Best Weekend Projects

by Family Handyman Magazine

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 yardaand can be made in a weekend. In The Family... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0762109270
• ISBN13: 9780762109272
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Reader's Digest Association
• Length: 217 Pages
• Weight: 2.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.0" x 10.5"

Customer Reviews

Reviewing: "Best Weekend Projects"

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