Home Book Club | Books about home renovation, remodeling, and restoration

How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding & Maintaining Your Home

A beginner's guide to home repair and improvement

To get started as a knowledgeable do-it-yourselfer, you will need a basic grounding in what makes your home run. If you have no experience in construction or fixing things yourself, you will need to start somewhere. You will need a book that provides basic information on all the parts of a home that you may need to fix. Where do you find that information? Most books that you will find online assume that you already know what you are doing. For the very inexperienced beginner, there is How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding & Maintaining Your Home.

The very little things that need fixing are the best places to start, and are the jobs that most experienced DIYers start out with. This means fixing running toilets, sink drains and different types of faucets. To fix these things, you will need to know how they work, and that is where How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding & Maintaining Your Home shines. It is an excellent education resource, providing the reader with carefully annotated exploded drawings of various household appliances and fixtures. The drawings are well done and an excellent introduction to the various electrical and plumbing elements of your home.

The book starts out with plumbing, which is possibly the most accessible part of home repair for most beginners. It continues into wiring and electrical work, beginning with the basics and proceeding to more complex stuff like hanging ceiling fixtures and understanding your carbon monoxide detector. Author Charlie Wing is a well-known author of home improvement books, and is known for other well-reviewed works like The Visual Handbook of Remodeling.

Convert Your Home to Solar Energy

The cost of energy fluctuates wildly, and as a result, it is only natural for a homeowner to seek out alternatives that are more affordable in the long run. Alternative energy sources are also of interest to homeowners who are concerned about pollution of the environment resulting from the use of fossil fuels.

There are few sources of energy more freely available or that meet the definition of “renewable” more than the sun. The technology used in harvesting sunlight has come a long way in recent years, both in terms of efficiency and affordability.

The benefits that may be seen from switching your home’s energy needs to a solar system are what Joseph R. Provey and Everett M. Barber show in their book, Convert Your Home to Solar Energy. The benefits and options available with the installation of such appliances as a solar water heater or a solar-powered heating and air conditioning are explored.

In the introduction, the authors go briefly into the history of the domestic use of solar energy, pointing out that solar technology has existed and has been used in the US since the 1930s. They also point out that for it to be used effectively; the consumer must be educated about how the technology works. For example, they suggest that homeowners may want to take steps such as upgrading their home’s insulation so as to maximize the returns from their solar investment.

Convert Your Home to Solar Energy also covers the use of devices like social cookers and clothes dryers that do not involve converting solar energy to electricity.

Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-Case Scenarios

Here is another book that will provide you with help on how to handle an emergency. Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-Case Scenarios provides you with advice on how those things that can come up at any minute and for which you may not be prepared. The nature of disasters in real life is that they often come at a time when we are most unprepared. They are also often things that we did not expect and have no experience with. Tornadoes are an example of this and tornado-preparation is an example of the subjects covered in Lisa Bedford‘s book.

If you have lived your whole life in a place where they were rare or have never occurred, then you probably have no idea what to do when faced with the prospect of dealing with one of the most destructive forces of nature. Preparation is one of the areas the author stresses. Avoid panic. Learn. Stock up on essential such as tools, water, food and certain toiletries.

The book is written in a blunt, straightforward tone that manages tackle serious subjects with a certain amount of humor. The humor makes it a bit more readable than other books of this type.

Another factor that sets it apart is Bedford’s point of view. She points out that when preparing for disasters using online resources, she found that most websites on survival were created with a male audience in mind and that there was nothing geared for the suburban mom.

This book attempts to rectify that by providing a resource directed specifically at the mom-demographic.

Home Repair That Pays Off: 150 Simple Ways to Add Value Without Breaking Your Budget

A home improvement book

Apart from being the place where you live, your home is an investment. It has to be looked in this light as your ability to resell at a profit can provide great financial benefit or can be a catastrophe. No opportunity that allows you to build on your investment and to make your home a more enjoyable place to live in, should be neglected.

This is especially useful for the Do-It-Yourself hobbyist who may want something to do on the weekends. With Home Repair That Pays Off: 150 Simple Ways to Add Value Without Breaking Your Budget they can practice their hobby, while increasing the value of their home. The author is renowned home improvement coach, Hector Seda.

Exterior Maintenance

The book covers such areas as maintenance to the building’s exterior. The outside of the building is the first thing that prospective buyers see and will inevitably form a part of their first impression. That first impression may impact whether or not they will pay the price you are asking. Concrete walkways, painting, siding, and proper upkeep of such areas as decks and porches all greatly impact the home’s price.

Landscaping is another part of the exterior that a homeowner will want to pay close attention to. A well kept yard will add greatly to the homeowner’s ability to live comfortably in their home as well as to the first impression created in the mind of a prospective home-buyer.

Interior Maintenance

Areas of interior maintenance that can add value to a home include fixing squeaky or sticky doors, which can be trickier problems than they may seem. Homeowner will also want to fix glaring cosmetic problems like holes in the drywall, and bi-fold closet doors that do not stay in their tracks.

How to Live in Small Spaces

Design, Furnishing, Decoration and Detail for the Smaller Home

Home improvement books often assume that the reader has a moderate to large income, and a moderate to large house as a result. Those with smaller houses usually have to make do by adapting suggestions meant for larger living spaces, to their own. Well, now they do not have to. At least not as far as How to Live in Small Spaces: Design, Furnishing, Decoration and Detail for the Smaller Home is concerned. This book, written by Terence Conran, caters to people who prefer cozy over sprawl. Or at least, have no option but to live in a small home. The reasons that people choose small living spaces range from the neighborhood to economics.

Space Utilization
This book is not only concerned with creating pretty spaces, it is concerned with the efficient use of limited living space. How do you convert a small space to an uncluttered, comfortable home? Another question it answers is whether or not it is possible for someone to express themselves via the decoration/organization of a small home as easily as by a large one.

Benefits of a Small Space

· One of the points that How to Live in Small Spaces: Design, Furnishing, Decoration and Detail for the Smaller Home makes is that small living spaces force the homeowner to forego the accumulation of unnecessary items. Packrats will have limited space with which to hoard.

· If used properly it also makes chores and activity within the home, more efficient. The ease with which a homeowner can clean their home can free up time for other aspects of life.

· Small homes use less energy to heat up and to keep cool, therefore a homeowner will save money on the utility bill just because of the reduced square footage.

Working Alone by John Carroll

A book of tips for solo construction projects

Whether you are building your top-secret apocalypse bunker in the desert or just have no friends, learning to build alone is a good skill to have. The term do-it-yourself sometimes means exactly what it says, and John Carroll’s Working Alone provides lone wolf builders with the knowledge of how to pull off major construction tasks without help.

Before purchasing this book, it should be noted that many of the techniques are not particularly beginner-friendly. That said, Carroll has included a section jobs that even amateurs should be able to handle.

The author is a builder who is accustomed to handling jobs by himself and this book has all the tricks that he has used in his career to safely complete potentially dangerous solo construction jobs. Obviously, the safety aspect has to be taken into account when contemplating pulling off a construction job without assistance. Working Alone covers this in the book’s opening where Carroll covers how to handle an emergency situation when you are working by yourself. Construction sites are full of the potential for injury. One of Carroll’s tips is to always have a mobile phone handy for making emergency calls.

The other challenges that the solo builder faces include lifting and moving heavy objects, measuring and marking. Carroll has workarounds for all of the obstacles. From using clamps that serve as another pair of hands, to the use of sturdy sawhorses and ladders, Carroll provides common sense advice to anyone who will be attempting tricky jobs on their own.

Green from the Ground Up: Sustainable, Healthy and Energy-Efficient Home Construction

Green reading

Environmentalism is more than just a trendy movement. It is the serious attempt to live causing undue stress on the ecosystem. It has become a massively powerful movement because people realize that there are consequences to neglecting the methods of harvesting resources and disposing of waste. Green construction is the attempt to erect buildings with environmental friendliness and sustainability in mind. What are the methods for making a construction project green? That is what Green from the Ground Up: Sustainable, Healthy, and Energy-Efficient Home Construction aims to tell its readers.

The author, who has 10 years experience in green construction, with a knowledge of solar technology and other tools used to make a home more energy-efficient and friendly to the environment. In addition to practical experience running an eco-friendly construction company, he has also worked as a consultant on green construction helped to train other home-builders in the various methods of green construction.

The introduction points out that while green construction does have a particular focus on being energy efficient, it actually encompasses all of the trade, not just energy usage. The aim is to get a house to fit perfectly with its surroundings. The intent is to reduce the damage caused by humans when using typical construction methods and objectives. This means avoiding waste when purchasing and using building materials. The book also mentions the improving of air quality indoors as a major objective of green construction. Ensuring the maximum efficiency of an HVAC system is one method of improving air quality while reducing the consumption of energy produced with fossil fuels.

Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings by Aldren A. Watson

The complete novice at do-it-yourself home repair has to start somewhere, and what better starting point is there than the equipment used in construction. Tools are and have been essential to various human endeavors since the beginning of time. From the simple plows used for early farming to the vast array of high technology implements used in contemporary construction, tools are a part of what sets humans apart from other animals.

Of course, it is not always necessary to know how a tool works in order to use it, but it can still be worthwhile for a beginner to study how best to use a particular implement to get the best possible results. Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings by Aldren A. Watson provides thorough knowledge of those basic tools used in carpentry. The methods of using tools like handsaws, chisels, planes and bit braces are all covered, and accompanied by line drawings.

Watson states that the purpose of the book is to help the reader to discover the workings and features of each piece of equipment. He believes that for a carpenter to truly excel at their craft, they must have an intimate understanding of their tools and learn to work with them instead of merely using them on wood.

Of course, no book is a substitute for a practical understanding of how these tools work. The reader will need to follow up on what they learn from Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings, by actually experimenting and practicing with the tools so that they can observe them up close in action.

Black & Decker Working with Drywall

Hanging & Finishing Drywall the Professional Way

Hanging drywall is one of the more unpleasant and tedious construction jobs, one that is hated even by the most experienced construction professionals. It is simple enough in process but difficult in execution. Black & Decker Working with Drywall: Hanging & Finishing Drywall the Professional Way, is one of the essential resources that give DIY handymen the instruction that is necessary to pull it off. This is one of those jobs that due to its simplicity may seem, at first glance, to be easy to handle. It is not. In fact, it is usually not a one-man job as gypsum boards are heavy and awkward to maneuver into place. On the other hand, as the book points out, it should not be one that intimidates the home improver, either. Once they get the basic principles down, the homeowner should be able hang drywall competently and reasonably quickly.

The book covers the essential pieces of knowledge that the person working with drywall will need, beginning with the tools and then the fasteners and adhesives. The seams will need joint tape and knowledge in how to apply it. The reader will learn all of these secrets.

Actually hanging the drywall will require a layout plan and the book provides help on how to come up with one of those as well. The goal of these layout plans is to keep seams to a minimum as they require work in the form to applying joint tape as well as sanding. The more seams there are, the more work there is and thus the more time spent on the job, therefore readers will want to pay careful attention to this part.

Building Kitchen Cabinets, by Udo Schmidt Dip

Like the bathroom, the kitchen is intended to functional, and to be functional it must be organized. Kitchens, incidentally, are often one of the smallest spaces in the home which makes the challenge of organization that much more difficult. The key to effective kitchen organization is storage space. The various implements needed to cook and serve meals can easily become disorganized and unsightly, especially in a large household where a lot of food is prepared. While many solutions for kitchen organization exist, the traditional and popular way is the cabinet.

The introduction to Building Kitchen Cabinets by Udo Schmidt Dip explains that many home builders are resistant to the idea of making cabinets from scratch due to the fact that there are already so many pre-made varieties available. The book, however, provides help and instruction (with lots of pictures), for those who want to buck the trend and build their own kitchen cabinets. The book even teaches the do-it-yourselfer how to design their own cabinets.

The author points out that despite the fact that factory-made kitchen cabinets can be customized to an extent, the homeowner who builds theirs from scratch is able to construct a design that is entirely their own. Unique designs and lots of storage space in the kitchen are also good selling points for a home, therefore properly built and installed cabinets can therefore be useful for more than just aesthetics.

The book also points out that by building the cabinet from scratch, the homeowner or professional contractor is not limited to the designs and materials, used to build pre-made cabinets.

It should be noted that this book is not meant for beginners, but for those who already have some experience with carpentry. It is meant to add the skill of cabinet-building to the repertoire of a professional or experienced handyman.

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