How to Plan, Contract, and Build Your Own Home

By Paul Leonard

Step-by-step blueprint for do-it-yourself home builders. From locating an architect, to hiring workers, to selecting features and fixtures, and more, here's how to build or expand your own home from start to finish--and save! Richard M. Scutella and Dave Heberle's soup-to-nuts guide, How to Plan, Contract and Build Your Own Home, Third Edition, leads you through the perils of homebuilding to make sure you end up with exactly what you want. You get point-by-point tips on choosing a site and style, keeping home traffic patterns sensible, deciding on the right size for rooms, preparing plans, getting permits and more. Unique "quality control" insights into each stage of construction highlight problems to watch out for--foundation, roof, floors, walls, stairs, walkways and driveways, heating and cooling, electrical capacity and wiring, even computer wiring and alarm sensors. From turning the first shovel of earth to the final inspection, this homeowner's construction manual makes sure your dream house will be a dream come true.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0830628061
• ISBN13: 9780830628063
• Release Date: March 1987
• Publisher: Tab Books
• Length: 397 Pages
• Weight: 1.69 lbs.

Customer Reviews

I built my house using this! My builder was impressed!!

This book gives excellent strategic advice. It is not a tactical manual on how to build a house with your own hands, but rather informs a buyer on how to get the job done and which decisions are critical (e.g. site selection, architecture design selection, and builder selection). If you want to learn how to install drywall, then this is not the book for you. If you want to get a general idea of how it is done, but want...

Good Introduction to the Building Concepts

I have a slight problem with the title of this book. Will it enable you to build your own home? Yes, if by build your own home you mean hiring carpenters, plumbers, electricians and the like. But no if you mean grabbing a hammer, pipe wrench and a roll of wire. This book is a general introduction to the concept of building a house. Here's what to think of when you are planning a house. Here are some of the basic concepts...

How To Plan, Design & Contract Your Own Home

This book is very helpful for you to work with and speak the language of your contractor. It is not designed for you to be your own contractor, but to work with one that you select. In Part II "How to Build It", the book shows how a house is put together. If you never lift a hammer throughout the entire construction process, it still pays to know how a house can and should be put together. The difference between mediocre and...

Excellent, Great Advice

This is an excellent book with a lot of great advice. The part of the title that says "build your own home" is misleading -- it does not mean it shows YOU how to build your home, it means it in the general sense of whether people will buy a pre-owned or build-your-own-home. I was fine with that because that is exactly what I was looking for.I spend a half hour poring over a wide selection of similar books. This one looked...

Big on ideas

I found this book to be great! It gave me alot to consider that I had not even thought about. It you are planning to build a home this is a great book. It starts out giving you advice on what to look for in your floor plan then walks you thru the complete building process. I was hoping for a little more advice on how to go about being your own contractor but the book did not promis that. This book will be by my side for a...