Housebuilding: A Do-It-Yourself Guide, Revised & Expanded Paperback – June 1, 2007

Pros:Easy read! I went through the entire bookstore in my hometown, this was one of the few books that really explained mostly everything necessary to build a house. I'm 55. In my 20's I worked on houses doing light to heavy duty home repairs, but I never took a course or school training and I wish I had. This book does a good job for covering all of the basics you'd probably learn with formal training, without the professor-talk. Let's say you couldn't read, but you can count money and read blueprints like some of my friends in the past have done. If you studied the pictures and memorized them, I'm willing to bet, there's a good chance you could build a solid, modern home, just from the pictures alone. Now this is a testament to how well this book was written by the now deceased author Mr. R.J. DeCristoforo. Over he years I would buy one of thes500-1000 page tomes' and might end up reading about 30-40 pages while it eventually would fall apart in the floorboard of an extended cab pick-up afterseveral yearsof I'm going to read that thing one day. The difference between this book and the book written by educators is that this one is easy to read. It's like this guy is standing right next to you saying, you do this this way and you do that that way while showing step by step how all of the small details fit into the big picture.Cons:Very few of these construction guides tell the name and descriptions of the tools of the trade manual or otherwise power tools. We could use some pictures of all of the tools necessary to build a house and at least a brief explanation of how to use them in a production environment, @ the jobsite!On a side note:All Authors need to show more pages online of their book. I had to go to several bookstores in my surrounding area just to locate several good titles.I've written several titles on amazon over the years. One thing I've learned: DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!!! People (chances are very good: your competition) will tell you not to put to much information online because someone will still it. Hell, the people @ amazon will even tell you: The more details you give of your book online= more sales. In the past I've gave away books for free and guess which ones sold the most?The free ones! Why? More people see you titles and most don't even buy. But it's always those few fans who for whatever reason would rather have a hard or soft copy of your work.So in summary, give us details. The more good details you give us, the better decisions we can make on your titles and If your particular book is not selling? Keep writing. Everyday! Eventually they'll sell, in BIC numbers!

I have not begun to start to get through this book and it is a gem! It tells you every step of the way what you need to do and how to do it and what to expect in the way of pitfalls along the way. I am learning something new every time I read another chapter and I have to say, it's almost information overload! For instance, I never considered that when buying lumber, if it feels heavier than another piece of lumber the same size, it is probably because the heavier piece is not completely dried which means bowing later down the road. Common sense should tell one that, but when building, there are a million things going on in my head and something that should have been easy can slip by you. I am SUPER GLAD I bought this book! All of the great reviews are true!

Good read. Lots of helpful info.Book has cover flap thats nice to mark you spot when reading.Made in Malaysia

Love this book!!. Everything inside this book is laid out clearly. The pictures are very helpful when you want to really grasp the technique being explained... i would recommend this book if you are looking to build your own house .

This was a very instructional book for someone like me who doesn't know a whole lot about construction. I was looking at doing an addition, but this book was more for new construction. Though it did help a lot in some areas, I had to find additional resources to aid me in making sure my addition was done currectly and to code. Very good illustrations, though.

This book is a must have if you are really considering building your own home or remodeling. I'm planning on doing that and I've had a lot of help from others with experience, but this book truly covers all sides to permits, construction from foundation all the way to flooring. The most impressive part was there are several options show for every section and the author seemed to remain fairly neutral with most techniques, only offering factual opinions.

This is a need if you are building your own house it has details about everything you need to know. Easy step by step instructions!

This book is not a guide, it is an overview of the building methods. The content might all be there, but the presentation is in the format of a stream-of-conscious discussion about home building which you could achieve every morning by browsing wiki articles.This book is marketed to people unfamiliar with building, but I'm afraid it would be useless for someone with no experience at all. Chapters appear out of order from when you would actually perform the task (e.g., hanging windows and doors appears after siding the house) and I have yet to find the true step-by-step guide portion of the book. For a particular chapter, it is very unclear what procedure you perform first unless you read through the lines and in many cases read ahead to find out what goes below whatever it is you are installing. The pictures are nice as long as you can spot the errors/omissions (or determine what it is they are trying to show you in the first place [an arrow pointing to something important would be helpful]) and often the figure legends are an exact repeat of the language in the text, instead of using that space to point out a subtlety or other important item.This book needs to be restructured or given a new title. A useful "guide" needs to enumerate steps clearly and present them in a multitude of forms, i.e., the text, a table or chart. Then that step-by-step design needs to match figures. Yes, there are many ways to build a home, but this book attempts to discuss them all simultaneously so that you can no longer distinguish between them. The book attempts to do a lot, and fails at most of it. This is a review of how to build homes in America, not a guide.