Real Estate Portrait

The Find: The Housing Works Book of Decorating with Thrift Shop Treasures, Flea Market Objects, and Vintage Details

Description

Sometimes you’re looking for it, sometimes it just finds you

Treasures of home décor abound at flea markets, thrift shops, and garage sales. But how do you know a find when you find it?
In The Find, Stan Williams and some of today’s most clever style makers, including Simon Doonan, John Derian, and Real Simple’s Kristin van Ogtrop–all diehard devotees of New York City’s Housing Works–show not just what to look for, but also how to look at an object to identify a great piece. The trick is to see beyond nicks and wobbles, color and intended purpose and to focus on potential. For example, a vintage leather trunk encased in Lucite works as a stunning coffee table. Pages from old books wallpaper a foyer. A cushion fashioned from a baseball diamond’s home plate makes a garden chair comfortable.

The Find includes chapters on furniture, accessories, small spaces, and entertaining. From a suburban ranch to an East Village studio in New York, each abode illustrates unexpected ways that secondhand items can make statements (or space) throughout a home.

Elegantly photographed, filled with practical sidebars about refurbishing, styling, and treasure-hunting, and replete with the quirky sensibility that has made Housing Works one of the most popular destinations for great things, The Find is at once a handbook and inspiration for vintage decorating. Secondhand does not mean second rate when there’s always something special to be found.

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-03-30
Summary: "Elegant Decorating"

The book The Find is a very elegant version of decorating with "found" objects. It shows many surprising juxtapositions of disparate pieces in a harmonious blend. The photos beautifully illustrate the refined style of the author, confirming that style trumps the challenge of interior decoration on a limited budget.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-03-07
Summary: "I Am A Thrift Furniture Junkie"

There is nothing more satisfying than finding a piece of furniture for that spot in your home that seems so lonely. First is 'the hunt', then 'THE FIND', then 'the remaking', and then 'the placing' the piece in it's long awaited space.I loved THE FIND. It described me perfectly as my envious friends will tell you. People always ask me how I decorate so well with found furniture ,cast offs, and objects. Now all I have to do to explain is send them to buy THE FIND and they will have more help than I can give them.What a great find THE FIND is......

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-01-06
Summary: "eclectic, colourful, trad-with-a-twist interior details"

As the title suggests, this is an interiors sourcebook featuring 'found' second-hand furniture and objects. I bought it after a recommendation on Anne Sage's brilliant blog ([...]), and I definitely agree with her glowing review.

I'm really enjoying scrolling through this book. The images are wonderfully inspiring and the book itself beautifully produced. It would make a good present (in this case, to myself!)

The text is surprisingly engaging for an interior design book - these tend to state the bleeding obvious, but not here. But obviously the pictures take precedence, and most are self-explanatory. There are definitely a few projects I'm keen to try: I am loving the giantess's blackboard on page 219 (blackboard paint and a frame made from salvaged picture rail moulding); the chest of drawers covered in grey linen bookcloth on page 110; and I am very taken with the idea of papering a wall in pages from old ledgers as seen on p134.

A shame that there isn't more how-to detail (as with Martha Stewart), but anyone reasonably handy, with a little bit of common sense and access to Google, could manage most of the ideas featured.

But how frustrating that we don't have Housing Works in the UK! The local flea market or boot sale might be your best bet, alongside county sale-rooms in unsmart parts of the land. If you're in London, Portobello and Columbia Road markets are a possibility, as is the Old Cinema in Chiswick, but none of these are cheap. Personally, I'm eyeing up my parents' garage...

I have taken one star taken off because there's a very distinctive aesthetic at play. It's wider-ranging than, say, the 'Domino' book, but it's still pretty hokey. That's my taste, but if you're into minimalist, modernist, glamorous or impressive interiors, it almost certainly won't be yours.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-01-03
Summary: "Not What I Expected"

I was very disappointed with this book. The cover looked like what I like, but inside it didn't deliver. It has lots of pictures, which is great, but not what I was expecting. My favorite books are The Paris Apartment, Creole Thrift, and the likes. I am a "paris apartment" girl, love shabby chic and Rachel Ashwell type looks. I like bits of country and cottage chic, as well, and some others, but this was totally boring to me. A waste of $20 as I will probably never look at it again. Most of my books and magazines I go through over and over, over years even, so this is definitely a disappointment to me. It's all what appeals to your taste. It wasn't what appealed to mine. The reason I gave it 3 out of 5 stars is that it is a nice book and just because it isn't my style, doesn't mean it isn't a decent book for someone else.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2009-12-05
Summary: "Disappointing read..."

While the ideas in this book are fine; there is nothing new or unusual in the approach to reusing items in decorating schemes.

There is a bit too much, for this designer's taste, mid-century modern emphasis, especially in the last part of the book.

Nice photography, good text, but a lack of freshness.