Holiday books help home improvement enthusiasts get going

Nothing brings holiday cheer to home improvement enthusiasts like great holiday books to spur on their interests through the coming year. Here are several home-related books for dreaming during long winter evenings:

• “The Real Wood Bible” ($30, Firefly). Help has arrived for anyone who is making hard decisions about which hardwood floor to select or which wood to buy for oodworking projects, courtesy of Nick Gibbs.

This book is 256 pages of valuable information about choosing 100 decorative woods. After 36 pages of pertinent advice, including seven steps to choosing wood and discussion of issues surrounding certified supplies, “Real Wood” opens up the world of choices, including tigerwood, Tasmanian sassafras, Brazilian rosewood, purpleheart and American beech.

Each species is accompanied by a photograph of the wood with and without a stain, plus text on strengths and weaknesses, main uses, key characteristics, how it handles in workshop situations and availability and sustainability issues.

• “Stone by Design” ($30, Gibbs Smith). In the hands of Lew French, stone design becomes more than fireplaces and flagstone paths; it becomes art and philosophy, inspiration and grace. Photographer Alison Shaw beautifully showcases several of his stone projects, including a writing studio, a walled garden door, a pathway, landscaping at a pond and Isabella’s Cave.

• “Jonathan Fong’s Walls that Wow” ($25, Watson-Guptil). The subtitle, “Creative Wall Treatments Without Fancy-Schmancy Painting” only begins to hint at the fun-filled pages that will lead the artistically challenged, complete with instructions. Fong offers 24 dramatic and inexpensive projects, including the wall of sound (styling with blank compact discs), chicken-wiring a wall into a message center, bamboo branches to bring the outdoors to your wall, a wall collage of wrapped gift boxes and creating a magnetic wall on which to hang quotes or poetry.

• “New Old House: Designing with Reclaimed Material” ($20, Gibbs Smith). Ed Knapp’s book should be an inspiration for anyone wanting to turn abandoned materials into new projects. It’s also an invitation to save historic hand-hewn beams, copper piping (turn them into pot hangers), or maybe an antique Ferris wheel seat that could be converted to a porch swing.

• “Listening to Our Ancestors” ($24, National Geographic). Why a book subtitled “The Art of Native Life Along the North Pacific Coast” in a round-up of home-related books? “Listening” is a reminder of how form and function can be integrated, about how much art existed in the lives of this area’s first inhabitants. There are visual clues in “Listening” that can be applied to your own home decorating. We do that to some extent anyway, in extra touches to woodworking, in quilts as wall-hangings. Use “Listening” as an inspiration to go beyond function when choosing your approach to in-home environment.

• “Eco Nest: Creating Sustainable Sanctuaries of Clay, Straw and Timber” ($25, Gibbs Smith). The authors profile 10 homes around the country to show that a nurturing home does not have to include the usual chemicals and toxins that come with modern home-building techniques.

• “Celebrating Home: Decorating for the Holidays and Seasons” ($30, Watson-Guptil). Move over, Martha Stewart. “Celebrating” has a “real” feel to it, full of ideas that people with average skills and finances can create during a busy 21st-century life. It’s full of traditions and new ideas, of memories and creativity, and you don’t need a full-time staff to create them.

• “Courtyards: Intimate Outdoor Spaces” ($40, Gibbs Smith). Douglas Keister takes readers through courtyard history in many countries before moving on to community courtyards, courtyards in historic residents, and new courtyards. He also includes chapters on courtyard water features and lighting.

• “The eBay Home Makeover” ($20, Watson-Guptil). Alyssa Ettinger unlocks the secrets to buying cheap treasures on eBay and turning them into delightful decorations. She starts with how to search, buy, bid and pay on eBay; she also shares tricks of the trade and provides an eBay glossary. The book is divided into chapters (windows, flooring, furniture, textiles, etc.) with specific tips on how to work the eBay system depending on your acquisition goals.

What are people saying about mortgages today:

Rates on 30-year mortgages edged down last week to a seven-month low. Mortgage-giant Freddie Mac reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to 6.3 percent, down slightly from 6.31 percent two weeks ago. It put rates at the lowest level since they were at 6.24 percent the first week of March.

Bank of Hawaii, Central Pacific Bank, Territorial Savings Bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgages all cut their 30-year mortgage rates to 5.75 percent this week.

Most people think of a mortgage as a means to an end. After all, you buy a house, not a home loan. But a mortgage is much more than the path to homeownership. It is a financial instrument that must be managed, just like any other financial investment.