Steel yourself ebook review

by Tony
(Emerald Beach)

I finished your book on owner building - it left me keen to get started!

I love checklists and this book is full of them - it's worth the cover price for the lists alone. They give a good summary outline and help to schedule activity - you can't have too many.

I think the most valuable thing for me was the "early-on" organisation needed to get a project going. The pit-falls of councils and the layers of regulation you need to traverse before you dig a hole. It's scary what you need to go through and no book on the subject should gloss over it if it's to be truly useful. Fore-warned is fore-armed so well done on that issue.

Ditto the advice on dealing with trades - it's going to vary from place to place, but always useful to hear of peoples experiences and how to get the best out of the tradesman/owner relationship.

Not-withstanding that "construction" techniques are going to vary from place to place and design to design, the construction details were clear - and that's no mean achievement. It's hard to explain in writing, often without diagrams, how to do a manual task.

I liked the small-detail hints and shortcuts. You can't cover everything but at the same time completeness is important. Getting the measure right in a book that doesn't run to many hundreds of pages is an achievement in itself.

Most importantly though is that the book was an interesting read - a story about a build that actually tool place - great photos. You're a good communicator and thats something that the internet and the global village sadly lacks.