The Complete Visual Guide to Building a House, Seventh Edition: What Every Builder and Homeowner Needs to Know About Quality Construction

If you are a builder, remodeler, or repair handyman, it is a very well written book with good tips and tricks. Obviously the title is BUILDING a house, not installing wires or HVAC systems, etc. so its really a carpentry book. Even for non carpentes working on houses it is a good reference if you need to know how buildings are laid out, where studs and blocking are behind the walls and floors, etc. Definitely will come in handy, plus the neat tricks and tips like using a string. Just a few sentences with good illustration made me get it right away when I used to struggle with it.

This book not only spells out each of the major steps in building a house, but includes quite good illustrations. I wish there had been a section on steel roofing, but I’m sure there will always be /something/ missing unless the book is an exhaustive description of all methods of construction. That would take several volumes and this is just a single, albeit thick book. I’ve had some experience on almost all phases of construction, and this is a good reminder of some of the things I had forgotten. The tips also provide helpful tricks. At 520+ pages with great illustrations and descriptions, this book is an excellent reference. It doesn’t cover absolutely everything, but it does address the vast majority of what one would encounter while building a house.

Not a 100% definitive of where to ‘place every screw’ for example but barebones basics of how houses are assembled with good details and descriptions, I like it a lot. I would recommend if you know nothing about houses but want to build a house one day!

Don’t expect this to cover air quality whatsoever, and you’re all good. I was surprised about this because today’s houses are built tight, and that means there will be humidity issues without mechanical solutions. One star off for that. Otherwise, it’s a good primer on how a house goes together.

Like John Carroll's other work, this book is excellent! It has clear, well-labeled illustrations that make the concepts and instructions easy to understand. This book really breaks down the house-building process into steps that are easy to comprehend. Unlike some other books, it does not over-simplify the process by just presenting a single textbook-like scenario, but actually addresses the real-life issues one might encounter when building a house.

I have built several sheds and done remodeling work, but never any house building. I am excited to build our house in Idaho using this book as my guide. It’s very well illustrated and written. I wish I had referred to this sooner. I have learned so much from this. I’ll try to upload pictures of my work as a result of this book.

Can't say enough about this book - the author and illustrator teamed up and built a very engaging and understandable book that shows you everything you need to know about building houses/structures.

The title of the book is a bit misleading the back cover tells the truth. It's not everything about building a house just the carpentry part. If you only use this book to build a house you'd have a house with no electricity, plumbing or heating or air conditioning. One other issue. Those who have trouble with small fonts will find this book hard on the eyes. The fonts are tiny throughout.

Excellent

Haven't finished reading it. Seems an excellent resource with good explanations and detailed diagrams. However, it's using the Imperial units (e. g. inches and fractions of inches) for measurements, which makes it annoying when trying to convert to centimeters.

Todo

Spot on. Actually explains things and gets into the detail

Super achat