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

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!

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.

This book was quite thorough but many of the explainations might confuse someone trying to build their own home. I also found outdated ideas and even words that are no longer in use for example calling concrete block cinderblock which is actually quite rare compared to true CMU. Overall its very informative and has good lists and guides. I would reccommend.

I read many books while preparing for my build and is by far the best. Very complete, easy to follow, lots of illustrations and pics, a glossary, very logical, etc. Just a great book! No fluff, no wasted time. Highly, highly recommend! john

We used this book as a guide to build our house. It turned out great. Step by step guide to getting your own contracting done. Easy to follow steps. Good value.

So far it's very helpful, but they need to update.

I found this book enormously helpful as I worked with my architect/builder to design our new net zero house. The chapter on Green Building summarizes the energy economy techniques which then come back in later in more detail in later chapters. The insulation maximizing California corners in the chapter on Framing were a fascinating detail; it has become my lithmus test for whether a builder is serious. Fortunately, I was working with an architect/builder who had already adopted most of these techniques. Your book allowed me to have informed discussions with him. Still, the book inspired us to go for a PEX manifold with electric tankless water heaters, and to downsize the windows to the optimal combination of light, privacy and energy, both decisions we now are very happy with.

VERY well written and exhaustive. This is a heavy book due to the use of coated paper which is very durable and shows the pictures and diagrams better than uncoated paper. I am very pleased with the purchase and I'm learning a lot by reading it! Highly recommended.

Dinheiro jogado fora!!!

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.

Very helpful book, great to do lists

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 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.