website for Country Workshops and you can get the updated author's reprint for a very reasonable price.

While you're at it, sign up for one of his classes. I learned more about furnituremaking and craft in one week at Country Workshops than I have learned over the past ten years reading every woodworking book in the library.

Without a doubt one the best books on traditional chair making I have ever seen. From the tree to the living room !!

This is quite good and covers "green" chairmaking. There is alot of data in this book and it's well worth the read.

Woah, what a book. I don't really know where to begin or what I can add to the many other fine reviews here, they that convinced me to buy this book.

I don't even like Windsor chairs, I think they are kind of ugly, I've seen too many cheap country furniture knock-offs, they make me kind of sick. Some - very few - are stunning. There are a few good ones in this book, and in other books I have on furniture history.

Why I bought this book was for the techniques involved, and reading the other reviews I was convinced it would be worth my money.

AND IT WAS - AND THEN SOME.

I have many, many books on woodworking and it is rare that I am surprised by something new, old or different that I did not know, but this book is so incredibly thorough and covers so many things - well - it blew me away. I am very impressed.

If it introduces a tool, it tells you how to use it, make it, even with plans. It details everything every step of the way. I can't be bothered counting all the things it tells you but I would have paid the money just for info. on building a shave horse and designs for one chair and a bowsaw.

Also, it is a BIG book. Tall, wide, and THICK, 300 pages makes it quite a thick book. PACKED with information, not waffle.

I hope my rambling review helps convince you it is worth it, the other reviews here have more detail, I really just wanted to add my vote. I think everyone gave it 5 stars. I'd say it probably should be on every woodworkers' bookshelf.

This book is an excellent introduction to making chairs. It is an incredibley thorough and clearly written book. I highly recommend it.

The theme of acceptance has been delivered in a wonderfully unique story that brings a huge grin to the face of reader and "readee" alike. I came across this book while on vacation and couldn't wait to deliver it to the 3year old little person that was having a birthday. The fun illustrations are absolutely delightful and a joy for whoever is turning the pages.

I purchased this as a gift for my 5 year old nephew. It is a cute story; good for the 6 and under crowd.

My son (age 6) loved this book. He took it to school for book talk.

This is my favorite book of all time. Great story and illustrations! My wife and I found this in Pottery Barn Kids and loved it at once. We don't have children and still read this at least once a week. I share the book with all of my friends and family. Great gift to share!!!

We got this book for our 3-year old as a birthday gift and we've read it almost every night. The illustrations are great fun and the story is a riot. Highly recommend!

When you really want specifics on a topic, you just need a book by this author and you'll find yourself immersed in the kind of details and guidance you were hoping to get. Not one to mince words, Jennings lays it all out with precision, yet keeping the information interesting and practical and sometimes a little humorous. She's got plenty of forms, plenty of decorating training (dealing with the professional ways to arrange a client's furniture), and even more guidance on how to move a client's possessions, plus all the set up, promotional and business side of things. An excellent read.

Jennings has a number of excellent books for the interior redesign and home staging business that fit together and build upon each other into a cohesive whole so that anyone can start and build a business from the ground floor up. This is her basic manual, which is filled to the brim with great advice and guidance, and she also has an advanced book called "Advanced Redesign", along with a couple more books geared for the home staging market. This book, however, shows you how to start up and set up your business, how to get clients, how to do consultations and price your services, how to market and promote it properly, and a good deal of excellent training on the design end of the business - the kind of stuff you won't get from others. For instance, at the end of the book she literally shows you the most common furniture arrangements used by professional designers. In most situations, one of these should be suitable for a typical room a person would work in. She makes the process easy to understand and gives readers the tools and examples to understand what to do, but also why they work so well.

The other books she has written show you how to add related products and services to your business to get the most out of your business that you can get. Since most people want to make profits from their business venture, the book gives you an excellent picture of how to go about doing just that, all in a clear, concise step-by-step analysis. All the books by this author are excellent and well worth the investment.

If you're looking to do interior redesign AND home staging simultaneously, I highly recommend both books by this author as they are easy to read, provide outstanding guidance, give you information on additional helpful tools and are flat out the best you'll find on the subject. I am a teacher and always on the hunt for tidbits and gems I can pass on to my own students. I got far more than I bargained for which pleases me greatly. The information is really to the point, very detailed, very precise. Both manuals are large and packed to the brim -- no fluff like some others. Get both by this author. This is a no-brainer.

As an interior designer, I was looking to expand my business into the home staging arena, but wasn't really interested in spending thousands of dollars on one of those 3-day courses. After ordering and reading the reviews from the author's Home Staging for Profit: How to Start and Grow a Highly Profitable Home-Based Staging Business, I stumbled across this book and am very thankful that I found it. As a designer, it provided knowledge that I already was trained in, however I thought it was a good refresher, because it reminded me of things that I had forgotten. I thought the author did a great job again in providing an in-depth guide about interior redesign. I found this book as well as her other to be quite informative, easy to read and chalked full of great tips and examples. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in running their own interior redesign business.

Rearrange It! - How to Start and Grow a Profitable Home-Based Redesign BusinessThis is a great book! It gives the reader an excellent overview of what it takes to successfully run a redesign business. It briefly covers all areas of your business including the legal side. I'd whole heartedly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the interior redesign as a business.