‘Ozzie and Harriet’ Meets MySpace in ‘Apartment Therapy Presents,’ a Coffee-Table Book for Fans of Back-to-the-’50s Décor – Turquoise Naugahyde Chairs, Anyone?

Want to brighten your place for the holidays? How about hanging a fake AK-47 on the wall instead of mistletoe?

Apartment Therapy Presents. Real Homes. Real People. Hundreds of Real Design Solutions. By Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan with Jill Slater and Janel Laban. Chronicle, 264 pp., $27.50.

By Janice Harayda

A red-flocked Jesus coin bank. A mural of pink flamingoes. A paint-by-numbers picture of a black poodle.

These are a few of the things that stylish young renters and condo owners display in their homes today, or so we learn from Apartment Therapy Presents, a coffee-table book based on a popular Web site. The “current aesthetic,” the author says, aligns with the tastes of a couple who bought a 1951 ranch-style house in Skokie, Illinois: “the’50s are back in style.” Call it Cold War Chic or Ozzie and Harriet Meets MySpace.

If chairs covered with turquoise Naugahyde aren’t to your taste, this book shows other items that could earn you style points: a pair of fake AK-47s framed by a rococo-like mirrors, a scary-looking dental chair made around 1900, a thousand yellow Post-Its stuck to a wall like overlapping shingles.

You can’t accuse the author of making any of this up. Apartment Therapy Presents shows “40 real homes decorated by real people” in more than 400 color photographs. It has floor plans and resource lists long on plugs for ebay, IKEA, and Design Within Reach. Nor can you say you didn’t understand the risks of, say, standing on a ladder for days while you stick a thousand Post-Its to your wall. A notice on the copyright page warns that the author, publisher and others “disclaim any and all liability resulting from injuries or damages caused by imitating the ideas described herein.”

Best line/picture: Some apartments in this book shout, “I’m camping out.” Dana Joy Altman’s beautiful place in a converted circa 1902 single family house in Chicago’s Logan Square, says, “I’m home.”

Worst line/picture: The photo of a pair of fake AK-47s framed by mirrors that a young Manhattan tenant hung on his wall. You hope this man never has guests who have lost friends in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recommended if … you’re planning to redo a small space and have a sense of humor. One picture in this book shows a collection of “’50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s freezer doors” that hangs on a kitchen wall in the East Village.

Published: April 2008

Furthermore: This book grew out of the site Apartment Therapy www.apartmenttherapy.com

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com