Home Improvement Guide: Exterior Projects

Includes two hours of prime-time quality video instruction plus three fully diagrammed, printable booklets. Subjects include: building garages, decks, installing a shingle roof, garage door opener, lockset and deadbolt, and door threshold.

Features: Inspiring photography helps homeowners dream, plan, and select outdoor pools, spas, and hot tubs; Highlights how to choose and prepare a site and select installation specialists; Pros and cons for designing a custom pool or spa and upgrading or remodelling an existing one; Buying considerations for durable materials, pumping and filtration systems, and more; Advice on selecting attractive and functional decking, fencing, and other amenities.

Turn your backyard into a marvelous playland. With 30 play structures to choose from, all designed for the weekend woodworker and ranging from child-size gardening tools to an heirloom-quality Cozy Cottage play-house, complete with porch, window boxes, mailbox, and a porch swing, you are sure to find projects that match your child's personality and the size of your yard. Active kids will love the gigantic Tarzanium, a two-story jungle-gym that includes a sandbox, a deck, a fabric sunshade; and a rope wall to climb, as well as planting boxes lot growing miniature gardens and ringtoss and hopscotch games, are great for quiet play time.

Longing for a private retreat where you can unwind? How about an outdoor kitchen where your family can enjoy cooking without heating up the house? All it takes is a little planning to bring your dreams to reality. This book gives you the skills and tools needed to turn your patch of concrete or planks of wood into outdoor living space. Ideas and advice for turning ordinary spaces into showplaces; Simple ways to add privacy to any size landscape.

-- Shows how to create decks and patios to extend living spaces outdoors. -- Includes guidelines for developing a design, drawing up a working plan to obtain a permit, and calculating materials needed. -- Includes complete constructions details for finishing a project.

Detailed photography and clear step-by-step instructions guarantee great results! 75 projects teach how to design, build, accessorise, repair and maintain decks. Includes expert tips on customising plans.

Whirligigs, Adirondack chairs, planters, bird feeders, and barbecue carts are the stuff of this book's 125 or so outdoor building projects. Also included are about a dozen larger-scale projects for decks and assorted outbuildings. Each entry provides a list of materials, photos and construction drawings, and a detailed procedural narrative. An introductory chapter, purporting to survey outdoor building techniques, is too cursory to be of any help. In its discussion of materials, for example, it fails even to mention pressure-treated lumber. Like too many project books, this is neither original nor particularly imaginative and fails to offer any more than the sum of its parts. Bill Demo, Tompkins Cortland Community Coll., Dryden, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.