This book guides you systematically through the whole processof designing and building your own house. It offers practicalassistance from the moment you begin thinking about the kind ofhouse you want. It helps you focus your ideas and translate theminto working plans. It shows you how to estimate costs. Then, stepby step, it shows you how to construct the house -- explaining andillustrating every step systematically so that you can proceedconfidently from beginning to end. Here are complete, clear instructions on everything you need toknow, including: -- How to decide what you want the house to be like -- inside andoutside, and in relation to the environment and neighborhood -- How to translate your ideas and decisions into workingdrawings -- How to deal with all the components of a house: structural(roof, floor, walls, columns, foundations), mechanical (plumbingand heating), electrical, interior and exterior finishingmaterials -- How to establish the exact dimensions of e

The national park system ranks among our most magnificentachievements and the story of its creation reveals how the Americanlandscape shaped our history and character and continues to do soalmost 175 years after painter George Catlin first proposed “anation’s Park.” In these lavishly illustrated pages, award-winning author KimHeacox chronicles our changing visions of wildness from the 17thcentury, when the first settlers built towns around shared commons,to 1916, when the National Park Service initiated a new kind ofcommon–unspoiled parkland held in trust for Americanseverywhere. Here are explorers like Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and John WesleyPowell, who reported wonders so amazing they were met withdisbelief. Here too are farsighted leaders like Thomas Jefferson,Theodore Roosevelt, and other sponsors of such parks as Yosemiteand Yellowstone. In spectacular counterpoint, 100 illustrations unveil a pristinenew world that awed the artists and photographers from EadweardMuybridge to Ansel Adams. An

Virginia Woolf was right. Women–and men, it turns out–yearnfor a room of their own. But instead of a little nook beneath the eaves, that room is nowa shed. Today’s sheds, however, are not dusty shelters for plantsand tools. Lace curtains have replaced cobwebs, charming antiquesstand where shovels and rakes once rusted, and instead ofcorrugated walls, you will find cedar shingles and window boxes.Sheds are stylish and elegant and offer a hassle-free andaffordable way to create more space without undergoing a majorrenovation. They function as artists’ studios, writers’ retreats,yoga dens, entertaining pavilions, children’s playhouses, gardenrooms, or serene hideaways for any personal pursuit. In Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways, Debra Prinzing andWilliam Wright showcase twenty-eight innovative and beautifullyimagined spaces from New York City to East Hampton, from Seattle toSan Diego, and from Atlanta to Austin to Santa Cruz. Some areelaborate and luxurious; others are delightf