Presents the stories of young city families, single people, and retirees across the country who have opted for simple homes and lifestyles, and includes photographs and descriptions of their houses and interior designs.

ALL the arts are modes of expressing the One Ideal; but the ideal must be rooted in the soil of the real, the practical, the utilitarian. Thus it happens that architecture, the most utilitarian of the arts, underlies all other expressions of the ideal; and of all architecture, the designing of the home brings the artist into closest touch with the life of man. A movement toward a simpler, a truer, a more vital art expression, is now taking place in California. It is a movement which involves painters and poets, composers and sculptors, and only lacks coordination to give it a significant influence upon modern life. One of the first steps in this movement, it seems to me, should be to introduce more widely the thought of the simple home - to emphasize the gospel of the simple life, to scatter broadcast the faith in simple beauty, to make prevalent the conviction that we must live art before we can create it.

Presented in an accessible question-and-answer format, information on repairs and upgrades--from the "Popular Mechanics" column, Homeowner's Clinic--comes from real-life situations faced by homeowners.

Detailed instructions, accompanied by hundreds of step-by-step illustrations, take readers through common repairs and maintenance tasks around the house, including repairing holes in drywall, unclogging drains, replacing light fixtures, repairing cracked tiles, screening gutters, and more. Original. 12,000 first printing.