What Your Contractor Can't Tell You: The Essential Guide to Building and Renovating Author: Visit Amazon's Amy Johnston Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0979983800 | Format: PDF
What Your Contractor Can't Tell You: The Essential Guide to Building and Renovating Description
From the Publisher
This is the bestselling book of its type for good reason. It’s exactly what owners need and want to know before they start a building project. It’s frank, insightful, well sequenced and gives the reader a fascinating look into the surprising culture of the construction industry. It addresses what all owners are worried about and plenty else they should be worried about. The reader will come away a savvy consumer with foresight, prepared and focused on the right things to ensure their project is a success.
From the Author
Creating a dream home just shouldn't be a nightmare, but hiring people to design and build for you is an enormous investment and a high-risk endeavor involving decisions that will last forever. Most homeowners spend about 20% of their time on the plan and 80% of their time on a messy, traumatic, expensive construction phase, often with bad consequences. Pros spend 80% of their time on the plan and 20% on a smooth construction phase with the desired outcome. But the homeowners can't know what goes into a solid plan unless someone tells them. After years of hearing bright people tell me horror stories about their experiences I thought ‘If owners knew even a fraction of what the professionals did, they could avoid most of these problems.’ I hope you find this book illuminating and helpful. Best of luck with your project.
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- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Shube Publishing (January 1, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0979983800
- ISBN-13: 978-0979983801
- Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.1 x 0.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Designing and building a new home is intimidating for three reasons (1) It is something with which you are not familiar; (2) you are not likely to have many friends who have done it; and (3) it is VERY expensive. Worse, you feel responsible for every mistake made, and you know that each mistakes cost you money and time. Buying this book is NOT one of those mistakes. Instead, it is the "ounce of prevention" that will pay for itself many hundreds of times over.
Amy Johnston is a professional construction manager and owner's representative. Her wisdom focuses with framing the entire construction project in terms of a tradeoff between time, quality, and money - you can only have two of the three. We're only part way through our new house, and that rings very, very true. We clearly opted for taking a longer time - will we keep that focus as construction progresses? In any case, she gives the insights into each part of the triangle. Better yet, she is fair - she makes sure that neither you, nor anyone else, is getting cheated. Contractors, architects, bankers, inspectors, and everyone else are clearly defined in their roles - though the most important role is the home owner's, which she describes in great detail.
Every chapter is focused on another phase of the project, and her clear writing opens up the mysteries along the way. She describes who is doing what (or should be doing it), and describes what choices need to made - and what the alternatives are - before saying what her choice is.
Her points are illustrated with good references, pertinent anecdotes, and points that she labels "Insider's tips" and "pitfalls".
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