Friday, June 17, 2011

Additions Planner (Better Homes & Gardens Do It Yourself)

Additions Planner (Better Homes & Gardens Do It Yourself)
  • Specifically geared toward the beginning stages of planning an addition.
  • Breaks complex information on structural, system, and site concerns into doable strategies.
  • Discusses options for materials as well as heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning needs.
  • Dozens of real-life inspirational photographs and detailed illustrations.
  • Easy-to-use charts streamline and organize planning and make it a pleasant task.
  • Prepares homeowners to work comfortably with a contractor to meet design and budget parameters.

Price: $14.95


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Thursday, June 16, 2011

The New Ecological Home: A Complete Guide to Green Building Options (Chelsea Green Guides for Homeowners)

The New Ecological Home: A Complete Guide to Green Building Options (Chelsea Green Guides for Homeowners)Today, a new generation of architects and builders is emerging, intent on creating homes that meet human needs for shelter while causing only a fraction of the environmental impact of conventional housing. The New Ecological Home provides an overview of green building techniques, materials, products, and technologies that are either currently available or will be in the near future. Author Daniel Chiras provides a wealth of up-to-date, practical information for home buyers, owner-builders, and anyone interested in building for a sustainable future.

Price: $35.00


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Long Road Home: Building Reconciliation and Trust in Post-War Sierra Leone (Series on Transitional Justice)

Long Road Home: Building Reconciliation and Trust in Post-War Sierra Leone (Series on Transitional Justice)The 1991-2002 war in Sierra Leone was infamous for mass amputations, widespread sexual violence, and forced recruitment of children into rebel forces. It was not an ethnic war, but one that tore families and communities apart in ways that could not be sustained in peacetime. After the war, the Sierra Leone government and civil society organizations encouraged the combatants to return home and encouraged the communities to accept them, even though the combatants, or the forces they were associated with, had committed horrendous crimes in those very same villages. Long Road Home describes how the ex-combatants and the civilian survivors in Sierra Leone struggled to reconcile and build trust in their communities a year after the war ended. The book explores the contribution of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission toward reconciliation and justice, and it questions whether reconciliation is always a good thing. It also examines how the seemingly nebulous concept of reconciliation can be understood so that the term is useful for peace building and is consistent with justice. Finally, the author argues that Sierra Leone has much to teach peace builders in societies emerging from intra-communal violence and much to contribute to comparative analyses of post-conflict transitions.

Price: $89.75


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Building the Japanese House Today

Building the Japanese House Today Built like a piece of fine furniture, the traditional Japanese house is universally admired for its clean lines, intricate joinery, and unparalleled woodworking. Focusing primarily on a new guesthouse in California, this elegant volume shows how a classic Japanese house can be built to offer the warmth and comfort that modern homemakers require.

Len Brackett, rigorously trained as a temple carpenter in Kyoto, has spent decades adapting the ancient Japanese design aesthetic to Western needs. Here he demonstrates step-by-step how both the traditional live-on-the-floor house, as well as models that accommodate furniture, can be constructed to provide such modern essentials as central heating, insulation, computerized lighting systems, and the latest electronics. This practical and inspiring guide-with gorgeous, clear photos and diagrams-is an indispensable resource for those who'd like to live in a Japanese home, for professionals who want to build them, and for any reader who delights in Japan's age-old aesthetic traditions.

Price: $45.00


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Ultimate Guide to House Framing (English and English Edition)

Ultimate Guide to House Framing (English and English Edition)
Ultimate Guide to House Framing, 3rd Edition, leads homeowners through the steps of building a structure by means of platform framing, the most popular style of framing in use today. The book also covers the latest in eco-friendly materials as well as green framing techniques. Ultimate Guide to House Framing is the most up-to-date source for framing information. Beginning with background information, the book provides readers with everything they need to know about building, including structural loads and how they interact, sizing lumber, working with tools, and reading blueprints. The book then takes the reader through the framing process-from foundations to floor framing, wall framing, roof framing, sheathing, and more. This expanded and revised edition ends with three project chapters: building stairs, finishing a basement with steel studs, and framing a bay window. Each chapter covers both construction and design information.

Price: $19.95


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Building Green, New Edition: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods Earth Plaster * Straw Bale * Cordwood * Cob * Living Roofs (Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative)

Building Green, New Edition: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods Earth Plaster * Straw Bale * Cordwood * Cob * Living Roofs (Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative)

The best-selling and highly regarded reference to sustainable construction gets an update! It’s refreshed with a completely revised introduction, a bright new cover, and extensive online resource tie-ins. Plus, it’s now printed on recycled paper with agri-based inks, so it’s greener than ever!

This groundbreaking book doesn’t just tell you about ?green” house-building techniques: it actually shows you, with more than 1,200 step-by-step photographs that follow the actual erection of an alternative building from site selection to final-touch interior details. Readers will get a clear sense of the real world challenges as Snell and Callahan create a lovely country cottage using four methods: straw bale, cob, cordwood, and modified stick-frame.

Along with sidebars throughout, there’s a thorough discussion of the fundamentals of building construction, alternative approaches, and designing a beautiful yet environmentally responsible home. Building Green was the first book of its kind?and it remains heads and shoulders above other titles in this field.  

 

Price: $35.00


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Additions: Your Guide to Planning and Remodeling (Better Homes and Gardens)

Additions: Your Guide to Planning and Remodeling (Better Homes and Gardens)Leads readers from the dream stage through execution of their own additions project.

Includes information on where to shop for materials and how to work with design and building professionals.

120 gorgeous color photos of additions—from small dormers to entire second stories—will inspire readers with beautiful designs and help them visualize their own successful remodeling projects.

“Don’t Do That!" tips throughout the book help readers avoid planning and design pitfalls.

Sidebars offer quick-to-read basics, such as: "The Top Ten" elements of a good floor plan and the "Money-Saver Top Ten" tips for keeping costs in line.

Questionnaires guide readers through their own planning stages.

Question-and-answer segments offer solutions to common problems.

Price: $12.95


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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Staging to Sell: The Secret to Selling Homes in a Down Market

Staging to Sell: The Secret to Selling Homes in a Down MarketHome staging strategies needed to succeed in a down market

Whether a buyer, seller, or real estate agent, the home selling and purchasing process is fraught with potholes that can usually be overcome. But in this weakened housing market, everyone involved in the selling process must increase their efforts. In order to sell homes at top dollar, houses must be "prepared for sales." That’s where Staging comes in. The real estate mantra is no longer location, location, location. It is now Staging, Staging, Staging! It’s all about presentation. In Staging to Sell, Barb Schwarz, The Creator of Home Staging®, offers her winning tactics, secrets, and strategies for selling a home at top dollar during these challenging times. In addition to offering specific tips on how to Stage a home, Schwarz, a sought-after speaker and Real Estate broker who has Staged and sold over 5,000 homes, provides readers, sellers, Realtors® and Stagers, with useful advice on correctly pricing properties, marketing properties so that they sell, addressing objections early on, having the seller handle the Staging before the house is viewed, and much more. Written with today’s turbulent real estate market in mind, Staging to Sell contains the information readers need to get their homes Sold in the market quickly for top dollar.

Price: $19.95


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Step-by-Step Cabinets & Shelves (Better Homes & Gardens Step-By-Step)

Step-by-Step Cabinets & Shelves (Better Homes & Gardens Step-By-Step)The everyday homeowner can create perfect cabinets and shelves for any room with this essential resource. No special skills needed. Easy-to-follow instructions offer guidance every step of the way, from selecting the right materials to building to installation.

Practical, doable projects.

Includes color illustrations with step-by-step instructions.

Expert tips on all the tricks of the trade for building and installing cabinets.

Price: $12.95


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The New Cottage Home: A Tour of Unique American Dwellings

The New Cottage Home: A Tour of Unique American Dwellings
The New Cottage Home taps into today's move toward lifestyle simplicity and the idea that living space should be rich in details, conservative of resources, and no larger than necessary. Jim Tolpin celebrates the diversity and charm of 30 sample cottages, from a Pacific Northwest cottage modeled after a French hunting lodge to a "salvage yard vernacular cottage" built with junkyard materials.

Each featured home reflects individual personality, priorities, and lifestyle. Whether by the water, on a mountain, or in a forest, field, or town, these homes emphasize quality of place over quantity of space.

Price: $22.95


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Homes & Courtyards: 28 Beautifully Designed Homes for Outdoor Living

Homes & Courtyards: 28 Beautifully Designed Homes for Outdoor LivingFilled with stunning color photos, floor plans and site layouts, this book takes readers on an amazing tour of 23 new homes and 5 to-be-built projects featuring marvelous courtyards, patios, decks and other outdoor spaces. Published by the creators of the national bestseller, Tuscan & Andalusian Reflections, this new book is a "must-have" for consumers, home planners, builders, architects, interior designers or anyone who enjoys superb indoor and outdoor living.

Price: $34.95


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Adobe Houses for Today: Flexible Plans for Your Adobe Home

Adobe Houses for Today: Flexible Plans for Your Adobe HomeSince Adobe Houses for Today first appeared, interest in energy efficiency has exploded. Showing the pathway to smaller, solar tempered, easy-to-heat homes using adobe, one of the world's most energy efficient building materials, makes this book about adobe houses not only for today, but also for tomorrow. Adobe Houses for Today features 12 plans for compact, beautifully proportioned adobe homes in modern and traditional styles. The richly illustrated text shows how the basic houses, designed for today's smaller families, can be expanded and adapted to fit readers' own budgets, family sizes, style preferences, and building sites. After a brief look at adobe's rich history, Adobe Houses for Today surveys adobe's advantages as a building material, illustrates adobe construction, and gives an eye-opening tour through the facts and fantasies of energy conservation. The heart of the book details the plans, using them as examples of design techniques that increase livability and control costs in any house. The book and its minimal-cost construction drawings are valuable, enjoyable tools for those buying, building, or remodeling a house. With this new edition, which includes an additional chapter with stories from people who have built the houses, construction drawings are now available for some of the expanded versions.

Price: $29.95


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Advanced Deck Building (Black & Decker Home Improvement Library)

Advanced Deck Building (Black & Decker Home Improvement Library) - Carries deck building one step further.

Price: $14.95


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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Step-by-Step Deck Projects (Better Homes & Gardens Step-By-Step)

Step-by-Step Deck Projects (Better Homes & Gardens Step-By-Step)50 doable project ideas with deck planning, building, and maintaining explained in easy-to-understand steps.

Tools and Materials chapter teaches such essentials as using a circular saw, measuring and leveling, and choosing the right lumber.

Explains how to upgrade existing deck with railings, planters, built-in seating and sun screens.

Shows how to craft custom designs—such as wraparound, multi-level, and entry decks.

Full-color photos of finished deck projects and full-color illustrations lead readers step-by-step.

Price: $12.95


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All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House

All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House

With the lyrics of a Replacements song running through his head ("Look me in the eye, then tell me that I'm satisfied"), David Giffels—with his wife and infant son in tow—combs the environs of Akron, Ohio, in search of the perfect house for his burgeoning family. The quest ends at the front door of a beautiful but decaying Gilded Age mansion, the once-grand former residence of a rubber-industry executive. It lacks functional plumbing and electricity, leaks rain like a cartoon shack, and is infested with all manner of wildlife. But for a young father at a coming-of-age crossroads, the challenge is precisely the allure.

All the Way Home is Giffels's funny, poignant, and confounding journey through the great adventure of restoring a crumbling house on the way to discovering what the words "grown up" and "home" really mean.

Price: $14.99


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Better Homes and Gardens Fireplace: Design and Decorating Ideas (Better Homes & Gardens Decorating)

Better Homes and Gardens Fireplace: Design and Decorating Ideas (Better Homes & Gardens Decorating)
  • This must-read planning tool covers fireplace building, layout, materials, accessories, and decorating. The revised edition provides updates on fireplace options that have come onto the market since the first edition was published.
  • Easy-to-read, problem-solving text offers hundreds of helpful tips.
  • Inspirational photos plus design ideas for indoor and outdoor hearth spaces.
  • Secrets on how to update an aging fireplace and rearrange furnishings around the hearth.
  • Technical information on fireplace maintenance and safety.

Price: $19.95


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Energy Free: Homes for a Small Planet

Energy Free: Homes for a Small Planet2011 International Book Awards Award-Winning Finalist in the "Environment: Green/Alternative Energy/Conservation"

Energy Free is designed to equip building professionals and homeowners alike with a toolkit for creating homes that use no more energy than they produce--this means homes that are free from the vagaries of energy-price fluctuations and that help to free society of the high political and environmental costs of fossil fuels.

Individuals and institutions have been working toward "zero-energy" homes for decades. This volume is the first record of those collective efforts, distilling their experience into a practical and comprehensive how-to guide. The author includes resource information and step-by-step guidance on how to make decisions that will yield an energy-free residential project, whether a single-family home or multifamily building, new or existing, in an urban or a rural setting. The unique needs and opportunities of each context are addressed.

The principal topics include:
  • Project boundaries (why you have to consider not only your home's behavior, but also your own)
  • Prioritizing strategies (e.g., insulation vs. photovoltaics)
  • Economics (including payback periods and incentives)
  • How to minimize a building's energy needs
  • How to minimize your energy needs
  • How to power the energy needs that remain
  • The critical role of integrated project planning
Energy Free offers a wide array of resource information, including detailed window and insulation comparisons; assessments of the relative contribution of different building elements; and overall performance. It draws on research and empirical data from myriad sources, including the Department of Energy's Building America program; Sacramento Municipal Utility District's House of the Future; Passiv Haus Institute in Europe and the Passive House Institute of the U.S.; Florida Solar Energy Center; Living Building Challenge; Affordable Comfort, Inc.'s, Thousand Home Challenge; and many pioneering individual home projects across North America.

Price: $25.00


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Grand Designs Handbooks: The Blueprint for Building Your Dream Home

Grand Designs Handbooks: The Blueprint for Building Your Dream Home

Packed with tools and tips, this essential guide provides the instructions any aspiring self-builder needs to ensure that their vision becomes reality. Organized into three main sections—Thinking, Dreaming, and Doing—guidelines are provided that cover every aspect of the build, from finding a plot, obtaining planning permission, and commissioning and briefing architects and builders up through implementing the build itself. Structured around fundamental locations—urban, suburban, and rural—a host of successful projects are featured, including, a reinvented violin factory, a converted barn, and a glass pavilion on a beach. Suggestions for using green design and building techniques are also provided.

Price: $23.95


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Energy Efficient Homes For Dummies

Energy Efficient Homes For DummiesHands-on, practical solutions to save money by making smart energy changes

One of the best and most affordable strategies people can employ to combat global warming is to improve the energy and water efficiency of their homes. Energy Efficient Homes For Dummies provides homeowners with advice, tips, and projects to reduce costs, increase energy efficiency, and cut down on waste and pollution. After performing a do-it-yourself home energy audit, readers create an action plan based on their personal goals. Readers are presented with a wide range of potential solutions, from making better use of blinds and awnings to exploring geothermal options in order to reduce household costs and their impact on the planet.

Rik DeGunther (Rescue, CA) is the founder of Efficient Homes, an energy consulting firm that focuses on home energy audits and the design of efficient heating and cooling systems.

Price: $21.99


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Monday, June 13, 2011

Hillside Homes: 208 Sloping-Lot & Multi-Level Designs : 1000 to over 5,500 Square Feet

Hillside Homes: 208 Sloping-Lot & Multi-Level Designs : 1000 to over 5,500 Square Feet-Inventive designs that make the most of today's beautiful and challenging building sites.
-An elegant book featuring contemporary and traditional styles sure to enhance a unique lot.
-Split-levels and split-foyers.
-One- and two-story designs.
-Walk out basements.
-Homes from 1,000 to over 5,000 square feet.
-Complete construction drawings available separately.

Price: $9.95


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A Biblical Home Education: Building Your Homeschool on the Foundation of God's Word

A Biblical Home Education: Building Your Homeschool on the Foundation of God's Word
An immensely respected leader in today’s homeschool movement, Dr. Ruth Beechick encourages families to center all aspects of their children’s learning on God’s Word in A Biblical Home Education. Beechick begins by showing how the subjects of worldview, science, and history have been pulled apart from the Bible and how they can be sensibly reconnected. In the author’s words, ?Since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, that anti-God teaching can lead only to foolishness.” Also included are chapters on thinking, reading, writing and study skills, learning methods, curriculum tips, and extensive teaching helps.

Price: $14.99


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