Book picks similar to
Builders of the Pacific Coast by Lloyd Kahn


architecture
nonfiction
non-fiction
home-building

All New Square Foot Gardening


Mel Bartholomew - 1981
    Sure, it's even simpler than it was before. Of course, you don't have to worry about fertilizer or poor soil ever again because you'll be growing above the ground. However, the best feature is that anyone, anywhere can enjoy a square foot garden - children, adults with limited mobility, and even complete novices can achieve spectacular results. But, let's get back to the ten improvements. You're going to love them: 1. New Location - Move your garden closer to your house by eliminating single-row gardening. Square foot gardens need just 20% of the space of a traditional garden.2. New Direction - Locate your garden on top of existing soil. Forget about pH soil tests, double-digging (who enjoys that?), or those never-ending soil improvements.3. New Soil - The new "Mel's Mix" is the perfect growing mix. We give you the recipe, and best of all, you can even buy the different types of compost needed.4. New Depth - You only need to prepare a SFG box to a depth of 6 inches! It's true - the majority of plants develop just fine when grown at this depth.5. No Fertilizer - The all new SFG does not need any fertilizer - ever! If you start with the perfect soil mix, then you don't need to add fertilizer.6. New Boxes - The new method uses bottomless boxes placed above ground. We show you how to build your own (with step-by-step photos).7. New Aisles - The ideal gardening aisle width is about three to four feet. That makes it even easier to kneel, work, and harvest.8. New Grids - Prominent and permanent grids added to your SFG box help you visualize your planting squares and properly space them for maximum harvest.9. New Seed-Saving Idea - The old-fashioned way advocates planting many seeds and then thinning the extras (that means pulling them up). The new method means planting a pinch - literally two or three seeds - per planting hole.10. Tabletop Gardens - The new boxes are so much smaller and lighter (only 6 inches of soil, remember?), you can add a plywood bottom to make them portable. Of course, that's not all. We've also included simple, easy-to-follow instructions using lots of photos and illustrations. You're going to love it!

The Minimalist Woodworker: Essential Tools & Smart Shop Ideas for Building with Less


Vic Tesolin - 2015
    Yet, for it's increasing popularity, there are many crafters who don't engage in woodworking because they falsely believe you need a large workshop and a full-blown collection of tools and equipment. The Minimalist Woodworker is about eliminating this myth. To enjoy woodworking, all you need is a few essential tools, a little bit of space, and the desire to make something with your own two hands. The Minimalist Woodworker is about making woodworking clean and simple - from the tools and the workspace to the easy-to-follow instructions. It eliminates the fears and excuses as it demystifies the craft. Written by Vic Tesolin, aka the Minimalist Woodworker, a woodworker and woodworking instructor, The Minimalist Woodworker is a stress-free approach for the hobbyist that emphasizes the destination is actually the journey. Beginning with an understanding of the minimalist mindset, The Minimalist Woodworker quickly details how to make a small space productive and outlines the most efficient tools for a woodworker. Each piece of equipment is explained and instructions on how to use are provided. Techniques for keeping them sharp and maintained are also explained. Once space and tools are covered, seven projects are presented: a saw bench and matching saw horse, a Nicholson-style workbench, a shooting board/bench hook, a shop mallet, and a small hanging cabinet. Each project not only develops woodworking skills, but also outfits The Minimalist Woodworker's small shop. With step-by-step instruction, photos and illustrations, and an easy-going voice, The Minimalist Woodworker offers a stress-free point of entry into the life-long craft of woodworking.

Travel Home: Design with a Global Spirit


Caitlin Flemming - 2019
    Touring the homes of leaders in global design who share a deep affection for travel, the book explores interiors with influences as widespread as Marrakesh, Paris, Cuba, Tokyo, Portugal, and beyond. Vivid photography is supplemented with insightful essays, interviews, and hardworking tips for cultivating your own global home. For globetrotters and armchair travelers alike, Travel Home showcases the interplay between travel and design, revealing how we can take inspiration from the beauty we experience in the world and bring it into our everyday lives.

Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave


Joanna Gaines - 2018
    This comprehensive guide will help you assess your priorities and your instincts, as well as your likes and dislikes, with practical steps for navigating and embracing your authentic design style.Room by room, Homebody gives you an in-depth look at how these styles are iterated as well as how to blend the genres you’re drawn to in order to create spaces that look and feel distinctly yours.In each chapter are practical takeaways to help problem solve potential pain points in your home. A fold out design guidebook at the back of the book offers a place for you to take notes and sketch out your own design plans as you make your way through the rooms.The insight shared in Homebody will instill in you the confidence to thoughtfully create spaces that you never want to leave.

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills


Abigail R. Gehring - 2007
    Created to both inspire and instruct, it returns readers to an era before power saws and fast food restaurants so they can rediscover the pleasures and challenges of a more self-sufficient, economical, and healthy lifestyle. Packed with hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, charts, tables, diagrams, and illustrations, it explains how to dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees for propagation, raise chickens, create a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will learn how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead.

The Complete Guide to Plumbing


Black & Decker - 2008
    Packed with clear color photos and easy-to-understand descriptions, the basics of home plumbing systems are clearly explained, and all of the most popular plumbing projects are shown with beautiful step-by-step photos.This new edition has been thoroughly updated to ensure that all information conforms to the most recent codes, including the 2015 Uniform Plumbing Code and the 2014 International Residential Code. New projects include plumbing and tiling a curbless shower. Other features include projects to promote accessibility in the bathroom; updated bathroom ventilation featuring new products; and an expanded section on exterior plumbing, including pools, pumps, and sprinkler systems.

A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity


William S. Coperthwaite - 2003
    In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Helen and Scott Nearing, Coperthwaite has fashioned a livelihood of integrity and completeness-buying almost nothing, providing for his own needs, and serving as a guide and companion to hundreds of apprentices drawn to his unique way of being.A Handmade Life carries Coperthwaite's ongoing experiments with hand tools, hand-grown and gathered food, and handmade shelter, clothing, and furnishings out into the world to challenge and inspire. His writing is both philosophical and practical, exploring themes of beauty, work, education, and design while giving instruction on the hand-crafting of the necessities of life. Richly illustrated with luminous color photographs by Peter Forbes, the book is a moving and inspirational testament to a new practice of old ways of life.

Marrakesh by Design


Maryam Montague - 2012
    For anyone who wants to add Morocco's spicy design mix into their own home, Maryam Montague, the personality behind the award-winning blog My Marrakesh, explains how to do so with the building blocks of Moroccan design—from the colors, patterns, and textiles to the archways, fountains, gardens, and so much more. With illustrative text and gorgeous photographs, Maryam shows how Moroccan design comes to life in real villas and riads and in her own magnificent home and guesthouse. Eager DIYers will love the ideas presented in sidebars and in how-to projects that can be applied to homes anywhere. Filled with all the richness of Morocco,Marrakesh by Design will transport readers straight to the souks and salons of this exotic city while showing them the multitude of ways to live with the enticing elements of Moroccan design.

The Japanese Bath


Bruce Smith - 1905
    In Japan, one goes there to cleanse the soul. Bathing in Japan is about much more than cleanliness: it is about family and community. It is about being alone and contemplative, time to watch the moon rise above the garden.Along with sixty full-color illustrations of the light and airy baths themselves, The Japanese Bath, delves into the aesthetic of bathing Japanese style and the innate beauty of the steps surrounding the process. The authors explain how to create a Japanese bath in your own home. A Zen meditation, the Japanese bath, indeed, cleanses the soul, and one emerges refreshed, renewed, and serene.

Young House Love: 243 Ways to Paint, Craft, Update Show Your Home Some Love


Sherry Petersik - 2012
    With two home renovations under their (tool) belts, 5 million blog hits per month, and an ever-growing audience since the launch of "Young House Love" in 2007, Sherry and John are home-improvement enthusiasts primed to pass on a slew of projects, tricks, and techniques to do-it-yourselfers of all levels. Whether an experienced decorator or a total novice, on a tight budget or with money to spend, any homeowner or apartment dweller will find ideas for his or her own home makeovers here. Learn to trick out a thrift-store mirror, spice up plain old roller shades, "hack" your Ikea table to create three distinct looks, and so much more.Packed with 243 tips and ideas--both classic and unexpected--every project pictured was exclusively executed for the book (so there are no photos that you've already seen on the blog). With more than 250 photographs and illustrations, this is a book that readers will return to again and again for the creative projects and easy-to-follow instructions in the relatable voice the Petersiks are known for. Adding a little wow factor to your home has never been more fun!

Elements of Style Revised Edition: A Practical Encyclopedia of Interior Architectural Details from 1485 to the Pres


Stephen Calloway - 1991
    Examines the details of architectural styles from 1485 to 1996, and provides a directory of suppliers and biographical data on select architects and designers.

Five Acres and Independence


Maurice Grenville Kains - 1972
    Countless readers of Five Acres and Independence have come away with specific projects to begin and moved closer to the fulfillment of their dreams of independence on a small farm.Whether you already own a suitable place or are still looking, Five Acres and Independence will help you learn to evaluate land for both its total economic and its specific agricultural possibilities. There are methods of calculating costs of permanent improvements — draining the land, improving soil, planting wind breaks, putting in septic tanks, cellars, irrigation systems, greenhouses, etc. — and methods of carrying out those improvements. There are suggestions for specific crops — strawberries, grapes, vegetables, orchards, spring, summer, and fall crops, transplanting, timing, repairing what already exists — with methods of deciding what is best for your land and purposes and techniques for making each of them pay. There are suggestions for animals for the small-scale farmer — goats, chickens, bees — and means of working them into your overall farm design. And there are suggestions for keeping your small farm in top production condition, methods of continually increasing the value of your farm, methods of marketing your produce and of accurately investing in improvements — virtually everything a small-scale farmer needs to know to make his venture economically sound.Some things, of course, have changed since 1940 when M. G. Kains revised Five Acres and Independence. But the basic down-to-earth advice of one of the most prominent men in American agriculture and the methods of farming the small-scale, pre-DDT farm are still essentially the same. Much of the information in this book was built on USDA and state farm bureau reports; almost all of it was personally tested by M. G. Kains, either on his own farms or on farms of the people who trusted him as an experienced consultant. His book went through more than 30 editions in the first 10 years after its original publication. It has helped countless small farmers attain their dreams, and it continues today as an exceptional resource for those who want to make their first farming attempt.

Underground


David Macaulay - 1976
    We see a network of walls, columns, cables, pipes and tunnels required to satisfy the basic needs of a city's inhabitants.

Jonathan Adler 100 Ways to Happy Chic Your Life


Jonathan Adler - 2012
    In gorgeous, full-color spreads, 100 bold ideas for Happy Chic dwelling, decorating, and entertaining are revealed. As a bonus, five project gatefolds invite readers to create their own Happy Chic handicrafts, including a macramé owl and custom LOVE note cards.

Yosemite and the Range of Light


Ansel Adams - 1979
    Full page B&W photos