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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | Celtic | Home » » » Best Weekend Projects | | | | | | | Description: | | Choose from 80 unique ideas to create an extraordinary living space. The projects are practical, as well as attractive, and will enhance your home and yardand can be made in a weekend.
In The Family Handymans clear, dependable style, these 80 well-designed projects are presented in a clear, easy-to-follow style that addresses readers in a very accessible, user-friendly tone. Each project starts with an introduction to the tools, techniques, and materials, approximate cost, and continues with detailed illustrated instructions plus tips and suggestions for making the projects easier and more efficient.
The projects are rated easy, intermediate, and advancedindicating the degree of difficulty and skill level requiredmaking it simple to choose the right project for your own ability. Throughout the book are sidebarsPlan Smart, Buy Smart, Work Smart, cutting and materials lists and professional tips from the editors. Plus many chapters include a collection of Easy for Everyone ideas.
Learn new tips and discover new ways to beautify and organize your home. Before you know it, you and your family will enjoy your new and improved home and yard after merely a weekend.
About the Author
Since 1951, The Family Handyman has been the leading magazine in the expanding home-improvement field. The Family Handyman magazine is published 10 times annually and has more than 4 million readers. On average, 75,000 copies of The Family Handyman are sold on newsstands and in all major retail stores including Lowes, Home Depot, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and WalMart. | | | Features: | |
• Over 80 projects are presented in The Family Handyman's clear, dependable style?with concise plans, complete material lists, illustrated step-by-step instructions, and hundreds of full-color photos of the finished product.
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Editors of The Family Handyman | | Paperback:
| 224 pages | | Publisher:
| Readers Digest | | Publication Date:
| April 10, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0762109270 | | Package Length:
| 10.4 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.9 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.6 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.5 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 1 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Reviewing: "Best Weekend Projects"Mar 21, 2009
With a subtitle of "80 Great Ideas Anyone Can Do" this book wastes no time getting to the projects. Instead of an introduction telling readers what the authors/publisher tried to do and thanking everyone involved for their help, the book immediately opens with a forty-three page chapter on "Storage." Projects range from the simple "Folding Peg Board Cabinet" to the more complex "Corner Swing and Roll-Out Trays" or the "Low-Cost TV Cabinet" (without doors). Each plan has an approximate price for supplies, skill level, a list of special tools needed, an exploded diagram plan and numerous pictures of every step of construction. The pictures are very helpful as they are rather large, in color, and items within the pictures are labeled and tagged along with detailed captions making it very clear to readers what they are looking at. Also included are brief "Handy Tips" designed to make construction go easier.
The second chapter follows the same format and covers "Shelving." Over forty-five pages projects such as an "Under-Sink Shelf," a "Coat & Mitten Rack," the "Leaning Tower Of Shelves" to more complex ones like the "Traditional Maple Bookcase." As with all the projects in this book, the skill levels might be a little low so you will want to consider if your abilities match the project depicted that you want to build.
"Household Improvements" is the title for the third chapter. Also covering over forty pages, it kicks off with how to "Hang A Ceiling Fan." That leads into adding a "Chair Rail" to save your wall from nasty scrapes by the chairs bouncing back against the wall. Or maybe you would like to spend a weekend doing "Snap-Together Wood Flooring." The book also shows you how to do "Fast, Easy Lamp Fixes" as well as "Fast Furniture Fixes" to deal with scratches and gouges among many more ideas. This chapter has few plans for original projects and instead is mainly more of a home repair chapter to take care of existing things.
Chapter four heads outside with "Paths, Walls & Fences." Beginning on page 138 with plans for a "Decorative Fence" that will only take two weekends (unless a storm front blows through) the book tells you how to design, plan and build the fence you want along with taking in to account whatever expectations the neighbors and the homeowners association have. The single fence plan depicted in the book is off a basic privacy fence made out of wooden slats and topped off with a wood lattice and gate. Total cost of the fence is estimated to be "$15 per lineal foot" in materials. After the fence is done, maybe you want to build a "border wall" even though the approximate cost "varies greatly." They tell you how to do so along with other projects such as "Simple Walkway Ideas" and building a "Modular Concrete Retaining Wall." At this point you might be thinking that it might be best to figure out how to save the old fence and they tell you how in "Renew Your Wood Fence." This chapter does skip around quite a bit instead of more naturally having all the fence plans together, all the walkway projects together, etc. Despite that quibble, this chapter is overall another good one with plenty of neat ideas.
"Yard & Garden" is the next chapter and it opens with a rather sexist photograph of a man relaxing and reading on a bench in the garden while the women is happily tweaking the spraying water fountain that is nestled in a bunch of flowers. At the end of the chapter, the same picture is used from a slightly different angle to showcase the small soothing fountain. In between are fifty pages that cover "5 Tips For A Perfect Lawn," a "Folding Grill Table," a "Copper Trellis" among numerous other projects are offered . One project on "Plant Markers" is rather impractical as it uses the empty paper seed envelopes as the headstones of the markers. Having done a variation of this idea myself in the past, I know the empty seed packets don't last very long in the garden. That weak idea contrasts to the very interesting "Container Water Gardens" project which shows you how to make small water gardens in various containers that you can set out on your patio or wherever.
This 218 page book closes with a list of manufacturer resources and a metric conversion chart. There is also a full page ad for two other books also published by Reader's Digest. There is not an index. Realizing that some things looked a little familiar, a closer examination of the title page reveals a small acknowledgement that these plans were previously published in various custom publications named "Storage Solutions, Best Weekend Projects and Best Backyard Projects."
Overall, this is a comprehensive and informative book of many different projects for the inside and outside of your home. Like any project book, it is up to the individual reader to determine how closely it matches his or her abilities and interest level. However, this detailed book is clearly far superior to a lot of the same type of books in the market and would be a worth while investment for your personal library.
Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2009
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