Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I expected this book to be more helpful, but it is really a few vague suggestions spread out across as many pages as the writer could manage. In fact I can save you the money and tell you the entire book in just a few words 1 Hire good people that know what they are doing and trust them to do a good job, the city will ensure they do it to legal spec. 2 make sure you like your house plans before you start 3 don't pay ahead of schedule Have a budget and stick to it Of course the problem with this advice' is finding good contractors and trusting them. That is exactly what general Contractors do for a living they spend time developing relationships with contractors. It does not happen overnight, GCs also hire bad contractors they just stop using them after one or two jobs. We don't have that luxury the owner builder needs to get the right ones first time out and that is hard Carl's big idea is to go to a lumber yard and ask for help, this is great if you happen to get lucky. The lumber yards loyalties are not to some walk in that is only buying lumber for one house it is to the guy who builds houses 365. So sure he might suggest someone, and that guy might talk a great fight and he might be great. But he might also be the next "up" or the guy struggling to pay his lumber yard bills. These kinds of books are suitable if you just want a very hazy outline. But it fails completely to deal with the real issues of acting as your own GC. Schedules, build orders inspections etc are all huge deals that are hardly addressed at all. If you want solid building advice there are a number of very strong sites that give strong detailed accounts of owner builder construction. I strongly suggest skipping this book. And if you want a cheap lightly used copy.....