CNN - Review: 'At Home' - December 15, 1998

(CNN) -- "At Home With the Past" confirms what a lot of home interior voyeurs already know: Looking into people's bedrooms and living quarters is great fun.

But you'll want to take your time on this tour of funky spaces and the tchotchkes and antiques that fill them. Note the word "funky." This is not Architectural Digest. These are not slick, nothing-out-of-place abodes, although there's no doubt that little expense was spared in some of the makeovers.

These are old houses and buildings -- among them are a church, a firehouse, a fishing camp and a loft -- that have been transformed and decorated in the tastes of their creative, often quirky, owners.

Which is why the book is worth strolling through: Each home is accompanied by the owner's story.

And in some cases, they alone are worth the price of admission. Like the newly widowed Abby Buchwald, who, while pregnant, moved from California to Savannah, bought a large rundown house, then painted pieces of furniture to entertain the daughter she had just after her move.

Salvaging old treasures

The chapters are well-written, mostly managing to eschew the vacuous quotes found in some interior design magazines.

As authors Steve Gross and Sue Daley point out: These are the kinds of people who "favored the battered, the scuffed, the faded and the mended -- over the shiny and new. They had rescued the artifacts and salvaged the icons of our collective past and put them on display with great care, pride and humor."

Some of the chapter subtitles give you an idea of what's in store: "A Manor in a Shed," "Eclecticism in an 1830s Greek Revival," "Nifty Fifties Cabin in the Catskills," "A Glitzy Disco Look" and "The Garage as Guest Cottage." Several of the homes are located in New York's Catskill Mountains.

Most of the homeowners have strived to keep renovations to a minimum, to maintain the integrity of the original buildings.

Eclectic style

Christyne Forti explains how she and Jan Tyniec were committed to preserving their early 1800s rural Pennsylvania home, where no one had lived for 50 years.

"The standard approach would have been to open up all the walls, lay in the systems, then slap up the wallboard," Forti says. "Here, workmen had to 'snake' in the wiring and plumbing with almost surgical precision so as to preserve the original walls."

The workers installed insulation and electrical wiring in the attic -- one floorboard at a time.

In most of the homes, there's little attention to a harmony of decorating styles and same-era furnishings, which makes for lots of surprises. And these folks are thrifty, preferring to scour yard sales and flea markets for their finds.

A Greek Revival farmhouse boasts 1950s metal-frame chairs, a 1940s woven paper rug and an early 1900s pine sawbuck table -- all in the same room. Paint-by-numbers pictures are hung throughout a circa 1912 cabin. Other homes boast collections of porcelain flamingos, McCoy vases, Tramp art and vintage bamboo. My favorite home, because of its colorful decor, is a former Brooklyn bank.

There is something in the book for every taste. There's a fabulous Moorish revival mini-palace, a loft with outrageous stained-glass windows and a gracious New Orleans home with French and regional antiques.

This is a book you can pick up over and over and make a new discovery. And it's almost guaranteed: Every reader will see something that stirs old memories.

Deb Krajnak is a copy editor and producer for CNN Interactive.