Building Your Own Home: A Step-by-Step Guide

Rating:
Summary: Basic legal information is strongpoint
Review: One of many books written by people who share their experiences building a home. In this case, it's a civil engineer who has thoroughly researched the legal and financial issues. The rest is a cursory overview of the building process, with a few self-drawn illustrations. Very readable text with a rare explanation of differing regional methods of surveying land.

Rating:
Summary: A Vague Summary of Home Building Issues
Review: This book is way too vague to be useful to someone actually trying to build a home. There's far too little detail on anything useful. For example, there are three pages on plumbing, two pages on electrical wiring. You can imagine how helpful this is going to be someone bold enough to set off in charge of a building project.

Rating:
Summary: A useful reference
Review: Wasfi Youssef does know much about the legal aspects, the municipal restrictions, the building codes, and contractor & inspector practices in use. This alone may make his text highly useful for the neophyte builder, or the husband & wife turned general contractor. Wasfi Youssef does cover the legal site-prep matters very well, but his text is sorely in need of better detail on the nuts and bolts of home building. He covers the "pen, paper, and permit" aspects very well, but the "hammer, chisel, nail, and stud" parts are inadequate. From reading his book, it should be more appropriately titled, "How to Contract the Building of Your Own Home". I have my doubts that Mr. Youssef actually built it any part of his home with his own hands, and he may have relied on contractor tradesman for the "nuts and bolts" of it.