Review of The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home (Paperback)

This book starts out by suggesting that the reader obtain a pair of work boots and a flannel shirt and go hang out at construction sites so that you can act like a builder and impress your subs. Not to get construction experience, but to know when to spit and how to yell at people properly. What a joke.

The authors' approach to building is very much in that vein. Cut corners in foolish places and cover it all up with drywall later. He advocates things like single-headers on loadbearing walls and butting up 2 sections of joist sistered with plywood (!) over an open span - not on top of the beam. Whatever pocket change is saved by stunts like this is not worth it in light of the structural and code deficiencies you'd be left with.

If you have read a few other books about frame construction, you can spot the patently crazy ideas among the other bits of very sound advice in this book. But if you are starting from scratch, run away from it. You may not spot the difference between the smart and the stupid here. I get the impression that the authors are coming from the perspective of a penny-conscious builder of tract houses who is just trying to move as many Mchouses as fast as possible without much care for quality. Fine from a business point of view, but it is exactly the kind of mindset that most owner-builders are trying to avoid.

Rather than this book, I would suggest picking up 'Build Your Dream Home for Less,' by R. Dodge Woodson. Woodson's book gives you the perspective of a professional builder who has also built homes for himself and walks a fine line between the perspective of the businessman who needs to maintain a healthy margin and a homeowner who doesn't want ot get stuck with a lousy house. The two books are priced about the same and Woodson's is the one you won't regret.

Product Description
This new edition of The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Homegives aspiring homeowners exactly the information they need to manage their own construction project. Full-color illustrations andphotographs with revamped forms and checklists present the material much like a project manual used by professional contractors.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.



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