Customer Reviews

Quick Guide: Garages & Carports: Step-by-Step Construction Methods

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

 

 

Here is a cogent, extremely useful book, one of a seemingly scant offering of books on the subject of building your own carport. (Garage construction is much easier to find reference material for) Unfortunately, this brief manual deals primarily with garage building, devoting less than equal space to the special problems associated with the construction of a free-standing, unseathed structure. Nevertheless, I found it most helpful as a starting point. Besides, how can you argue with anything that costs as little as the publisher charges for this book. You will be hard pressed to find a better value for your $8.

When you start a major project, whether a do-it-yourselfer or a builder or contractor, you want the best and most up-to-date building instructions and guidance you can find. This book is the one that instructs you as to the hows and whys, giving good shortcuts in money-saving and time-saving techniques on building that garage or carport.

As a general contractor who is on the job working with my crew, I found this one to be one of the best.

The garage I currently own is not only leaning to the South but is also put together from what looks like 3 other garages. I bought this book to help me with designing and possibly doing part of the new garage myself. After looking through it for an afternoon, I now know that we will be doing the entire thing ourselves.

The book covers:
Design considerations
Requirements (permits, drawings and such)
Tools, materials and fasteners (basic, but discusses nails, screws and framing connectors in some depth)
Lumber and its defects
Site and layout
Foundation (with a good section on footings)
Pouring concrete
Framing (of course)
Building a carport and a shed roof
Roofing, doors, windows, siding, sectional garage door ("roll ups")
4 garage projects - with cutting and materials list! (one-car detached garage, one-car attached carport with shed, one-car detached carport with gable roof, and a two-car detached garage with truss roof)
Truss types (W-type and Howe) plus installation tips
Conversion chart
and a glossary.

For a "Quick Guide" and only 80 pages, this book is well laid out, nicely written and has tons of drawings so that you can instantly see what they are talking about (see the "Search Inside" feature on Amazon.) When it comes to construction, I do better with pictures / drawings / blueprints.

If you are looking to do part of your garage or all of it I highly recommend this book. Or, if you just want to have a better understanding of what your contractor is talking about, this book can help you with the language and the `why' of construction.

Also, my book came with a different cover (see the picture I submitted.) The inside is the same as the "Search Inside", page for page, so I don't think anything major changed.

This book covered all the basics. It is a good resource, although you will probably need more detailed information if you are going to build the garage completely by yourself.

I purchased this book for my husband who plans to build a garage. he was absolutely delighted with the detailed and easy to follow instructions. My husband is not a builder and has no experience in building garages. So this instruction book has proven most helpful. Highly recommended!

This is a handy reference for general construction techniques. It isn't a big book, in fact it is only about the size of a magazine, but yet it covers so much. It starts with site selection, and goes all the way through siding and roofing. You may still need more detail about certain steps, but this will certainly get you going in the right direction. I think it's a book worth having on the bookshelf for future projects too.