Rating: 
Summary: Excellent reference
Review: This book is a great reference for the "Do it yourself" crowd. The one thing I think it lacks is great illustrations, but what they do have is adequate. I'd honestly suggest getting another book, like the one by Black & Decker, to supplement this one, but this will help you quite a bit with any projects, even by itself.
Rating: 
Summary: consistently most helpful book of it's kind
Review: This book is and has been, the most practical general reference guide to most of us AMATEURS. It is easy to read, well indexed and the illustrations are practical. Good job Reader's Digest.
Rating:
Summary: Handy book to have
Review: This book is extremely good at presenting a given home repair task to the novice and covers most of what you'll ever need to do to your home. It gives a general listing of the types of tools you'll use and includes some incredibly useful tricks of the trade like how to hide nail heads (aka "blind nailing") and using wedges of wood to prevent pry bars from destroying more than you want. I especially like the supplementary material it provides. For example in the electrical section, it talks about how electricity is typically wired in a home. It further offers guidelines on such things as the number of receptaccles per (15 amp) circuit and how a layout of circuits might look around your home. A minor nit is the book lacks is a way to estimate how appropriate a given task is for you. For example, they talk about installing and removing a bathtub, but don't include any conventional warning like "Are you out of your mind?" or "Maybe you should not attempt this." (Removing and installing bathtubs is considered to be both time consuming and labor intensive.) Overall, this is a great reference book for the homeowner and provides great diagrams and descriptive text of tasks you may soon need to attempt.
Rating:
Summary: A great reference for the homeowner
Review: This book is extremely good at presenting a given home repair task to the novice and covers most of what you'll ever need to do to your home. It gives a general listing of the types of tools you'll use and includes some incredibly useful tricks of the trade like how to hide nail heads (aka "blind nailing") and using wedges of wood to prevent pry bars from destroying more than you want. I especially like the supplementary material it provides. For example in the electrical section, it talks about how electricity is typically wired in a home. It further offers guidelines on such things as the number of receptaccles per (15 amp) circuit and how a layout of circuits might look around your home. A minor nit is the book lacks is a way to estimate how appropriate a given task is for you. For example, they talk about installing and removing a bathtub, but don't include any conventional warning like "Are you out of your mind?" or "Maybe you should not attempt this." (Removing and installing bathtubs is considered to be both time consuming and labor intensive.) Overall, this is a great reference book for the homeowner and provides great diagrams and descriptive text of tasks you may soon need to attempt.
Rating:
Summary: Very helpful
Review: This book is GREAT for the beginning do-it-yourselfer. It assumes that you know next to nothing, which is a good place to start. It's very thorough, starting with tools and how to use them and going through all the components of your house. The one thing it doesn't cover is landscaping/gardening, but there are millions of books about that. It won't teach you how to build your own house, but it has just about everything you need to maintain and improve one. This book will give you the confidence to take on most home projects yourself. (And, hopefully, the skills to do so as well...)
| 
