Building Your Home: A Simple Guide to Making Good Decisions

I only wish I had this book sooner. It came out at the end of my 25 years in the design and construction industry. Or I would have used it as a manuel with every homeowner I have ever built with. I feel like we finally have a simple way to translate and navigate the often confusing process and verbage of construction. It's almost like a translater. And the lists are amazing. And the examples of all the different surface choices are such an easy way to decide options. It is the best gift you can give someone who is in any stage of planning or construction.

I'm still years away from building my home, but this book is already so useful! It has me thinking about all sorts of practical things I would have overlooked. I love how it is designed like a workbook, so it feels like Kristina Leigh is assisting in the process by creating a sturdy foundation onto which I can develop my own goals and ideas. I'm so grateful to have a book like this as a guide!

This book does the work for you - it's incredible. It thinks ahead for you, to keep the decision making simple. I'm building a house, and used this book to guide me through the process. It would have been a completely different outcome had I not used this book. The worksheets make it simple, and Wiggins highlights danger zones and is always one step ahead. I can't recommend it enough.

We aren't going to build for a year or two but wow - this book brought up so many things to work out ahead of time. I've always wondered if my partner and I could survive building a house. We are both opinionated and don't always communicate as well as we should. The chapter offering a format for how to communicate and make decisions is gold. It is already working as we slowly meander through all the things that we will need to start considering.

We're preparing to build our retirement home, so this looked like it would be the ideal book to guide us through the process. I could not have been more wrong or disappointed. VERY basic advice repeated over and over again about preparing lists of what you like and getting multiple quotes. Besides the generally weak content, I have to say that the book was laid out in a manner that felt like a student trying to stretch out an essay to meet a minimum page count requirement. The book has huge margins and page after page of broadly space checklists. While my eyes perhaps enjoyed the lack of text density, the reason was pretty obvious; there was simply no substance.

Sorry I waisted money on this short silly book with little usable content

I actually bought this book after using a library book for awhile because it's useful enough as a workbook to be well worth the cost, especially compared to the amount I'm about to spend on a major home remodel. I still give it 3 stars because the lack of the accompanying app because I'm not cool enough to have an iPhone becomes more annoying the further into the book you get, but the book is entirely usable without it. Hopefully the author will remedy the problem soon and make an android app available. The book helps immensely with all the practical aspects. For example, until working through this book it hadn't occurred to me what a nuisance it would be to not have a side door. We've never had a side door but the remodel, while adding a lot of wonderful features, is also moving the back door far away from the kitchen leaving no convenient way to haul in groceries. Thankfully we caught this before we got any further and added a side door. Small thing but over decades of grocery shopping will be a huge life improvement. :) I highly recommend getting about a dozen books from the library and the choosing the most useful to purchase. I'm quite certain the $100 I spent on books has saved me immensely more money as well as frustration.

I'm so happy with this book selection! Kristina brings all the hard decisions down to size and keeps it simple. There are so many tips in this book that you wouldn't even know to ask or wonder about. I was 100% prepared when meeting with our selected builder and architect. I feel much more comfortable and educated with this process. Thank you!!!!