Friday, November 15, 2013

Helping your Home: Everything from Remodeling to DIY


The Family Handyman: Refresh your Home by Readers Digest
Need to revive old trim? Quiet a noisy garage door? Fix wobbly outlets? These are all really easy to do to refresh your home. Instead of hiring expensive contractors and landscapers, this helpful guide will take you step by step through a wide range of do-it-yourself ideas for your home, garage and yard.
This book contains 500 simple projects and tips to help you save money, update and renovate your home. It focuses more on home repairs and simple tutorials that are necessary when fixing things such as plumbing, electrical fixtures, landscaping and even a few tips for your car.

Money-Wise Makeovers by Jean Nayar
In this book, Nayar shows the reader different ideas for updating your home. She focuses on the major areas of the home, such as living spaces, dining rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms.
“Life changes, and sometime a house needs to change, too. Maybe you’ve moved into an existing house that guzzles energy and drains your resources. Or maybe you’ve simple outgrown the home you have, but don’t want to leave it. In any case, there’s no reason to let an imperfect home compromise the way you live. In fact, there’s hardly been a better time to upgrade and existing home and improve its value without excessive spending.”

Period Details by Martin and Judith Miller
Period Details is a sourcebook that teaches you about the past of architecture. Although it doesn’t have any DIY or remodeling tutorials inside, it is a great book to help the reader come up with ideas, paint colors, and even wallpaper designs.
Miller states in the opening comments of his book: “The only way you can decorate for today is to know what the past is like. It’s like growing up – if you don’t learn from experience, you don’t ever find out, and you fall into a pattern of mistakes. Although architects and designers are required to learn about the past in school they don’t necessarily put that knowledge into practice. Therefore, you need constantly to educate your eyes as I do, by looking at paintings, at furniture, and at buildings.  Visit museums, read books and magazines, and all your life gather ideas.”

Affordable Remodel by Fernando Pages Ruiz
Affordable remodel provides a guide for those who want to improve and enhance the value of their homes, whether by planning and overseeing the remodel or by doing the work themselves. Ruiz, shares his hard-won secrets in this book by revealing a full range of money-saving options available to homeowners today.  With the power of insider knowledge, you too will find ways to achieve the home of your dreams without breaking your budget.

Not so Big Remodeling by Sarah Susanka
Susanka is spearheading a movement that will re-define the way Americans remodel their homes. She says in this book: “I’ve worked with thousands of individuals, couples, and families over the past two decades, so I knew exactly what was needed to keep costs down and livability up on my own house. Although a remodeled house is rarely as personal, architecturally speaking, as a house you design from scratch, there are lots of small things you can do that will make it much more closely aligned with your visions for a dream home than you’ve probably ever thought possible. My goal with this book is to show you how to make a little remodeling go a long way. In fact, the informing attitude is one of ‘Keep it simple.’”
Throughout the book, Susanka gives floor plan examples of houses with before and after photos, as well as a constant stream of ideas that will help the reader begin to imagine their own dream house.

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