Customer Reviews

The Owner-Built Home

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I purchased my copy of Kern's classic builders' guide in 1979, launched a home-building career with the book in my toolkit and I'm still using it today. As other reviewers have noted, you can't apply everything offered here in every location because building codes often get in the way of building outside the box. But what you will find here is hands-on practical advice about the way construction really functions and a can-do attitude that will infuse any building project you undertake in the future. The best single piece of information I took away from Kern's teaching is to ALWAYS use ring-shank or spiral-shank nails in any structural application (that is, you would use them for framing but not for molding). None of the homes I built from 1979 to 1995 have squeaky floors today. Thanks Ken!

These days I'm well into a writing career, but am refurbishing a century-old home into some semblance of "green." Kern's book is in the next room, beside my tool bag. His advice still rocks.

One cautionary note: Kern finally, apparently, went too far outside the box and died when an experimental structure he was building collapsed in a wind storm. We lost a good'un.

This book contains some of the most innovative thinking about homebuilding ever to come out of the back-to-the-land movement of the 70's. Kern's book is filled with practical alternatives to the cookie-cutter mentality of the mass housing business. Anyone who intends to design and build their own home, and wants to make something different, needs to read this book first.

I wrote this review for a friend tonight, before I looked it up on amazon.
I had no idea it was a collectors item.
I got my original copy in 1973
I studied it like the Bible
My copy is almost worn out from use.
I built two houses using it as my guide.
It is true that you would need to consult local building codes, but it is a wonderful way to examin what you want, there is a list of questions in the back, that would help you decide what you want, and would be a great thing to review before you talk to a builder or architect

In the Ken Kern
"Owner Built Home"

He says if someone wants wall to wall carpet, they should get carpet slippers.

Another thing I remember,
There are two classes of world travelers.
Those with no money and those with a lot of money.
And little in between.
The most inexpensive houses are made of adobe.
And the most expensive houses are made of adobe, and little in-between.
Same thing with gravel driveways.

He traveled the world and studied all building methods.

He proposes living in a trailer and building in stages, and then removing the trailer.

He has a good section on color and the psycological effect of color.
I chose room colors based on his ideas 22 years ago, and I have not changed them, and I like them.

Ken Kern is a must read. I cherish his dedication to his values. A true American philosopher that's on my bookshelf alongside, Thoreau's Walden Emerson's Essays, Ben Franklin's Autobiography, Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Mike Oehler's The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book, John Muir's How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Complete Idiot, Mark Twains Short Stories, Jack London's Alcoholic Memoirs, Steinbeck's Short Stories, and a few by Bukowski and the Nearing's.

Schools need a class on Kern and the Kernistas. Most of my other heroes are very political and theoretical, but Kern is just so pragmatic, so American. In a time when charlatans hide behind talk of family values and desecrate democracy, my frustration rises and I need to get grounded. I've just Finished Scott Nearing's The Making of a Radical and I'm all primed to act locally, to act responsibly. My angst and apathy is finally turning back to the constructive, and I'm fortunate to have the inspiration of Ken Kern. Yeah, a lot of things bother me, but I'm going to focus on what I can do to make things a little righter or rather lefter.

I knew and was personally involved with Ken and his creations up to his death in 1986. Consider this book as inspirational rather than factual or practical and you'll be ok. Originally written in the 60's, the material is a counter-culture classic not to be taken literally.