No comments about Bathrooms: Planning and Remodeling.

1 comments about How things work in your home (and what to do when they don't).

1. How things work in your home and how to fix them. 368 pages of very useful information. You will find all the usual home appliciances, plumbing, electric service, toilets, heating systems and cooling systems. The book is easy to read and has excellent diagrams showing the workings of almost everything in the home that is a functioning part of the home.

5 comments about Trim Carpentry Techniques: Installing Doors, Windows, Base and Crown.

1. Very good book for baseboard, crown, door and window moldings. It has tons of pictures and illustrations. On the top of the cover of the book it says: "For Pros/ By Pros". I would agree with this assesment; but it is easy enough for a handyman type with little molding experience like me to follow also. After looking through this book, I was tearing out old molding with abondon and the confidence that I could do a good job of getting nice new stuff back in.



2. Great book on trim carpentry techniques for pros or someone who wants to do a professional quality job. Written from the practical viewpoint of an experienced pro with high standards. A bit of overkill if you are in a hurry but I would recommend it before trimming several rooms yourself or even if you want to check your contractor's work.



3. Nice illustrations, step by step procedures are easy to follow if you do not like to read. Detailed materials and tooling information is somewhat provided. Good for a jobsite quick refrence guide.



4. I was looking for a well layed out reference guide that I could learn a few tricks of the trade. This book seemed to spend way to much time setting the reader up for the first day on the job (back in the 70's and 80's mind you), then long-winded yet sparse information on actual methods of trim carpentry.
   
   If you are willing to read a book from cover to cover on this subject here's your ticket. But if your looking for concise writting, logical up-to-date illustrations, a book that you can easily reference in a pinch, you might want to steer clear.



5. sorry to say but not well illustrated and not easy to follow look elsewhere for help in this area...I wish I could recommend options but other then Old House Journal(a monthly magazine) I could not recommend a good trim refrence. I will note a couple of my own tricks though. First remember that the most complicated trims are usually built in stages or layers. Second remember that good trim starts with good framing and straight bases (the object you are trying to frame ie: window door opening ect). Last but not least if your painting don't go nuts for the perfect joint. Caulking can save your day..that does not mean to be sloppy, measure twice, cut once, remember to factor the width of the blade waste; but then use a premium grade (GE Silicone II Extreme) caulk to join butt and corner pieces. Good luck ...

5 comments about Kitchens: A Design Source Book.

1. I checked this out from the library hoping to find some good ideas for a kitchen remodel. This book is full of showy kitchens that no real cook would tolerate. If you want you kitchen to look pretty, modern, or authentic, this may help you. If you want to use your kitchen instead of just dressing it up to look nice, buy another book.



2. After reading this book you'll realize that, gone are the old notions that a kitchen is the place where June Cleaver baked cookies for The Beaver, Wally, and the omnipresent Eddie Haskell! The kitchen has now become a showcase of sleek design and gleaming stainless steel, and YES you CAN cook in it! This book is full of ideas for designing your kitchen and using available space to maximum advantage without sacrificing beauty. From the traditional to the contemporary kitchen you will find many excellent ideas, and it will broaden your horizons about what can be used in a kitchen. Imagine having a set of chairs by: Charles Eames, Alvar Aalto and Marcel Brever sitting side by side while the Dualit grills your sandwich!



3. I enjoyed the other book in the series, so I assumed this would be a delight as well. I am so glad that I decided to buy this! Wonderful detail and full of great ideas, this gets the creative juices flowing! Kitchens is a great buy.



4. Small type, cluttered pages, white type dropped out of photos -- I got a headache trying to read this book. There may be good ideas here, but I'll never know. Unless your vision is 20/20 and you have a good reading lamp and magnifiers, skip it.



5. I take this book off the shelf all the time to skim it for new ideas (someday I'll actually undertake my renovation, I hope). Every time I read it I see something I hadn't noticed before. I love the variety of kitchens in this book--very modern, very retro, very traditional. There are tons of colors, tons of kinds of photographs. I also love that many of the kitchens are not perfect--there are funky, home-made countertops, old floors, jumbles of utensils, and so on. It's refreshing in the face of so many books and magazines that assume that everyone wants a perfect, "new" looking kitchen with top-of-the-line everything. A lot of the kitchens appear to be European, which I appreciate because I think a lot of them use space in ways that American kitchens do not.

No comments about Getting the Builders in: How to Manage Homebuilding and Renovation Projects.

2 comments about The House Book.

1. One of my favorite interior books. Very appealing '60s and '70s interiors that seem to belong to interesting people. This book has an authenticity and appeal that you will not find in other interior books of the period, which often lean too far in the direction of bland professionalism or tacky manufacturer promotions. Also a glimpse of European family life and mores. Veterans of 1970s Northern California will recognize certain tropes, such as diagonal wood siding, rainbow murals, and children with Free to Be You and Me records.



2. Although this book was published in the 1970s, the concepts of combining various textures, colors, materials, and their placement in each space of your home are timeless. The photography is amusingly dated, though. Even so, the staged designs on each page are delicious to flip through - it look very much like an Ikea catalog... but from the 1970s!

No comments about Plumbing & Central Heating.

No comments about Cozy Atmospheres and Interiors (Cozy).

4 comments about Build Like a Pro: Painting and Finishing.

1. When you look at the cover of this book, what does the largest photo show? A man painting an interior wall of a room. And what is the book title? Painting and Finishing. And the first bulleted caption line on the cover is "Painting the interior or exterior of a house." The second bulleted caption line is "Choosing finishes for kitchens and bathrooms." So, does this book discuss strategies and techniques for efficiently painting a home's entire interiors, including walls and ceilings? No. Does it discuss the new paints for painting plastic laminates or stains and paints for concrete floors and counters? No. Does it discuss scaffolding if you are "blessed" with exceedingly high ceilings in large rooms or address when it makes sense to spray paint rather than roll walls and ceilings? No. This book is devoted exclusively to discussion of painting or finishing wood, that is, solid and composite woods or wood veneers used in moldings, cabinets, furniture, siding, decking, and decorative items.

   While a great deal of interior and exterior decor in better homes is composed of wood, this book is marketed as a general painting and finish book for the home, not as a book for one material in the home. Nowhere on the front or back cover, is this book labeled as what it is: how to paint and stain new or old wood surfaces. And although I already know how to use a paint roller, I bought the book to help me plan how to paint two complete home interiors. Not just the trim and the cabinets. The professional advice I expected to find simply is not there because this book is being presented, in my opinion, as something it is not.

   If what you need is advice on painting wood, I think there are better, meaning more detailed and more creative, books available. For instance, "The Painted Kitchen", by Henny Donovan (Firefly Books, 2000) demonstrates a wide range of styles and techniques for painting kitchen cabinets and Annie Sloan's "Inspirations In Painted Furniture," (Collins and Brown, 1999) is both inspiring and an excellent technical reference for painted furniture.

   Michael Dresdner's book delivers a great deal of solid, basic, technical information, it is well written, and it is well illustrated, but it is also very limited in scope. He covers tools of the trade, oil-based versus water-based products, work area preparation, clean up, and safety thoroughly. He provides some nifty tips on preparing wood for finishing as well. Unless that's just what you need, however, I recommend you keep browsing.




2. The title is misleading. Interior painting is barely touched upon, exterior painting content is basic at best. Staining and finishing sections are rather rudimentary.

   Typos abound. Some sidebars are repeated three times.

   I've never been disappointed by a Taunton book until this one.




3. I like Tauntons press books alot. So when I went to find a book on painting I looked for thier book on painting.
   Most of Tauntons Press books go into more advanced aspects of what ever they are refering to. This book is more suited for the slow 2nd grader. It mostly deals with outside painting and staining.
   nothing at all on how to roll inside walls. This is the WORST book that I have ever bought. This book does not even come close to Tauntons Press normal quality, Shame on you Tauntons...



4. The Taunton Pro books are usually quite good, but this one is an exception. Even the bullet points on the front are misleading "Painting the interior and exterior of a house." When I think interior, I think walls, but evidently they mean every other surface EXCEPT walls! LOL.
   
   I also wondered if the author had a contract with BIN. I don't mind if you mention that you like BIN products the best, but to waste valuable photography space on showing a BIN display and cans of paint seems a bit of a waste to me.
   
   The section on floors had several diagrams with arrows going in various directions to show sanding patterns (page 74-75). There was not a clear explanation of which sanding pattern you should use and I came away from reading that section even more confused. The section on Kitchens and Bathrooms was also incomplete. It started out telling you how to prepare the old cabinet surface, how to choose the right primer, then "next to painting, the easiest way to change the look of kitchen cabinets is to recolor them" and goes into staining. It NEVER talks about painting the kitchen cabinets! (page 24-27).
   
   Even the "In Detail" callouts were incomplete! On page 27, there is a short paragraph on Mixing Glazes. It talks about clear, water based glaze base, then talks about getting a paint chip and having the store make up a quart. The mixing instructions are "When mixed with enough glaze base, one quart of paint makes 3-4 quarts of glaze." That's it!
   
   I found the instructions incomplete and not up to the regular Taunton level of quality in their books. Do not waste your money on this book.

No comments about Great Kitchens.