Home Repair
Ty's Tricks: Home Repair Secrets Plus Cheap and Easy Projects to Transform Any Room Ty Pennington, the carpenter on The Learning Channel's show Trading Spaces, lends a conversational tone and his signature wit to this do-it-yourself guide for everyone. He proclaims that "anyone, even you, can save money by doing some of your own home renovation and repair, no matter how inexperienced you are, no matter how lousy you are with your hands, no matter how much you think you can't do it." Then he shows readers some of what he's done-the first chapter is a tour of Pennington's renovated home, complete with inspiring before and after photos, and even a seductively silly shot of Pennington in the shower. Ensuing chapters include information on building and making "cool stuff," hiring contractors, tools and materials, walls, paint, floors, plumbing, and creating your own style; the photos help illustrate each process. The narrative is never presented in intimidating, technical jargon-filled chunks; it's broken down into lists, boxes, sidebars, and snippets, and the frequent "Ty's Tips" feature.
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The Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair: Got a problem with grout? Open The Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair (to page 98) and watch your tiling worries dissolve before the simple beauty of photography. Black & Decker has anticipated your every question and problem with interior, exterior, and home systems repairs, and detailed the solutions in just over 500 pages. In no other human endeavor is a visual guide so important as home repair (well, maybe brain surgery), so this is a crucial aid to the handyperson. Easy-to-find sections on floors, insulation, roofing, chimneys, water heaters, wall switches, air conditioning, and much more are well-designed, brilliantly illustrated, and carefully outlined with step-by-step instructions from masters. The photos in particular are extremely valuable, offering many different views (sometimes even exploded) of the operation in question, and always showing just enough to communicate without overwhelming the reader with too much detail. These alone would be worth the price of the book, but the written explanations and instructions are also very helpful, offering tools, materials lists, and hints that wouldn't occur to the amateur. The book finishes with a maintenance schedule to help you keep repairs from becoming serious, and the end papers have conversion charts and tables that you'll use time and again. |
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Dare to Repair : A Do-it-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home Whether you identify with riot grrrls or Rosie the Riveter, you'll love the tackle-it-yourself empowerment style of Dare to Repair. Covering simple tasks like unclogging bathroom sinks and switching directions on a ceiling fan along with more intimidating projects such as patching holes in drywall or creating a circuit map, this no-nonsense guide will walk you through those simple steps of maintaining, and perhaps even improving, your home. Forget about Martha and her hot-glue-gun projects--this is about drain snakes, electrical tape, and the kind of screwdrivers you can't order from a bartender. |
