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by: George Nash
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Book Description:
From Library Journal This tome on housebuilding covers all aspects of typical projects. Nash, author of numerous home renovation books, among them the accomplished Renovating Old Houses (LJ 3/15/92), is considered one of the best in the field. In his aptly subtitled volume, Nash guides the reader through each step in building or remodeling a home. His clearly written text is complemented by nearly 1800 illustrations as well as a short but solid index. As a planning document, this is a great introduction to the issues of housebuilding. Recommended for most do-it-yourself collections. Alex Hartmann, INFOPHILE, Williamsport, Pa. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"Clearly written text is complemented by nearly 1,800 illustrations as well as a solid index. A great introduction to the issues of housebuilding. Recommended."-Library Journal. "The most complete one-volume work that I've seen on how houses and their systems are put together." -Fine Homebuilding.
Reviews:
FULL of details, but clarity often gets lost in them: This book is about BUILDING a conventional stick-built American house. There's scant attention to design issues. This also isn't the book if you want to construct anything other than a standard stick-built house (no domes, concrete houses, log cabins, & c.), or to incorporate elements like solar heating or super-insulated shells. George Nash assumes that you'll follow the road most travelled. Given that limitation, the book is just CHOCK FULL of construction details. Just as an example, the chapter on framing a roof goes on for more than 60 pages. IF you can follow it, there's a lot of meat inside. But if you're like me, even with a fair amount of carpentry experience you'll find yourself getting lost on more than one occasion. There's no list of definitions (lexicon), and carpentry in particular has its own vocabularly. On top of that, Nash freely interchanges synonyms (such as "jack" and "trimmer" -- two terms for the same type of framing stud) in the text. Plus the index refers only to words in the text, and omits those in the MANY illustrations entirely. The end result is that I frequently had to do some time-consuming page flipping to track down a term that had escaped my memory. The illustrations bear particular attention because of their ability to confound. The (black and white) photographs are described by Nash as "my collection of old negatives, prints, and snapshots". Many of them have poor contrast, so they don't clearly delineate the features that are supposed to be of interest. The line drawings are professional product, with strict attention to proportional representation, but nonetheless frequently do a poor job of illustrating what the text is talking about. This is the case for three reasons: (1) they were created independent of the text, and stitched together by an editor, NOT the author OR illustrator; (2) their strict proportional representation means that important but small details can get lost; and (3) each one was reduced in size (by an editor) to squeeze more onto each page and reduce the total book length. The end result is that the text and illustrations do NOT make a unified or even particularly complementary whole. If you know what you're trying to accomplish, and have the time to slog through the details, this book will tell you most of what you need to build your own stick-built house. For less detail, but a FAR superior starting point for creating your own house, buy "The Real Goods INDEPENDENT BUILDER: Designing & Building A House Your Own Way" by Sam Clark. Read Clark's book cover-to-cover, then keep it open to the same subject area as you read "Do-It-Yourself HOUSEBUILDING"; anytime the Nash book confuses you, you can step back and get a clear overview from Clark's excellent work before you dig back into the details of the Nash book. (Even Clark's index is superior. Clark's book is about 500 pages with generouse whitespace; Nash's book is about 700 dense pages. Yet Nash's index is only 3/4 as long as Clark's.) Overall, George Nash has pumped his tome full of almost all the construction details a do-it-yourself housebuilder could hope to find in one place. But this is NOT a book for beginners.
Dreams Can Become Reality: My husband and I DID build our own house over fours summers with a hammer in one hand and nails in the other. I am sitting in it right now at my computer. We began with old versions of Sam Clark's and Robert Roskind's self-builder books. (The new versions have much expanded chapters on interior finish work.) They are very good for FUNDAMENTAL concepts such as design, load limits, materials and tools needed, time estimates, etc. But it was Nash's that really gave us the DETAIL we needed to do so many of the jobs required of us, ranging from stair building to laying tile to putting up interior toungue-and-groove wall board to installing hardwood flooring. Of course, the book doesn't cover everything you MIGHT want to do. For instance, we put a concrete counter top in the kitchen and had to go to Fu-Tung Cheng's book for advice and direction. The point is that housebuilding is a BIG commitment. If you wish to, or have to, do it yourself, it will take SEVERAL BOOKS AND RESOURCES. My advice is to look at various books at your local public library then purchase the ones you think best for you. But rest assured, housebuilding is a realistic endeavor for any healthy individual. Even people over 50! But for every hour spent building, back it up with a couple hours researching. The research is invaluable and I highly recommend Nash's Do-It-Yourself Housebuilding as your point of reference.
Everything you need to know: This book contains everything you need to know about building most homes. If you want to be the contractor, I recommend that this book be acccompanied by "The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home" by McGuerty & Lester. It has sample schedules, contract, etc. But I use this book more for the know-how of building a home. THIS IS THE BOOK TO OWN IF YOU WANT TO TALK INTELLIGENTLY TO YOUR BUILDER AND KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR DURING CONSTRUCTION! It will tell you EVERYTHING! I started out with a builder that was planning to be shady and knowing stuff in this book scared him off. I knew too much for him to cut important corners. I asked specific questions and he fled. My current builder and I have good relations and we can intelligently talk specifics of the trade because of this book.
Professional Contractor's Opinion: Do-It-Yourself Housebuilding is one of the few books in my home library on construction that I would actually own. Like all books, our opinion depends on where we are at (as far as knowledge in the field) for it to be practical, so this might not be for everyone. Personally, If you have a fairly good grasp on remodeling, and want to learn more about new construction from the ground-up, this is an outstanding book. If you are new to construction, I would recomend another more simplistic book like the Home Depot do-it-yourself series. I have read a lot of books on construction, and I own a construction business, and this is the one book I don't want to just take out from the library.
Build It All Yourself: Good book if you want to pick up a hammer and saw and build your own house. Not very helpful if you want to subcontract out the labor. It includes discussions on where to place the lumber to smoothly frame the house, and 50 pages of how to build forms for foundations. Not quite the information that I was seeking. Read about 1/4 of the book and skimmed the rest. I'll use it as a reference during construction, then off to the library it goes.