It's harvest time, so we're picking three of the latest crop of home improvement books to review. These books push the premise that home improvement isn't just about how you relate to your power drill, but also your family, friends and self -- think Dr. Phil with a tool belt.
It's no surprise really, since all they're all written not by grizzled contractors, but attractive television personalities who happen to host fix-it or decorating shows. Does that mean that chatty anecdotes, too-personal revelations and other TV tactics take precedence over practical information in these books? You bet.
Among the Do-It-Yourself Family, by Eric Stromer (Bantam, 2006). The hunky blond major, but has some real remodeling bona fides: He spent his hungry years in Hollywood fixing up houses on the side. Now married and the father of two boys, he's themed his book on projects that families can construct together, from the simple (a growth chart) to the complex (a mini-Viking kitchen center).
Mr. blown-up latex work glove on their heads like a hat, but warns that if they pull it over their faces, they'll suffocate). Even so, the projects are original, and the construction instructions carefully detailed.
Change Your Home, Change Your Life, by Moll Anderson (Cool Springs Press, 2006). A former furniture-store decorator, Ms. Anderson now bills Design, Scripps Network's Hot Trends in Outdoor Entertaining 2006 and Fine Living's Two Minutes of Style.
She writes that she was inspired to become furniture. Instead it's mostly a workbook where readers are invited to get in light makes you feel energized, relaxed, exhausted or romantic? or If you could pick a theme song, what would it be?
...
Assign a song to each room in your home. While such exercises certainly loosen up the imagination, I wonder instance, by making candlesticks out of galvanized plumbing pipes or area rugs out of stitched-together bath mats.
Chix Can Fix, by Norma Vally (Penguin, 2006).
I wasn't too impressed when the book jacket described the author, Discovery Home Channel's Toolbelt Diva, as a former model turned construction pro. And indeed, most of the 100 to tell you how to plunge a sink or flip the toggle switch on a circuit breaker? Much of the language is a bit too cutesy, like plumbing basix, and a few of the sidebars are more about showbiz than repairs -- for instance, we learn that Ms.
Vally's television make-up artist paints calluses and black-and-blue spots on her arms, and sprays sweat on her brow. Most alarmingly, however, the author often writes as if her readers are moody morons. Example: Don't, out of frustration, chuck a freakin' tool at the wall -- you'll only be setting yourself up for a wall repair.
While the information on doing the actual projects was straightforward and well-illustrated, women deserve a better basix book than this.
-- June Fletcher is a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal and the author of "House Poor" (Harper Collins, 2005). Her "House Talk" column appears most Mondays on RealEstateJournal.
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