Got a problem with grout? Open The Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair (to page 98) and watch your tiling worries dissolve before the simple beauty of photography. Black & Decker has anticipated your every question and problem with interior, exterior, and home systems repairs, and detailed the solutions in just over 500 pages. In no other human endeavor is a visual guide so important as home repair (well, maybe brain surgery), so this is a crucial aid to the handyperson. Easy-to-find sections on floors, insulation, roofing, chimneys, water heaters, wall switches, air conditioning, and much more are well-designed, brilliantly illustrated, and carefully outlined with step-by-step instructions from masters. The photos in particular are extremely valuable, offering many different views (sometimes even exploded) of the operation in question, and always showing just enough to communicate without overwhelming the reader with too much detail. These alone would be worth the price of the book, but the written explanations and instructions are also very helpful, offering tools, materials lists, and hints that wouldn't occur to the amateur. The book finishes with a maintenance schedule to help you keep repairs from becoming serious, and the end papers have conversion charts and tables that you'll use time and again. If you can't have Norm the master carpenter over to help you fix your old house, The Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair is the next best thing. --Rob Lightner


Book News, Inc.
Master carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and other contractors contributed their expertise to this up-to-date guide to important home improvements, from patching cracks in a basement floor to replacing a roof. For each project they provide detailed how-to instructions, complete tools and materials lists, helpful hints, and troubleshooting charts. Topics include interior, exterior, and systems repairs. Contains about 2,000 color illustrations and a maintenance checklist for the entire home. -- Copyright © 1999 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR All rights reserved Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR

FROM OUR EDITORS

Expanded and updated, Black & Decker's Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair covers virtually every repair and maintenance problem any homeowner or renter will ever encounter. The extensively illustrated (2,500-plus photographs) guide includes interior, exterior, and systems repairs ranging from floor and ceiling repairs to roofing and asphalt projects; to plumbing, electrical, and ventilations problems. The 600-page book explains how to choose and use hand and power tools; how to diagnose home safety and house-related health problems; and create and maintain a home workshop. The comprehensive sections on home safety and household health risks even include methods for detecting radon, lead, asbestos, and water contaminants.

FROM THE PUBLISHER