Housebuilding for Children: Step-by-Step Plans for Houses Children Can Build Themselves (Paperback)

~ Lester R. Walker (Author), Nonny Hogrogian (Introduction) "Construction on a house can't begin until a carpenter arrives on the site with all the tools and necessary, materials..." (more)
Key Phrases: firring strips, nailer strips, roof rafters, Assembling the Tools, Materials Here

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Step-by-step illustrated instructions for building six different houses with a description of the necessary tools and equipment. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Overlook TP (October 28, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879513322
• ISBN-13: 978-0879513320
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #200,751 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Housebuilding for Children, May 28, 2000

By	J. Rich (California,USA) - See all my reviews

Truely delightful and informative book for young builders and their parents. My son first checked it out of the library so many times in a row we finally decided to just buy it! Great basic building skills and tool knowledge taught, good practice projects, and good playhouse building ideas. The illustrations and plans are very informative. We enjoy the authors enthusiasm about working with kids and their passion for building. My son just can't get enough out of it and he's only in kindergarten. I suppose I'll never pry it away from him when he can read it for himself!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Treehouse in a weekend!, June 25, 2005

By	Kristina E. Pereyra "siliconvalleygrrl" (Mountain View) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I went looking for treehouse books, finding many that were more complicated than the deck and took more materials!

This one was perfect - simple, nonthreatening, and useful for teaching building skills to the kids. We decided we could use the other chapters to elaborate on their simple treehouse design.

My husband bought materials Saturday morning, and by Saturday evening our two kids were stomping on the sturdy platform. Sunday evening we had a treehouse. I know I could not say the same for any other treehouse book I had seen.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good place to start, but you can improve on some projects, September 1, 2008

By	sara - See all my reviews

This review is from: Housebuilding for Children 2nd ed: Step-By-Step Guides For Houses Children Can Build Themselves (Paperback)

Good basic carpentry instructions (if sometimes a little too basic), helpful illustrations that take me back to my 70s childhood.

The houses are very basic, and definitely not intended to last very long. However, with a little research and/or know-how they are easy to modify and make more durable - an educational project in itself, though more adult involvement may be needed with inexperienced younger kids.

I, my husband and our 7 year old just built a version of the balloon frame house in this book. The framing went very well, though the size of nail recommended by the book split the firring strips every time, so we ended up pre-drilling every hole.

The book recommends making the walls for this and other projects out of a wallboard called homasote. Probably because it's easy for kids to saw. However it's also not all that strong for siding purposes, it soaks water and falls apart pretty quickly. We replaced it with sheet siding (we also considered treated plywood), and we also cut triangular pieces for the roof peaks (left open in the original - our weather isn't good enough for that). We made the house footprint 6x4 instead of 4x4 and are glad we did - 4x4 would have been pretty tiny inside! We're putting a tar paper and shingle roof on it as well, not homasote.

Despite all those caveats, I never would have tried to build a frame playhouse without this book, my kid has had a fantastic time working on it with us, and we all feel very confident about taking on more building and carpentry projects after this. So again, I think it's a good starting place, backed up with some extra research into building techniques and materials.