The Best House & Home Books 2025

1. How to Build Animal Housing - Paperback

With dozens of adaptable plans for sheds, coops, hutches, multipurpose barns, windbreaks, and shade structures, this guide covers everything you need to know to build safe and sturdy housing for your animals. Stressing the importance of evaluating your goals, planning ahead, and budgeting accordingly, Carol Ekarius helps you determine the best structure for your particular situation and offers expert advice on tools and construction techniques. Build a functional and comfortable house for your animals that they'll be proud to call home.

With dozens of adaptable plans for sheds, coops, hutches, multipurpose barns, windbreaks, and shade structures, this guide covers everything you need to know to build safe and sturdy housing for your animals. Stressing the importance of evaluating your goals, planning ahead, and budgeting accordingly, Carol Ekarius helps you determine the best structure for your particular situation and offers expert advice on tools and construction techniques. Build a functional and comfortable house for your animals that they’ll be proud to call home.

2. The Complete Guide to Sharpening (Paperback)

You know how frustrating it is to work wood with tools that are dull. All that is over. Tool expert Leonard Lee has consolidated a lifetime of study of sharpening methods, techniques, and devices into the most practical reference on the subject. In The Complete Guide to Sharpening, you'll discover the most effective ways to sharpen your tools-from chisels to drill bits. You'll get better edges than on most razor blades, and you'll learn how to shape them to cut better and stay sharp longer. In fact, Lee's simple principles and some basic equipment wil allow you to sharpen any woodworking tool you are likely to encounter.

The Complete Guide to Sharpening (Paperback)

3. Pyrography Designs Paperback 1861081162 9781861081162 Norma Gregory

Here is a collection of designs for pyrographers to use without fear of copyright infringement. Norma Gregory shares her designs and has supplied additional elements that can be combined to create hundreds of new images to suit your individual needs. Includes birds, mammals, flowers, herbs, water life, farms and Celtic knotwork. Author: Norma Gregory Publisher: GMC Publications Published: 03/01/1999 Pages: 128 Binding Type: Paperback Weight: 1.03lbs Size: 10.84h x 8.27w x 0.31d ISBN: 9781861081162

Pyrography Designs (Paperback)

4. Haircutting for Dummies

9780764554285

Haircutting for Dummies

5. House (Paperback)

In the New York Times bestseller House, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder takes readers to the heart of the American Dream: the building of a family's first house with all its day-to-day frustrations, crises, tensions, challenges, and triumphs. In Kidder's "remarkable piece of craftsmanship in itself" (Chicago Tribune), constructing a staircase or applying a coat of paint becomes a riveting tale of conflicting wills, the strength and strain of relationships, and pride in skills. With drama, sensitivity, and insight, he takes us from blueprints to moving day, shedding light on objects usually taken for granted and creating a vivid cast of memorable characters in the process. "The making of a house is a strange blend of dreams and mundane work, of heaven and earth, and Mr. Kidder has explained it."--New York Times Book Review

House (Paperback)

6. The Big Book of Small House Designs : 75 Award-Winning Plans for Houses 1,250 Square Feet or Less (Hardcover)

75 unique designs for attractive, efficient, environmentally friendly homes. Now available in paperback, this collection of 75 plans for small homes offers more than 500 usable blueprints and other illustrations for a variety of living spaces suitable for every environment and style, from a New England farmhouse to a sophisticated townhouse in the city to a Santa Fe ranch. The designs include site drawings, floor plans, elevation drawings, section drawings, perspective drawings, and exploded views. A brief introduction to each home describes its setting, the philosophy behind the design and its intended use, materials used, recommended landscaping, and more. Many of the homes come with money-saving and environmentally sound features such as solar panels and water heaters, wood stoves, ceiling fans, airlock entries, wind power alternatives, and natural gas heaters.

75 unique designs for attractive, efficient, environmentally friendly homes. Now available in paperback, this collection of 75 plans for small homes offers more than 500 usable blueprints and other illustrations for a variety of living spaces suitable for every environment and style, from a New England farmhouse to a sophisticated townhouse in the city to a Santa Fe ranch. The designs include site drawings, floor plans, elevation drawings, section drawings, perspective drawings, and exploded views. A brief introduction to each home describes its setting, the philosophy behind the design and its intended use, materials used, recommended landscaping, and more. Many of the homes come with money-saving and environmentally sound features such as solar panels and water heaters, wood stoves, ceiling fans, airlock entries, wind power alternatives, and natural gas heaters.

7. Living a Beautiful Life, (Paperback)

With the publication of Living A Beautiful Life, Alexandra Stoddard originated the idea of creating an atmosphere of beauty and tranquility with simple touches that turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. As a world-famous interior decorator, she has worked her magic on interiors large and small, from mansions and embassies to cottages and studio apartments. Through her writing and lectures, she has encouraged millions to brighten their lives and their homes by turning mundane tasks into small pleasurable rituals that add beauty and joy to everything they do. Alexandra Stoddard's secrets of Living A Beautiful Life are yours. With the publication of Living A Beautiful Life, Alexandra Stoddard originated the idea of creating an atmosphere of beauty and tranquillity with simple touches that turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. As a world-famous interior decorator, she has worked her madic on interiors large and small, from mansions and embassies to cottages and studio apartments. Though her writing and lectures, she has encouraged millions to brighten their lives and their homes by turning mundane tasks into small pleasurable rituals that add beauty and joy to everything they do. Alexandra Stoddard's secrets of Living A Beautiful Life are yours.

Living a Beautiful Life, (Paperback) Author: William Morrow & Company ISBN: 9780380705115 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2004-05-06 Page Count: 192

8. Better Homes and Gardens Home: Tiling Step-by-Step (Better Homes and Gardens) (Paperback)

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Clear, step-by-step instructions and stunning photos illustrate techniques to select, install, maintain, and repair tile. Dozens of projects for floors, walls, countertops, showers, backsplashes, and fireplaces. Lists of materials, time, skills, and tools needed for each project. Practical advice and tips to help DIYers choose colors, patterns, add decorative tiles, apply grout, and more.

9. Do Your Own Wiring 9780806984728

ISBN: 9780806984728 ISBN10: 0806984724 Contributors: Armpriester, K. E.,

Do Your Own Wiring (Paperback) 9780806984728

10. Granite Kiss: Traditions and Techniques of Building New England Stone Walls, (Paperback)

In this elegant, literate primer, a master stonemason imparts the fundamentals of building traditional New England-style dry stone walls, along with thoughts on the history, aesthetics, and philosophy of the craft of placing stone. In this eminently readable primer on the fundamentals of placing stone, Kevin Gardner distills 25 years of experience in building and repairing New England-style dry stone walls into principles and practices that are adaptable to a wide variety of designs and circumstances. In addition to directions on building basic stone walls, he also demystifies steps, wells, ramps, walkways, and may other forms of dry masonry. Gardner also discusses the philosophy behind the repair and restoration of old walls, and gives the beginning wall builder ways to think about the place of the stone wall within the landscape. Along the way, Gardner considers the mythology of the stone wall and its place in the New England imagination. And he explores the history, philosophy, and aesthetics of working with stone in a book that will bring as much pleasure to armchair craftsmen as it will valuable instruction to the beginning wall builder. Selected as one of 2001's Best Gift Books by The Times of Trenton, New Jersey; one of the 50 best nonfiction books of 2001 by the Christian Science Monitor. 22 black & white illustrations, glossary, bibliography, index.

Granite Kiss: Traditions and Techniques of Building New England Stone Walls, (Paperback) Author: Countryman Press ISBN: 9780881505467 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2008-09-17 Page Count: 224