The Complete Do-it-Yourself Manual (Family Handyman)

Easy to Use..Picture is clear.Details by details.I am happy with it..More than 5 STAR.Thank you for the hardwork and creating this book to share with us.

I have the e-book, and I absolutely love it for projects that I want done around the house.So I purchased the hardcopy to keep on hand. As a back up.

We can search almost all things by internet, but sometimes compare different pages is troublesome. A book is convenient and easy to go and back to compare. This book express structures and many ways to maintain the house with many pictures and illustrations. Recommended to have one at home.

Complete? Not so much. I received it yesterday and had a pretty good look at it, spending around 2 hours going through it. I have had the 1991 version since 2000 or so, which was published by Reader's Digest. As I understand it, Family Handyman (publisher of the "current" edition) is a spinoff of Reader's Digest). Today I took a look at my old 1991 version (which I think was great) and came upon a treatment of one of the many projects I have on my list, which is replacing a tread on my back staircase. The book goes into lots of detail with great illustrations and explanations. Last night, I looked at the staircase material in the newer 2014 edition and there was almost nothing on staircase treads -- what was there all talked about stopping squeaks. My old 1991 edition has "Treads" in the index with 3 page numbers. There's nothing for "Treads" in the new edition's index.Moreover, I prefer the illustration style in the old edition to that of the new edition. There is a much greater preponderance of photographs in the new edition and I much prefer the work or artists in these sorts books to those of photographers. The new edition has seemingly hundreds of shots of real people doing projects. I feel that this distracts from the task at hand, which is to focus on the projects themselves. In this regard, the old edition is far superior.Of course, the new edition has some treatments that the old one doesn't. There are some areas of concern that are treated in the new edition which were not in the 1991 edition. Also, of course, some materials are new and available tools have changed some. Clearly, however, I'm going to go to the old book in many instances when I need help with a project. Newer is not always better.Edit: Dec. 29, 2020. I had a good look at this "Newly Updated" edition again today and was super impressed. This time I LIKE the photographs. There's a lot of great information about tools of all kinds that might be used in DIY around the house projects. I went from cover to cover and the great majority of the treatments are IMO worth reading even if you don't have immediate interest, i.e. just to familiarize yourself with the topic, ins and outs. I have a new found intention to read 90% of this book cover to cover including all the stuff at the start about tools. I know a lot about those things, but this book goes into a lot of details that I don't know about and there are many tips, little tricks of the trade explained. I think this book is really well written and I was thinking that they really did do a great job on this. I just gave it one more star, and it might deserve 5.

I am very pleased with this book as it covers a wide amount of DIY subjects and gives clear instruction with pointers along the way. I like the Home Depot guide that had multiple home topics too but found it lacking in many areas where as this one has blown it out of the water in every way for the projects I've done so far. All of the information it has can be gotten off the Family Handyman website and/or application but for anyone that does a lot of DIY stuff on their home knows that trying to use a computer/smartphone whole working on something they are not familiar with is the worst and if horribly inefficient. Not to mention that if you have a "mishap" and a mess happens then worst case scenario you would only be out less than 25.00 to replace this book instead or the hundreds on your electronics. I don't usually give reviews or even long ones when I do but this reference text is something I stand behind for anyone who is a home owner so I thought I'd throw my opinion out there for anyone that's interested.

Bought as a house warming gift for my brother and his family perfect for people that do not know much about home repai

Very well written and illustrated. Answers a lot of questions for underlying construction

has a lot of good general information and basic instruction for some projects but isn't as in depth as I truly needed. Good for the first time away from home or just out of the dorm person but not really what someone who actually needs or wants to take on home improvement projects needs.