The Home Design Handbook : The Essential Planning Guide for Building, Buying, or Remodeling a Home

Rating:
Summary: Mostly lists - a workbook
Review: Most of the book is literally pages filled with questions about what you want in a home, with blank space to write in your answers. There are a few suggestions that all somehow end up pointing at similar designs. The filled out book would be given to an architect to start a design. Very good for someone who needs a formal structure to decide what is needed. If you've already throught seriously about what you want, this book will waste your time.

Rating:
Summary: thinks of everything - very personalized!
Review: This book looks at home design from a wholistic approach as well as up close and personal. It focuses on your hopes and dreams and the soul of your home to give you true satisfaction with your design. It includes such things as site, energy considerations, family's lifestyle, outdoors and indoors, and budget. With the guidance of this book you can plan to build a house from scratch or remodel an existing house to your taste and needs. Each room in the house is taken into consideration in detail, right down to the storage space, with photos and floor plans. Useful addresses and an extensive bibliography are given for your further exploration. This book is fantastic, especially because it gives you the freedom to custom design your dream house. Much of it is in the form of a workbook, with blanks to fill in. After going through all the forms, it will become clear to you what you need to do to achieve your goals.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference for home buyers!
Review: We found The Home Design Handbook to be an excellent resource as we searched for our home. The questions and exercises helped us narrow down and prioritize what we wanted (and did not want) in our home. Even the information intended for those who plan to build or renovate a house, covered issues that we found important considerations for anyone buying an existing home. For example, we learned alot about what to watch for to ensure the house was more energy efficient, inside and out. We felt we were better educated buyers with this great book!