Customer Reviews

New Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this book. It's extensive, easy to follow and copiously illustrated. With it, I can tackle most small-and-medium jobs around the home (even plumbing, my personal bugaboo. New faucet? No problem!) Without it, I'd be stuck having to call someone in and paying good money to have the work done. This book is a great resource for homeowners (or even renters) and is all the home repair and improvement manual that many people would ever need.

The book is broken into sections, organized by the type of work they cover. There's a chapter on Electrical, one on Plumbing, one on Power Tools, etc. The Emergency Repairs section at the beginning of the book could be invaluable in making your home safe and habitable if necessary until a professional can come in to make permanent repairs.

This book is extremely good at presenting a given home repair task to the novice and covers most of what you'll ever need to do to your home.

It gives a general listing of the types of tools you'll use and includes some incredibly useful tricks of the trade like how to hide nail heads (aka "blind nailing") and using wedges of wood to prevent pry bars from destroying more than you want.

I especially like the supplementary material it provides. For example in the electrical section, it talks about how electricity is typically wired in a home. It further offers guidelines on such things as the number of receptaccles per (15 amp) circuit and how a layout of circuits might look around your home.

A minor nit is the book lacks is a way to estimate how appropriate a given task is for you. For example, they talk about installing and removing a bathtub, but don't include any conventional warning like "Are you out of your mind?" or "Maybe you should not attempt this." (Removing and installing bathtubs is considered to be both time consuming and labor intensive.)

Overall, this is a great reference book for the homeowner and provides great diagrams and descriptive text of tasks you may soon need to attempt.

This book is GREAT for the beginning do-it-yourselfer. It assumes that you know next to nothing, which is a good place to start. It's very thorough, starting with tools and how to use them and going through all the components of your house. The one thing it doesn't cover is landscaping/gardening, but there are millions of books about that. It won't teach you how to build your own house, but it has just about everything you need to maintain and improve one.

This book will give you the confidence to take on most home projects yourself. (And, hopefully, the skills to do so as well...)

This book has helped me with so much. When I was a new homeowner, it held my hand through numerous leaks, clogs, installations, renovations, etc. Even if you don't plan to make repairs or renovations yourself, you should still get a copy of this book if you own a home, just so you can ask contractors intelligent questions. Illustrations are helpful and clear, and the index is superb. I recommend this book especially to new homeowners.

This is an excellent book for the novice do-it-yourselfer. I was intimidated with a lot of the work needed to be done on my new home, but this book made it all seem possible. It was clear what things I could tackle myself, and what things are best left to a pro. I particularly liked the section on fasteners - it was something I didn't understand, although I thought I should!, and it gave a detailed description of what to use where, and why. I had a lot of lightbulb moments reading this book.

One note - be sure to pick up the new edition, which I hear is much improved (hard to believe)-it just came out feb 05 and is not the first one amazon brings up - the new edition is actually cheaper as I write this.

I have this book and think it's GREAT for projects that you're doing from scratch (like replacing bathroom fixtures), but it's NOT a great Home Repair manual -- there are a lot of minor tasks that go virtually unnoticed and undescribed (like re-caulking bathroom fixtures). A good book to have in your home reference library, but definitely not my first choice!

If you are not the most adept person at home repair, or are living on a modest budget which does not allow for expensive home repairs, then this book may be the solution. It is extremely well organized and covers every part of home repair from electrical to plumbing to tools. Even those who do not own their own home but rent, and perhaps have a landlord who only does maintence when the roof falls through (and, believe me, there are more than a few of those around,) you will find this book extremely helpful. The illustrations are clear and the wording straight forward and easy to follow. If it's a Reader's Digest book, it sure to be worth every penny...and this book is. For the home handy-man, or woman (single woman will love this book,) this manual is a "must-have reference guide" to a ton of problems that could cost a fortune if you had to hire a professional to make the repairs. Go for it, be adventurous, the problem might be easier to fix than you think!

I am a new homeowner. A co-worker let me use his book to do a plumbing project. It seemed like a big and time consuming project! But when I read and followed the instructions, it took me less time than I anticipated. This book is easy to understand and the drawings are clear to follow. I am ordering my own copy.

Lets preface this by stating that I know nothing about anything mechanical. That's why it's so amazing that I could use the instructions in this book to fix things! The water in my bathroom sink wasn't flowing properly, and by reading the instructions and looking (closely) at the illustrations, my friend and I were actually able to fix it! The book also gives excellent ideas on how to ensure your gutters are keeping water away from the foundation of your house, and how to do all sorts of other helpful things you'd never think of if you hadn't read it. I can't recommend it highly enough. I'm sure you'll save ten times the book's cost, even if you only prevent a single visit from a plumber or electrician!

I'm a Home Inspector in the Washington DC metropolitan area, I have this book, and refer to it regularly to help out my clients. Buy this for your own library, you can't go wrong and you'll save money doing your own repairs.