Amy Johnston

This book does not cover the design process at all. Instead it's all about the nuts and bolts of getting your home built and being a new comer in an industry not known for always dealing well with customers. You should read this book or an equivalent if you are thinking about building a house or even if you are just renovating.

If you took only two things away from this book they should be (1) always have a contract which covers the scope of the project, how quality will be assessed, and what the owner's recourse will be in the case of incomplete or badly completed work and (2) plan, define, and keep track of everything. You and your builder may go into this process with the best of intentions, but if things go wrong, good intentions will not fix your home. Clear plans that you can track progress against and a well defined process for changing things might.

Beyond those two high level points, the book is jam packed with useful particulars such as different contract structures, basics on the language used in the world of construction, the methods of budget estimating your builder is likely to use, contracts and what they should include, and how to deal with change orders.

I expect that by the time our house is built, my copy of this book will look well loved.… (mer)

A decent book that does better in some areas than others. Has a very thorough guide to writing and negotiating contracts, which is obviously an important part of the process. I wasn't as wowed by the sections on shopping for a contractor and scoping out a project. The advice is also much more slanted towards major projects (large additions, new builds, etc), and I didn't feel like most of it transferred well to smaller projects. At the end of the day, I'm glad I read it but didn't walk away feeling all that much more confident about starting my project than before.… (mer)