From the author of the successful 150 Best series comes the debut entry in the forward-thinking Open Concept Houses series, filled with nearly 500 pages of color photos—sure to become the ultimate resource for this fast-growing trend in home design and renovation. One of the hottest lifestyle trends today, open concept living spaces eliminate doorways and walls to create a large combined area for cooking, dining, entertaining, and relaxing. No longer are the kitchen, dining room, and living room compartmentalized. Instead, each space blends into the next to create one large area "separated" and defined by islands, carpets, and furniture. This increasingly popular style provides a sense of expansiveness, connectedness, and flow that traditional architecture and design—defined by spaces broken by walls—lack. This engaging, inspiring, and informative volume brings together a diverse collection of houses from all over the world, including spaces that have been designed from the ground up or have been renovated to reflect this popular trend. Inside Open Concept Houses you’ll find an array of beautiful and creative homes by distinguished international architects and designers who have conceived practical and functional solutions adapted to the specific needs and particular tastes of their clients. Filled with hundreds of full-color photographs as well as sets of floorplans for renovated residences—both the original and remodeled blueprints—this imaginative, idea-filled book is a must-have for architects, designers, decorators, and home owners looking to create or adapt the open concept style in their own dwellings.

Kristie Barnett reveals the secrets of her proven method of Psychological Staging to quickly sell residential real estate for top dollar. This method has earned her both local and national awards for home staging, and has made The Decorologist the go-to authority in the field of real estate staging.

Discover the huge possibilities of a small house! Whether you’re building from scratch or retrofitting an existing structure, these 50 innovative floor plans will show you how to make the most of houses measuring 1,400 square feet or less. Gerald Rowan presents creative and efficient layouts that use every inch of space, with tips on fully maximizing closets, porches, bathrooms, attics, and basements. From reorganizing a small storage area to building a brand-new home, you’ll find a detailed design to fit your family’s needs.

Do you have a home or investment that could benefit from some investment? Are you planning to sell up and want the best market value for your property? Many of us have homes or investments which aren’t working for us as hard as they could be. This could be for any number of reasons, but the fact is that you can improve your investment by just taking some very simple steps. In this new book, 10 Creative Ways to Increase the Value of Your Home and/or Investment, you will find some of the easiest ways to add worth to your home or investment in chapters which include: Ø Buying smart Ø The best way to find great property deals Ø Increasing value with bedrooms Ø The outer appeal of your property Ø Renting space Ø Proper maintenance Ø Taking down walls Ø And much more… With the tips and strategies inside this book, you have no end of opportunity to make the most of your home. From a quick paint job or simply mowing the lawn, through to an additional bathroom or an altered layout, 10 Creative Ways to Increase the Value of Your Home and/or Investment will inspire you to make the most of what you have. Get a copy today and improve your investment tomorrow!

Would you want to live in a factory-molded cube made of plastic, asbestos, and UFFI? With an "H-bomb shelter" and the nuclear furnace underneath? Or a house designed by God to harmonize with the cosmic Muzak? The Canadian Home explains how our housing came to be including the pagan origins of "colonial" homes, why "Tudor" is not Tudor, and where so many predictions went wrong. But the book is not just about tastes and floor plans; it also celebrates technological innovation, from prehistoric Inuit windows (of stretched seal guts) to the R-2000 house and habitation in space. For the first time, records of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association have been opened to reveal the power plays of bureaucrats, developers, architects, and financiers and how they affect the quality, affordability, and choice of our housing today. Fiery debates over the sublime and the ridiculous (e.g. 1940s architectural articles on whether Toronto should be bombed) are set against the backdrop of Canadian politics and industrial history. Whether the reader’s interest is in construction, politics, or home decor, this book explains why the roof over our heads is the way it is." Pierre Berton "In his fascinating study of Canadian shelter, Marc Denhez takes us on a 20,000-year journey from the days of the cave, the tipi, and the igloo, to the H-bomb shelter and the mobile home. This is, in short, a lively as well as an erudite study of the development of housing . [It] deserves a permanent position on any library shelf." "If you live in a house or own one or build one if you have a roof over your head read this book. A housing book with punch and humour immensely enjoyable." -Charles Lynch author, journalist and former governor of Heritage Canada.

"While we all use remote controls, we understand little about their history or their impact on our daily lives. By emphasizing volume control, channel shifting, and multi-function management, they tell a story about our experience of mass media, culture,and domestic life. Remote controls reveal the deep impact electronics design has on our self-perception and world-view. This book offers lively analyses of the remote control's material, literary, and cultural history to explain how such an innocuous media accessory can change the way we occupy our houses, interact with our families, and experience the world. From the first wired radio remotes of the 1920s to infrared universal remotes, from the homemade TV controllers to the Apple Remote, remote controls shape our media devices and how we live with them"--

The is the first book to ever describe the reality of real estate in Canada. It shows you how to purchase and sell real estate and also shows you alternatives that work very well. This is complex subject and the Author's sense of humor helps describe it in ways that are easy to understand and fun to read.

Until the Wheels Fall Off: The Extraordinary Life of Joe Paladino By: Joe Paladino Many would look at a teenage boy in a wheelchair with pity. Joey was one such boy who rolled over all the barriers to build a life no one could have ever expected. What kind of future would you envision for a reform school kid? See how tragedy can make for an exceptional man, as we hear Joey tell the story of how he went from invalid to an extraordinary life.

A lively exploration of eclecticism, playfulness, and whimsy in American postwar design, including architecture, graphic design, and product design This spirited volume shows how postwar designers embraced whimsy and eclecticism in their work, exploring playfulness as an essential construct of modernity. Following World War II, Americans began accumulating more and more goods, spurring a transformation in the field of interior decoration. Storage walls became ubiquitous, often serving as a home's centerpiece. Designers such as Alexander Girard encouraged homeowners to populate their new shelving units with folk art, as well as unconventional and modern objects, to produce innovative and unexpected juxtapositions within modern architectural settings. Playfulness can be seen in the colorful, child-sized furniture by Charles and Ray Eames, who also produced toys. And in the postwar corporate world, the concept of play is manifested in the influential advertising work of Paul Rand. Set against the backdrop of a society that was experiencing rapid change and high anxiety, Serious Play takes a revelatory look at how many of the country's leading designers connected with their audience through wit and imagination.

The United States is among the most affluent nations in the world and has its largest economy; nevertheless, it has more poverty than most countries with similar standards of living. Growing income inequality and the Great Recession have made the problem worse. In this thoroughly revised edition of Poverty in America, Iceland takes a new look at this issue by examining why poverty remains pervasive, what it means to be poor in America today, which groups are most likely to be poor, the root causes of poverty, and the effects of policy on poverty. This new edition also includes completely updated data and extended discussions of poverty in the context of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements as well as new chapters on the Great Recession and global poverty. In doing so this book provides the most recent information available on patterns and trends in poverty and engages in an open and accessible manner in current critical debates.