The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home: A Step-by-Step Method for Managing Home Construction Paperback – January 12, 2017

I read many books while preparing for my build and is by far the best. Very complete, easy to follow, lots of illustrations and pics, a glossary, very logical, etc. Just a great book! No fluff, no wasted time. Highly, highly recommend!john

I’m building my first house to sell. This has been good information to shorten my learning curve.

This book was quite thorough but many of the explainations might confuse someone trying to build their own home. I also found outdated ideas and even words that are no longer in use for example calling concrete block cinderblock which is actually quite rare compared to true CMU.Overall its very informative and has good lists and guides. I would reccommend.

Fantastic work authored in the 5th Edition book by the experts and professionals, Kent Lester and Dave McGuerty! You both hit the nail on the head! This is exactly what I would expect from a book, particularly a residential contracting book! This book presents very thorough, sequential, orderly, detailed, and easy to understand, step-by-step plans that are beneficial to anyone in the rough, general process of building, but especially helpful to the beginning contractor. I would say this book definitely sums up the most complete, significant basics, at a minimum, that are vital to any home being contracted. The book also shows how to inspect during the process of construction, even if you don't swing a hammer! Resources of where to find information are made apparent along with major building supply companies for each room of the house, masterplan checklist of where to begin, plan checklist, contract, and agreement, are located in the appendix of the book. There are lots of specialty books on the market of how to do certain things in construction, but this book summarizes and compiles it. I'm not a contractor myself and have never contracted any type of structure being built, but I find this field highly interesting and motivating. I enjoy picking out building materials, fixtures, finishes, working with numbers, and estimating costs, etc. The whole nine yards is presented from the building lot, foundation, framing, roofing, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, painting, trimwork, cabinetry, countertops, flooring, landscaping, and decks, etc. Well worth purchasing this book, even if you're only merely thinking about contracting and maybe not yet ready to actually build a home. I highly recommend anyone read this book, particularly if you're curious about the overall, general process of the contracting, building, and construction industry!

We used this book as a guide to build our house. It turned out great. Step by step guide to getting your own contracting done. Easy to follow steps. Good value.

Nice check lists

This book will walk you through the process of building a home with forms, checklists etc. This book will give you confidence to build and manage your own build while saving lots of money. I know how to build a home, yet this book gave me ideas and additional knowledge that I wasn’t thinking about. If I were a beginner, I’d buy this book and read it twice before attempting to build your own home. Think about this, the investment and time putting into this book will payoff huge amount of return on investment. Follow the book and it’s worksheets. There is a lot to read and absorb, but you can do this! Time is your friend. Put the work into this book and reap the rewards of the knowledge you obtain and apply to building your home.

This is a great book offering guidance in most areas of the home building process. Much like planning your wedding, even if you're planning on hiring a planner to oversee and arrange all the different elements it's still important to do your own research both to protect yourself and to be able to properly voice to your coordinator exactly what it is you want. Home building is exactly like that, only with way more steps and areas than a wedding. This book gives a lot of information. Most of all, it gives enough information for those questions you didn't even know you had to take shape.We also really appreciated the info about green building stuff as well as just the general descriptions of the pros and cons of different building materials or types (ex. Roofing materials, types of concrete, foundation styles). There's also info about dealing with all your various specific contractors if you choose to do that part of the work yourself.