58 of 59 people found the following review helpful
Tells what to think about, July 17, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: How to Design and Build Your Own House (Paperback)
Anybody can sit down and draw a rough floor plan. But this book tells you to think in terms of how you use space rather than rooms. That simple piece of advice makes you think differently about what you want in a house and what you need. If you are thinking of building, GET THIS BOOK. Even if you’re going to a contractor or architect, get the book and sit down with your whole family to make plans. You’ll find out about personal privacy issues, how your rooms and spaces should flow, how to make your house more efficient not from an energy standpoint, but from a “how I use my house” point of view.
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This review is from: How to Design and Build Your Own House (Paperback)
I used this book to design and build my first house 15 years ago. I am now a general building contractor and continue to use it so much that that first copy is worn out and I’m buying a replacement. It offers a wonderful combination of design ideas, structural tables, and common sense advice.
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48 of 50 people found the following review helpful
Excellent overview of process!, October 22, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: How to Design and Build Your Own House (Paperback)
Great attention to many points which must be considered for design and building a home. While the material (particularily the pictures) are dated, the overall advice is timeless. Impressed that it admits not everyone is suited to the demands of the process.
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This review is from: Building Construction Illustrated (Paperback)
I teach construction technology to future General contractors and Interior Designers…and this is the best reference book I have found for beginners. When they ask me the size of a door or height of a kitchen cabinet I tell them to look it up…and I have the utmost confidence that it is both in this book and so well illustrated that the students can easily understand it. I call this book the Beginners Graphic STandards. And at about 1/3 the cost. I also reccomend KaffeeKang’ book called Graphic Guide to Frame Construction for residential framing.
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This review is from: Building Construction Illustrated (Paperback)
As an architect I worked for noted, this book gives you just enough information to make you dangerous. Ching provides a beautifully illustrated guide to basic concepts of building construction. It is a great introductory book filled with much useful information, but one can’t necessarily build from this book. I use it mostly to explain construction ideas, especially when it comes to wood-frame buildings, than I do as a set of graphic standards. Ching does offer some specific information, such as thermal resistance of building materials and a general span guide for roof and floor trusses, but much of this information is general and should be verified with more precise data books. However, Ching didn’t set out to create another “Standard Architectural Graphics” book, but rather an affordable guide to building construction which would provide some useful information to the design student and home builder alike.
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Tells what to think about,
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How to Design and Build Your Own House,
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Excellent overview of process!,
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easy to understand for constuction novices,
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Just enough to make you dangerous,
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