What Your Contractor Can't Tell You: The Essential Guide to Building and Renovating
by Amy Johnston
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Book Summary Information
Author: Amy JohnstonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-01
ISBN: 0979983800
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Shube Publishing
Book Reviews of What Your Contractor Can't Tell You: The Essential Guide to Building and Renovating
Book Review: Excellent first (or second) source for working with contractors
Summary: 5 Stars
Over the last fifteen years, I've (barely) survived one disastrous whole house renovation and lived through two lesser projects. As you might imagine, when I decided I was going to buy and renovate another house, I knew I needed to do a better job at managing the process. After going through at least a dozen books of varying quality on working with contractors, I was very happy to find "What Your Contractor Can't Tell You" (WYCCTY). Here's why:
Most books on contractor management fall into one of two categories, highly technical or highly adversarial, and for me, neither is really on the mark. I don't want to *be* a contractor, I want to hire and manage one. I am also not interested in spending six months circling a contractor like we are about to knife fight. WYCCTY avoids both extremes, making the contractor-client relationship about business and your job as a client about protecting your interests appropriately. This is as it should be and the book describes dozens of ways of doing so, all which fall into the category of good project management practice.
That means you will be reading a lot of stuff on contracts, project budget tracking, schedules and making design decisions. There are good chapters on how to read and evaluate schedules and budgets and excellent chapters on contracts and change orders; the latter are especially helpful if you are new to construction or renovation.
If you have managed projects (construction or otherwise) you will discover that you know most of what you need to know and the book will be a reference for you. If you have not managed projects before, you will quickly see that you have two choices: get educated on the tools and skills needed or hire a good project manager to do the job for you. This makes the book really useful for someone new to renovation or project management.
The author focuses on the contractor and construction part of renovation and while it does have chapters on working with architects, they aren't as detailed or helpful as the rest of the book. If you haven't been through that process before, you'll need other resources to really learn about it.
This won't be the only book I will use during my upcoming project but it will certainly be one of three or four that I have quite near at hand. I highly recommend it for the project savvy as a reference and for the beginner as a way to decide whether or not your renovation project management is something you want to dive into.
More What Your Contractor Can't Tell You: The Essential Guide to Building and Renovating reviews:
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Summary of What Your Contractor Can't Tell You: The Essential Guide to Building and Renovating
What Your Contractor Can't Tell You is a comprehensive guide to getting the best results while building or renovating a home. Most homeowners spend about 20% of their time on the plan and 80% of their time on a messy, traumatic, expensive construction phase. Pros spend 80% of their time on the plan and 20% on a smooth construction phase. But the homeowners can't know what goes into a solid plan unless someone tells them. This book is based on a simple premise...if homeowners knew even 10% of what the professionals in the construction field know, they could avoid 90% of the problems. Creating a dream home shouldn't be a nightmare. Hiring a contractor is an enormous investment and a high-risk endeavor involving decisions that will last forever. This book equips homeowners with the information and strategies needed to turn their vision into a home or a renovation that can be built on time and within budget. Chapters give detailed coverage of critical topics: design; selecting and supervising the architect and contractor; cost estimates; budget; plan specifications; contracts; dealing with town officials; and keeping track of everything along the way. For each stage of the project, there is detailed information on common pitfalls and how to avoid them, as well as insiders' tips which reveal what most contractors can't tell you. This book was previously published by Warner Books (2004) and titled What the "Experts" May Not Tell You About Building or Renovating Your Home.Design & Construction Books
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