Living etc

...looking for inspiration anyway, and Living Etc was one of the magazines that we got into the habit of buying with our big supermarket shop each month. It is the only magazine that we buy that is guaranteed to cause a toddler style ruck in our house, or tug of war over who gets to read it first, as we both enjoy it.

What is Living Etc?
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Living Etc is a home improvements magazine, published by IPC. ...
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I would categorise Living Etc in the same camp as the TV show Grand Designs, which incidentally also has its own magazine now. It's a more aspirational read than some of the more established, traditional style mags. It's definitely selling you the message that beautiful living will improve your quality of life. By planning the space you live in, in a more functional manner, you can really make the most of what you ... more

Introduction
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I originally wrote this review back in early 2006, and frankly it sucked harder than a Dyson. So thank you to the kind souls that even said it was 'helpful' as it was about as helpful as a chocolate tea pot.

Anyway, I digress. I bought my first home with my partner, back in 2004, a lovely 2 bedroom Victorian conversion in South East London. But due to saving up for the wedding we couldn't really get cracking on any of our home improvement plans.

It didn't stop us looking for inspiration anyway, and Living Etc was one of the magazines that we got into the habit of buying with our big supermarket shop each month. It is the only magazine that we buy that is guaranteed to cause a toddler style ruck in our house, or tug of war over who gets to read it first, as we both enjoy it.

What is Living Etc?
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Living Etc is a home improvements magazine, published by IPC. It comes out each month and contains a good mixture between the sort of home that requires a large renovation budget, and affordable, innovative tips that we can all benefit from. It costs £3.40 and has around 40 pages per standard issue.

The magazine features a standard layout of;

- Feature length articles on about 3-4 different homes each month. This month the main feature is on a couple of American Architects from New York who have bought and renovated a home in the American countryside. The way this section functions is always to show you lots of pictures of the new home, (although not many before shots), costs on certain items in the house, and interviews with the people who did the work, looking at their motivations and inspirations for their home.

- A certain themed section, each time different. This months theme was on bathrooms and what you could achieve with different sized rooms in your home, and on varying budgets

- One- off pages on a certain home item. This months magazine featured a page on door matts, with prices ranging from £2.50 for a plain brown, very functional matt, to a novelty Hare shaped matt in the £40 region. There was also a page on stair carpets, which I always think is a shame as in a ground floor flat we have no need of stair carpets, but I can see they are an easy way of jazzing up the entrance to your home, if indeed your stairs are in your hall. Coffee tables also feature, with suggested books to put out on the tables.

- The magazine features the standard items like reader's letters, and Q&A for household problems.

- Food and Travel - This is a smaller section towards the back that normally reviews a few new bars or places to eat. These places are around London normally, so perhaps not of much use to people regionally. In this months issue the Travel section consisted of about 6 new hotels that have been reviewed by the magazine, in range of places around Europe and Africa.

Feel of the magazine
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I would categorise Living Etc in the same camp as the TV show Grand Designs, which incidentally also has its own magazine now. It's a more aspirational read than some of the more established, traditional style mags. It's definitely selling you the message that beautiful living will improve your quality of life. By planning the space you live in, in a more functional manner, you can really make the most of what you have. As a result of this one of the main areas they concentrate on, and I've seen it come up time and time again is how to maximise storage areas in your home. These don't have to be traditional cupboards and can be created in any space. For example turning the area under your bath into cupboards that can pile away all your unsightly bathroom accessories.
Or how to create extra cupboards out of the alcoves next to your chimney, something which has been of great interest to us as we have these features in two of our rooms, and currently storage is a little light in our home.

One of the things about Living is that they do take criticism from some readers that their featured ideas can be a little exclusive, but I don't think that's necessarily true. Among the advice on how to create your own wet room, or install a sky light, are pieces on how a good quality notice board in your kitchen can bond the family, or how to create children's bedrooms when you have more than one child per room.

Practical Applications
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One of the ideas I got from Living Etc back when we bought the house was floating shelves. These, if you are not familiar with the term are shelves where instead of working on the traditional hinge and bracket style, consist of a coat rack type affair that you put up first, that has three long prongs sticking out of. You then take the shelf and guide it back onto the prongs, so that when shelf and prongs meet it looks as if the shelf is staying up on its own.
We were able to buy several of these from Ikea at a cost of only £30 per shelf, in a lovely dark wood mahogany effect. They look really nice against the cream walls in my sitting room, and show off my books well.

This idea really helped us make the most of our living room, with its uneven walls (show me an old house that has straight ones!)

Other useful Living Etc Features
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Recently launched was www.livingetc.com the website of the magazine. This contains;

- A useful forum where readers can swap tips and ask each other questions on where to find different things.

- An online calculator for working out how much paint or wallpaper you might need to complete a job.

- A searchable database of stores in the UK stocking home improvement products.

- Useful links to websites of all products featured in the magazine.

Criticisms of Living Etc
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Although I am a happy user of Living Etc, I can see what the criticisms are that others might make.

1) Its pretty London centric if Im honest. Although the featured homes are often from abroad, this issue as I mentioned had New York and Stockholm in it, you will rarely see Cardiff or Exeter mentioned. There have been letters from annoyed readers in the past saying, why show me all these lovely products if the nearest place to me stocking them is 100 miles away. I can see their point.

2) The homes they feature do tend to either be period homes, Victorian and Georgian seems to make lots of appearances, or ultra modern Warehouse conversions. I don't think I've ever seen a bungalow for example. This does give the view that there are only certain kinds of homes in the UK, cant all homes be improved?

Summary
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Living Etc is a useful home improvement magazine if you are seeking to do either full scale renovation projects, or just seeking a few new ideas to jazz up your interior. With a strong city bias this is especially useful for those people with access to higher disposable incomes, but does genuinely have something for everyone. 

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