The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home: A Step-by-Step Method for Managing Home Construction Kindle Edition

This book will walk you through the process of building a home with forms, checklists etc. This book will give you confidence to build and manage your own build while saving lots of money. I know how to build a home, yet this book gave me ideas and additional knowledge that I wasn’t thinking about. If I were a beginner, I’d buy this book and read it twice before attempting to build your own home. Think about this, the investment and time putting into this book will payoff huge amount of return on investment. Follow the book and it’s worksheets. There is a lot to read and absorb, but you can do this! Time is your friend. Put the work into this book and reap the rewards of the knowledge you obtain and apply to building your home.

He covers everything I can think of in here.

Fantastic work authored in the 5th Edition book by the experts and professionals, Kent Lester and Dave McGuerty! You both hit the nail on the head! This is exactly what I would expect from a book, particularly a residential contracting book! This book presents very thorough, sequential, orderly, detailed, and easy to understand, step-by-step plans that are beneficial to anyone in the rough, general process of building, but especially helpful to the beginning contractor. I would say this book definitely sums up the most complete, significant basics, at a minimum, that are vital to any home being contracted. The book also shows how to inspect during the process of construction, even if you don't swing a hammer! Resources of where to find information are made apparent along with major building supply companies for each room of the house, masterplan checklist of where to begin, plan checklist, contract, and agreement, are located in the appendix of the book. There are lots of specialty books on the market of how to do certain things in construction, but this book summarizes and compiles it. I'm not a contractor myself and have never contracted any type of structure being built, but I find this field highly interesting and motivating. I enjoy picking out building materials, fixtures, finishes, working with numbers, and estimating costs, etc. The whole nine yards is presented from the building lot, foundation, framing, roofing, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, painting, trimwork, cabinetry, countertops, flooring, landscaping, and decks, etc. Well worth purchasing this book, even if you're only merely thinking about contracting and maybe not yet ready to actually build a home. I highly recommend anyone read this book, particularly if you're curious about the overall, general process of the contracting, building, and construction industry!

Bought this book to develop specifications for a new custom built home. The material is laid-out very well and covers most building processes, and, provides some good rules of thumb. The invite to download forms at their website, appears to be dead. The material does need updating, such as, use of WRB, ZIP, is not mentioned. Should had gone into more detail of a smart home, etc. Otherwise, the book allowed me to increase my spec alittle bit more, that will save me money, so, the book price is worth it.

Excellent book, in using it as a frequent reference after one solid read through, and it's extremely helpful even if you decide not to do your own contracting, so that your general contractor and since can't get one over on you!

This is a great book offering guidance in most areas of the home building process. Much like planning your wedding, even if you're planning on hiring a planner to oversee and arrange all the different elements it's still important to do your own research both to protect yourself and to be able to properly voice to your coordinator exactly what it is you want. Home building is exactly like that, only with way more steps and areas than a wedding. This book gives a lot of information. Most of all, it gives enough information for those questions you didn't even know you had to take shape. We also really appreciated the info about green building stuff as well as just the general descriptions of the pros and cons of different building materials or types (ex. Roofing materials, types of concrete, foundation styles). There's also info about dealing with all your various specific contractors if you choose to do that part of the work yourself.

It’s a good book, I haven’t put to practice what it teaches you but as far I can tell. It gives you good tips on how to build your house by reducing the costs up to 35% of the total cost.

This book is amazing. I might be building a mother in law flat in the next year and because of budget constraints I'll probably have to be my own GC. I'm a project manager in my professional life so have the organizational skill-set and have been wondering if I am out of my mind--as my friends and family have been telling me--for considering doing the project myself. This book is invaluable for determining how to assess. I honestly think I can do it. It might not be painless but neither is having a house built--I've done that too.This book would also be useful for people who are having their house built because it describes all the things that the contractor/builder is looking out for in the process. To me knowledge is power so the more you know the better the experience can be. This book can't be anything but useful no matter what role the homeowner decides to play.

Great book to learn, teaches you the ins and outs of general contracting also the good and the bad. I will be reading this book more than once.

This book is really great. Worth every penny. It has tones of useful information and checklists. Even a seasoned pro could take something away from opening this book.

This book is full of repeated useless information and full paragraphs that are respeated word for word. This book does not help you with contacting your own home.

Very helpful book, great to do lists