The Newlywed's Guide to Setting Up Home by Gail Abbott

Exciting as it may be, moving into your first home as a couple can be daunting and expensive. Whose stuff is going to go where? Whose taste is going to dominate? How are you going to make a small, under-decorated and awkwardly shaped flat feel like home? In The Newlywed's Guide to Setting up Home stylist and interiors writer Gail Abbott navigates the potentially stormy waters of sharing a home, offering a wealth of handy hints, tips and advice and highlighting common pitfalls experiences by those doing up a house together.

AVOID EXPENSIVE MISTAKES

Chapter one, Getting Started, helps you to step back and evaluate the best and worst bits of your home, and work out your own personal style. Are you Country? Contemporary? Retro? Classic? Vintage? Once you've argued out a style you both like, you can create rooms with a common identity and unity. From here, it's time to start looking at The Main Elements of your home. Elements such as lighting, storage, walls or windows are all covered, with advice on how to approach each on a budget and in a way that maximises the potential of your home. The rest of the chapters are divided into specific rooms of the house with money saving tips thrown in such as replacing cupboard doors instead of the whole the kitchen and advice on how to avoid other expensive mistakes.

FINE LOOKING HOME

The Newlywed's Guide to Setting up Home is nicely put together with aspirational lifestyle shots raising your expectations as to the sort of fine-looking home you can expect to end up with if you follow Gail's advice. It's just as useful for those who are living together and who may not be married (this is the 21st century), but girls, be wary of leaving this book out for unsuspecting boyfriends to find - they will inevitably be alarmed by the title.

Emily Jenkinson

Publication details:
Cico Books
£16.99
ISBN 978-1-906525-73-6
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4th November 09