Paige Rien - Love the House Youre In: 40 Ways to Improve Your Home and Change Your Life

ABOUT THE BOOK

Love the House Youre In is about more than creating a beautiful space; its about creating a home that reflects you and all that you find comforting and inspiring in your life. Decorating your home can be daunting and overwhelming, but heres the secret: If you want to love your house, the inspiration and ideas need to come from you. Love the House Youre In provides the tools to do just that. Through 40 actionable steps, you will:

• Explore your life story: Mine your life for those things that inspire nostalgia and create a positive connection to memories, explore your familys heritage, and be conscious of how you want to live now.
• Understand what youre working with: Take stock of your stuff, understand the history of your home, and get clear on the space you have.
• Create an inspired action plan: Discover how to approach design room-by-room, find the through line that ties the whole house together, and work in ways that empower your own ideas and creativity.
• Learn the design skills that matter: Get tips on picking paint colors, choosing window dressings, arranging art, and more.

When you start decorating your home with you as the starting point, you can create a highly personalized space that reflects your past, your future, and how you want to live today. In the process, youll gain the confidence and inspiration to come up with a functional and fabulous living space thats just right for you and your life.

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LOVE THE HOUSE YOURE IN

Paige Rien

40 WAYS

TO IMPROVE YOUR HOME AND CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Roost Books

An imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc.

4720 Walnut Street

Boulder, Colorado 80301

roostbooks.com

Illustrations by Claudia Pearson

Cover Design by Daniel Urban-Brown

2016 by Paige Rien

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rien, Paige.

Love the house youre in: 40 ways to improve your home and change your life / Paige Rien.First edition.

pages cm

Includes index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-4001-0

ISBN 978-1-61180-198-9 (pbk.: acid-free paper)

1. House furnishings. 2. Interior decoration. 3. DwellingsRemodeling.

I. Title.

TX311.R54 2015

645dc23

2015008352

FOR FRANCIS

CONTENTS

I know what youre going to say. You just dont love your house. You bought it because of the schools or the yard or the price, but you come home after a long day and think, Yuck. You wish it were different. Badly. You need it to be differentto look better, to work better, and to make you feel better. Ive been there many times myself.

If you want to love your house, heres the secret: it doesnt come from a really great couch or the perfect happiness-inducing paint color. It doesnt spring forth from the best interior designer or reading the most popular design blogs. It comes from within you. It comes when you fearlessly put yourself into your home and tell your life story throughout. It comes when you stop looking at what everyone else is doing. It comes not when everything matches but when the spaces match you and what youre all about.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.

MOTHER TERESA

MY STORY AND THE REASON FOR THS BOOK

My husband, Francis, and I have lived in lots of fixer-uppers together, and weve made homes out of all of them by doing almost everything together, (mostly) harmoniously. As we were renovating a giant three-story seaside house from the 1890s (a task that required us to wear winter coats to bed for two months and taxed our relationship in ways I dont care to revisit), I was hired to be a designer for HGTVs very popular show Hidden Potential for five seasons. While the glamour of television was fun, I began to miss getting my hands dirty and, most important, I missed the design process. Television compresses the journey I find so interestingthe collaboration and construction needed to go from idea to new spaceand perpetuates some big design myths. Big change doesnt happen, nor should it happen, overnight or while you were out. And unfortunately, television designers dont have all the answers.

E-mails from frustrated, desperate, even despondent viewers inspired this book. Despite an ocean of ideas, options, and inspiring images from TV, blogs, Pinterest, Houzz, and countless shelter magazines, many home owners remain lost or disenchanted with home improvement. What we have collectively forgotten in the blizzard of leather poufs, reclaimed wood tables, and ubiquitous ikat is that to make a home great, we need to spend less time in the marketplace and more time with ourselves.

Looking outward all the timeat things in stores, at other peoples housesor always listening to what people like me have to say disconnects us from what we really need and want. The result is a lot of unhappiness. Its easy to get lost in too many options, with unworkable ideas and questionable advice. If you feel defeated, congratulations: you are hereby motivated to make your house better, and you are the reason for this book.

HOW DO YOU START?

This is not a typical interior design book. There is not one picture of my work or my house in these pages. There is no eye candy, there are no big reveals or design secrets. Here is what youll find instead:

A process based on self-reflection and self-knowledge. I ask a lot of questions. First the all-important ones: Who am I? Whats my story? Then house-specific ones: What feeling do I want for this room? Ultimately, its Your Turn at the end of each chapter to apply what you know of yourself to your home. In the end, even if you do hire an architect, a designer, or a decorator to help you (and I dont advocate for or against the practice), the work you do with this book will help you get the most out of that relationship.

A fresh perspective and approach. Begin to see your house as sacred and the work on it as art. Where we lay our heads, teach our children, heal and rejuvenate ourselves, and experience the ups and downs of modern life is truly sacred ground. The process is intensely creative, the outcome deeply personal and expressive. Compose your house like an artist, taking your time, going your own way, and finding the joy in the process.

Strategies for creating a home that works for your lifestyle and personality. Go beyond looks and thoughtfully consider the feeling you are trying to create in your house. Homes are capable of doing many important things: calming us, centering us, inspiring us. They can also tell an honest and engaging narrative about us. Make your home fabulous for you and beautifully about you, and it will become an interesting place for whomever visits.