The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home

List Price: $18.99 Discount Price: $2.26

Customer Reviews:

A great handbook for planning your home building [Posted on 2007-07-12]
There are so many things covered in this book that a list will be drastically incomplete, but I will give a few:
Deciding if it's worth it to contract your own home. Buying land. PLanning your home for that land (position, site issues), energy saving measures, supplies you need, how to hire contractors and deal with them. Things that can go wrong and what you need to do. What each aspect of building involves and how to prepare for them. Ways to cut costs. Deciding what you want most for your money. How much house you can afford. And many more.

In response to a previous post, there is a small section on ways to save money on construction. Most of them are very simple, some are from official sources (like ways to avoid waste, which also saves money). I agree with the previous post that you should be careful of cutting corners on things you don't fully understand. Like how wide to space supports. Verify with local builders and compare to building code. Something HE also suggests. But with things like plan your house in 4' segments so you waste less drywall (which comes in these widths). You can safely follow advice like that.

This book has many excellent qualities. Unlike most, he's giving your the forms and information you will need to contract your home, not just endless descriptions on why it's great to do it. His timeline showing the time range for each aspect and what needs to be done first is priceless. So many pages I found were "aha" pages where I said to myself "That's JUST what I've been needing to know".

I do agree that you will want more than one book on the subject. This is a huge investment! It's really a great book to keep on hand for helping you plan this experience and do a good job of it.

The book is dated 1997, so some things are going to be dated. He has a small section where he plays up computers and the internet which seems a little dated. Also the $$ amounts given will seem awfully low. Not too many of those, though.

Something this book is NOT is an artisan/artist's guide. For making things beautiful and artistic, you'll want other books to give you ideas.

I've read several books from the library and ones I've purchased, and I'm buying this one first to have my own copy.

Contracting Your Home [Posted on 2007-09-01]
This is a great guide to how to build your own home. Their are tips on how to work with subs, local officals. They have a step by step instructions, along with drawings of what the project should look like when finished. The forms listed, through out the book, can help you advoid legal, contract and problems threw out the entire the project.

Should be renamed "The Contracting Your Home Bible" [Posted on 2007-10-31]
The moment you open this book you start to understand the dynamics of building at every phase. I have been an electrical contractor for ten years and not fully understood what I now do.

I've been in many new builds and rebuilds by people who thought they knew construction, and have seen problem with timing and purchaces and deliveries and the myriad of problems that plague the job site.

This book my new Bible of building would have prevented all of the kaos. Not to say any job will be without problems, this book will help you resolve all building issues. Just go by the numbers and you can't fail

A Fantastic Book For Some Wanting to Enter the IT Business [Posted on 2008-03-11]
This is an excellent resource for the IT contractor or someone entering the IT businees. As some one who does IT contracting I found that the section on "Effectively Improving Your IT Market Value" especially useful. This is one area that I need to work on for personal growth and this book shows how. Highly recommended.

Obsolete, Incomplete [Posted on 2008-06-24]
The first thing I looked up in this book was siding options. What can you say about a book that fails to list the single most common and cost effective option: Fiber Cement (aka hardiplank). I think this is a book inexpertly updated from the 80s. The book has NOTHING on Windows. It has a little section on finding info on the internet that pre-dates Google. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. It's a waste of time and money.

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