Showing titles in Home Design & Renovation

As the sun set slowly on the British Empire in the years after the Second World War, the nation's stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the weight of rising taxes and a growing sense that they had no place in 20th-century Britain, hundreds of ancestral piles were dismantled and demolished. Perhaps even more surprising was the fact that so many of these great houses survived, as dukes and duchesses clung desperately to their ancestral seats and tenants' balls gave way to rock concerts, safari parks and day trippers.

Imagine yourself—a brand-new homeowner—all set to move into a new property that you just bought. You're eager to start a new chapter in your life, but there are still a few things bothering you. The obvious course of action is to hire a contractor for home renovation. But most homeowners can spend between $100,000 and $200,000 for complete home renovation. You must be thinking, "How can I renovate my home without spending a fortune?" The answer is easy: Do it yourself. Do It Yourself Home Renovation will show you how to renovate like professionals at a fraction of the cost.

Why settle for a house that looks like every other one in the neighborhood? With Building Your Custom Home for Dummies, you can design and build the home of your dreams. From brainstorming must-have features to hanging a wreath on the front door, this book walks you through what you need to know from start to finish. Get savvy on purchasing property, securing financing, and raising the walls that will become the setting for life's next chapter. If you can imagine it, you can build it!

Rob Kenney’s father left him and his seven siblings when he was 14 years old, and the youngest had to fend for themselves. He wished that he had someone who could teach him the basics - how to tie a tie, jump-start a car, unclog a drain, use tools properly - as well as succeed in life. But he and his siblings had to figure these things out on their own. Now a father himself, Rob decided that he would help people out by providing how-to tips as well as advice - and even throw in some bad dad jokes.

Do you walk in a room to organize and find yourself paralyzed and overwhelmed? Do you find yourself spending money on organizing solutions that don't work? Organizing isn't easy. And having ADHD doesn't make it any easier. But it doesn't have to be impossible.

The green-building movement has produced hundreds of "how-to" books and websites that are filled with tips about green building and what homeowners should do to go green. While helpful and informative, when it comes to making actual purchasing and installation decisions, these books do not make it any easier for a homeowner to prioritize against a budget. Here, Melisssa Rappaport Schifman shares her knowledge and experience for others to use in their journey toward a greener way of living.

What will it take to restore balance to our world, repair past injustices, and support future generations' survival? Looking deeply into the web of life that created and supports us, and drawing inspiration from diverse cultural traditions and perspectives, spirited thinkers Michael Pawlyn and Sarah Ichioka propose a bold set of regenerative principles with potential to transform how we design, make, and manage our buildings; infrastructure; and communities.

Van boondocking is not just the adventure of a lifetime. The successful transition to this lifestyle means that the adventure can be what your life is composed of all the time. Imagine waking up to birds chirping, the sound of a gently rolling creek, or to that warm percolator of coffee brewed over the embers of a dying campfire. That’s nice for a weekend, but what if you lived like that full time?

How many of us have been told after we graduated that what you studied in books is one thing, and how it works in reality is something different! This audiobook is a complete guide that takes you through all phases of a project.

From Ben and Erin Napier, the stars of the hit HGTV show Home Town, comes Make Something Good Today, a memoir that lets us all know that great love stories are possible, big things can bloom in small towns, and there is always magic in the ordinary if you know where to look for it.

Do you wish you knew the basics of plumbing so you could handle most of the maintenance and repairs yourself? Then the Plumbing Book for Beginners is the perfect resource for you. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of plumbing and gives you the knowledge you need to become a DIY plumber.

Nearly every US city would like to be more walkable - for reasons of health, wealth, and the environment - yet few are taking the proper steps to get there. The goals are often clear, but the path is seldom easy. Jeff Speck’s follow-up to his best-selling Walkable City is the resource that cities and citizens need to usher in an era of renewed street life. Walkable City Rules is a doer’s guide to making change in cities, and making it now.

One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kind of walls, chairs, buildings, and streets we’re surrounded by. And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be - and argues that it is architecture’s task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.

Simple, practical advice on how to design your home for health and happiness. Create a healthy, happy home with 100 design ideas to support your physical and mental wellbeing. Using the latest evidence and research in wellbeing and Biophilic Design, learn how to transform every space in your home to create a restorative and nurturing environment. Discover the many benefits of connecting to nature, maximising natural light, improving air quality and the right way to add colour, texture and pattern to create spaces that improve relaxation, recuperation, social connections and sleep.

We all know how important it is to reduce our environmental footprint, but it can be daunting to know where to begin. Enter Kathryn Kellogg, who can fit all her trash from the past two years into a 16-ounce mason jar. How? She starts by saying "no" to straws and grocery bags, and "yes" to a reusable water bottle and compostable dish scrubbers.

They’re scented, fizzy, and fun, but adding a sizzling bath bomb to your tub is doing far more good for your health than just stimulating your senses with some fizz, color, and flowery aromas. You’re about to learn how to transform your bath tub into one of the safest and most powerful healing therapies ever discovered.

From one of Fine Homebuilding's best-loved authors, Larry Haun, comes a unique story that looks at American home building from the perspective of twelve houses he has known intimately. Part memoir, part cultural history, A Carpenter's Life as Told by Houses takes the reader house by house over an arc of 100 years.

In this mesmerizing memoir-in-essays, New York Times best-selling author Erica Bauermeister renovates a trash-filled house in eccentric Port Townsend, Washington, and in the process takes listeners on a journey to discover the ways our spaces subliminally affect us. A personal, accessible, and literary exploration of the psychology of architecture, this book is designed for homeowners, remodelers, and those who are simply curious about how our built environments shape who we become.

Does your disaster preparation plan include security measures? When civilization fails and the desperate masses begin looting, they will come for your food, water, and life-sustaining supplies. This book tells you how to implement a complete plan for operational security and physical defense.

Building a new house requires a lot of foresight—things will go wrong and the plan will most likely find itself derailed at one point or another. Although this is in many ways a natural occurrence, it doesn't have to be in any way catastrophic. With the right plan in place and a detailed map of how to progress through the entire process, no matter the curveballs you encounter, you’ll be able to seamlessly get back into the flow of things. It’s one thing to have the skills, but it’s another thing entirely to be able to apply them in a way that produces results.