Customer Reviews

Adding to a House: Planning, Design & Construction

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you're thinking of adding on to your home, this is the best one-volume comprehensive text on both the design and construction process on the market. As a former builder (fifty custom homes, a 46-home subdivision, and commercial projects) who has worked with many architects, I found the principles of addition design laid out here to be thorough, practical and well-illustrated. Every house and every addition is unique, and so understanding the principles is the key to good design. This book also explains much about the construction process, including material take-offs, job planning and other essential topics for any owner or owner-builder.

Taunton Press has an well-deserved reputation for quality construction books, and this is an excellent example of a comprehensive treatment of large, complex subject. As a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle Home section, I would recommend this book unreservedly to any homeowner considering an addition.

I think the book is great. As an architect, I am always on the lookout for books that explain in detail what I am trying to do. I keep this book around to show my residential clients to help them understand their addition.

The illustrations are clear and simple enough for normal people (non architects) to understand. The text comes from the authors years of experience dealing with both sides of the contractor-designer coin. I appreciate his thorough approach and find the book a good addition to my library.

If you are a do-it-yourselfer DO NOT but this book! It talks in generalities about everything and specifically about nothing. I built my own 4 season addition and found the book "framing floors,walls and ceilings" to be very helpful with actual instructions on how to do things.
This might be an ok book for someone planning an addition but will not be doing any work. My advise, dont waste your money!

This is an awesome book full of real world experience, means and methods for additions. If you are an architect as I am, this is a must have for your library...and I have a big library. Highly Reccomended.

This is by far the best book on the subject. I have been digging through construction, design, and architecture books for several months until I finally came across this gem. Finding it earlier would have saved me lots of time and made it easier to work with my architect.

Altough there are some nice projects illustrated in this book, it is apprearent that the author, a contractor, has little respect for architects. The author is only in favor of a 'design-build' approach and exclaims that there is usually a "mistaken assumption that the construction documents adequately describe the work" and that in order for an architect to do an accurate set of drawings and specs "there would be hardly any money left to build with". Inaccurate and absurd.