Home Improvement Books, Home Repair Manuals, and DIY Books

Almost as soon as you finish building and moving into your new home, it will start to need repairs. While most of the major systems in your house will last for at least 10 to 15 years, almost immediately upon completion, little things will start to go wrong with your house. The New Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual - by Reader's Digest will help you identify the problem, tell you if it is something that you might want to repair by yourself, and if so, it will help guide you through the repair process. The step-by-step instructions and clear drawings will help you learn how to repair most of the things that go wrong in your home. It is one of the best home improvement books I have ever read and should be included in every homeowner's library.

Some other do-it-yourself books that you may want to consider reading are listed below.

• Home Magazine's How Your House Works - by Don Vandervort

• Home Owners Manual: Advice on Maintaining Your Home from Tom Silva, Richard Trethewey, and Steve Thomas

• The New York Times Home Repair Almanac: A Season-By-Season Guide for Maintaining Your Home - by Edward R. Lipinski

• Renovating Woman: A Guide to Home Repair, Maintenance and Real Men - by Allegra Bennett

• Home Improvements Manual - by Readers Digest

• The Complete Guide to Home Roofing Installation and Maintenance: How to Do It Yourself and Avoid the 60 Ways Your Roofer Can Nail You
  - by John W. Chiles Jr.
  Provides detailed information on how to plan for and install a top quality roof in a minimum amount of time. With no previous roofing experience, a homeowner armed with this book could easily tackle most any roofing project and feel confident that the end result will be a lasting, trouble free roof.

• Home Improvement 1-2-3 : Expert Advice from the Home Depot
  - by Benjamin W. Allen (Editor)
  Joint project between the editors of Better Homes & Gardens & the Home Depot. Cover a lot of ground in this big, detailed book. Clear, step-by-step instructions & diagrams for just about any outdoor project one can imagine, from deck building and maintenance to building a retaining wall to making outdoor furniture to installing an outdoor faucet or constructing a customized fountain...

• The Home Depot Outdoor Projects 1-2-3 - by Home Depot, Ben Allen (Editor)

• The Complete Illustrated Guide to Everything Sold in Hardware Stores - by Steve Ettlinger

• Code Check - by Redwood Kardon

• Documents, Contracts and Worksheets for Home Builders
  - by Alan R. Trellis
  100 building forms & documents already written for you. Reduce errors and callbacks, increase customer satisfaction, enhance communication with clients, streamline business operations and put more profit in your pocket with the help of documents, contracts, & worksheets for Home Builders by Builder magazine's Al Trellis.

• The Very Efficient Carpenter: Basic Framing for Residential Construction
  - by Larry Haun
  This is a great resource. it covers the basics and then some. if everyone on your crew was familiar with this system, you could easily frame a house in a week.

• Do-It-Yourself Housebuilding
  - by George Nash
  Clearly written text is complemented by nearly 1,800 illustrations as well as a solid index. A great introduction to the issues of housebuilding.

• Be Your Own House Contractor: Save 25% without Lifting a Hammer - by Carl Heldmann

• Build Your Dream Home for Less
  - by Roger Dodge Woodson
  Very good advice throughout from an experienced builder, written in a relaxed and straightforward way. Offers his opinion on the myriad choices--crawlspace vs. basement, ashphalt vs. wood roof, fiberglass vs. steel bathtub--that are usually just provided without guidance by other authors.

• The Real Goods Independent Builder: Designing & Building a House Your Own Way - by Sam Clark

• Homesteading Adventures: A Guide for Doers & Dreamers - by Susan J. Robishaw

• Basements - How to: Real People-Real Projects (Hometime Series) - by John Kelsey, Pamela S. Price, Laura Tringali, Robin Hartl

• Basements (Creative Homeowner Press Quick Guide) - by Mark Feirer, Fierer, Patrick Quinn

• The Basement Book: Upstairs Downstairs: Reclaiming the Wasted Space in Your Basement - by Thomas Carpenter, Jeff Taylor

• Creating Storage: Hidden Storage & Rescued Space in the Garage, Attic, or Basement - Sunset Books