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The Owner-Builder Book
So a few years latter when I decided that I could afford a new home, I asked my friend how he had built such an amazing house for so little. He pointed me to "The Owner-Builder Book." When I saw the subtitle to the book, I was a little suspicious: "How you can save over $100,000 in the building of your custom home." I had seen a few too many infomercials making similar promises, but my friend had done it, so I figured that I could too.
Now, a year later, I have completed building my $550,000 home for $320,000. Much of my 41% savings can be directly attributed to this book:
Chapter 1: You Can Save $100,000
Chapter 2: Learn The Wealth-Building Secret
This is the pep-talk part of the book written to give you incentive
to read the next 300 or so pages. This chapter talks about how custom
homebuilders know and use the ideas in this book all the time. Ever seen
an ad for a "builder's own home"? Why are they always the upper-end
homes? Hmm.
Chapter 3: Contractors Aren't What You Think They Are
Chapter 4: You Can Manage Better Than a Contractor
Chapter 5: You Will Profit By Building a True Custom House
These chapters dispel myths about contractors. Hint: A contractor is
very simply a project manager, and usually not a very good one at that.
Among other things, they rarely shop around for better material prices.
They usually use the same lumberyard that they have always gone to. I
saved over $20,000 just by telling my framer that I was going to purchase
the materials from a different lumberyard, all he had to do was give me
the list.
Chapter 6: Conquer Details Room By Room and Save 20%
Chapter 7: How to Get the Subs on Your Side
Chapter 8: How to Build a Budget That is a Powerful Miracle Tool
Chapter 9: Commando Shopping Techniques
Chapter 10: How to Schedule the Work at a Savings
These chapters talk about how to actually save money: The key points are
planning, getting down the details of exactly what you want, (i.e. I want
two phone outlets in every room with two strands of cat5 and coax.), and
make sure to shop around. As an example, I had bids ranging from $5,000
to $15,000 for my electrical. One would assume that with 5G's you would
get less than with 15G's, right? Not necessarily: for $5,000 I got
everything that I wanted, plus I was able to add a bunch of outlets that
I hadn't thought of at the last minute for free cause the subcontractor
was a nice guy. Now I love that TV above Jacuzzi tub.
Chapter 11: How to Make Your Lender Swoon
Chapter 12: Paperwork Before You Begin
Chapter 13: Six Months to Victory
These chapters help you get the paperwork ready that you will need
throughout the process. Remember contracts with liquidated damages and
lien release forms! I only had problems with one subcontractor that my
wife had been responsible to get fill out our contract with and had never
done it. But, luckily their own contract, which my wife had signed with
them, covered most of what we needed. I even got to keep an extra $2,000
dollars because they didn't have time to come back and stain the stairs.
Let's see, $50 in stain and supplies, 3 hours time. Yeah, I'll take the
$2,000.
Chapter 14: Smooth Execution Saves Money and Improves Quality
Chapter 15: Mistakes You Can Avoid And Successes You Can
Achieve
These chapters drill into your head what planning and details mean. I
had one major problem over the course of building my home. The truss
company built my trusses wrong. It took them three more tries and fourweeks to get me a completed set. Because of my contracts and planning, I
cut the cost of the trusses by almost half, but the time hit was the most
damaging. My total time to completion was 7.5 months. I had planned for
6.
Chapter 16: If You Decide to Use a Contractor
The final chapter discusses how to choose and work with a general
contractor if you decide that being your own general is too much for you.
Conclusion
Don't leave with any illusions: this book will not build a custom home
for you. By planning and following through on the information in this
book, you too can build your dream home.
The first page of each chapter is available online at: http://ownerbuilderbook.com/book/Ch1.cfm, and a free CD-ROM with software templates for budgets, contracts, the entire book in MP3 format, and a previous edition of the eBook in PDF format is available. You can purchase The Owner-Builder Book from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then hit the submission page.
Of course this is a troll, and nothing he says about GPL is true, you knew that though right?
The application guy doesn't have anything to worry about with GPL unless he bases his application on another application that is allready GPL. In the latter case you'd have the same problem with Microsquishy.
Microsoft Lacky, you know only microsoft wants Linux to change from GPL, so it can swipe all the internals for its piss poor OS without paying/giving away the sources, much like it has done with BSD. All the good parts of windows OS are from souce code copied from BSD.
BTW, I've used token ring with linux since 1993. So I don't know what the trolls problem is.
Oh I see what egg tolls problem is, snipped from one of his previous posts:
"I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming."
He does kernal level programming with VB. Yea thats going to happen.
Can we mod this guy down any further?
-M
Bush is trying to streamline the H1B visa process so the big companies can bring in even more foreign workers
whahh whaaah, them stinky foreign people are talking all the good jobs...
Tell me, where does your family come from..? Because if your not Native NorthAmerican, you dont belong here (and some would say even the natives that the europeans slaughtered were not the 'original peoples' - they were foreigners)
so, with that in mind, which Rightist party are you a memeber of?