Buy it, furnish it and they will come

AUTHOR Marylouise Oates is like your funny Aunt Debbie, who isn’t shy about telling you what to do with your life but delivers the message with humor. And in this, “The Second Home Book,” Oates offers a guide to keep by your side, along with the prerequisite tape measure and folder filled with notes and lists.

Formerly a society columnist at the Los Angeles Times, Oates has produced a thorough map for the second-home owner (or second-home ponderer), written in a friendly but authoritative style.

Oates bases much of her practical advice on her years of experience with second homes -- both the ones she’s lived in and the ones her friends and acquaintances have owned. She includes all aspects of owning a second home, far beyond the actual purchase (and, in fact, discusses this in only one chapter, at the end).

Here are a few of the areas she explores:

* How to furnish your second home: Focus on comfort and sturdiness, don’t go overboard on accessories and remember that anything can be painted white.

* How to oversee your second residence from afar. “Finding help in a resort community is not difficult; finding help that stays with you is,” she writes. She also tackles the nitty-gritty details of tracking and paying bills, what vital records to keep where and how to plan for emergencies.

* How to tell your guests (and the children of guests) what’s permitted and what’s not: Send guests a pre-visit note or e-mail outlining your rules, such as, “If you are very fussy, if you use a very special tea or need to have French framboise jam on your toast . . . just bring it along. You won’t hurt our feelings.” When you need to confront a guest about overstepping the rules, she says, use a tone that combines Mary Poppins with Katie Couric -- “firm but perky.”

* How to entertain: Give careful thought to mixing friends from your primary and secondary homes. “Some groups are better left unshuffled,” Oates advises. She also warns that friends and family might want to use your home as a setting for weddings or large extravaganzas. That’s fine, she writes, as long as you have a say in the planning.

* How to establish rules for people who want to -- gasp -- borrow your hideaway: Make clear what they can eat from the pantry and which appliances they can use. Suggest a nearby store they can visit to replenish provisions. Expect things to break in your absence, so make sure that what you leave in your house isn’t irreplaceable. Think of the people who are borrowing your house as toddlers, “only more so, because they will be unsupervised,” she says. On one issue, she’s emphatic: No pets allowed. And her advice on second homes that are overseas? “If you have one, just don’t tell anybody.”

As if the book weren’t already entertaining enough, it’s tied together with snippets of movie dialogue, much of it from black-and-white classics from the 1940s, but others from contemporary films.

Oates’ humorous tone throughout (in a section on shipping from a small-town post office, she writes: “Wait! You are skimming over these paragraphs . . .”) makes the challenge of owning a second home seem less intimidating, especially for those who need to do it on a shoestring. She’s there cheering you on. “You don’t let any of that negative talk discourage you. No way! You are focusing on the wonderful and not the difficult.”