[.ca] Trim Carpentry and Built-Ins (ISBN 1561584789)

awesome!:
I wish all how-to books could be so well illustrated and clearly written. This one takes you fom start to finish on a range of projects, like window trim, baseboard, crown molding, wainscot, book shelves and cabinets, and provides a slew of tricks in the margins. plus sidebars that tell you what you need to know at a glance. Niceley arranged. easy to get to what you want without having to read a lot of text. This book stands far above those in the same series.

Thumbs waaay up:
I bought 5 copies as gifts for friends and family who love to work on their homes. The advice about using blocking to install crown makes this book worthwhile by itself, but this is just one example of dozens of tricks for completing carpentry jobs to dress up a home interior. Great photos throughout. I've worked my way up to tackling built-in bookcases, and found the stp-by-step advice on this as helpful as the rest.

Helpful Stuff:
I got this book to figure out the details of some built-ins for my living room. As someone who tinkers around the house but has no real training I found DeKorne's book thorough, straightforward and down to earth. The photos were helpful and in the end the book really helped my project take shape.

Everything I wished my father had taught me:
My husband gave me this book as a gift, and it's provided wonderful encouragement (it's also a book he wanted, of course). Together we have completed some nice house projects together, such as converting our back porch into a sunroom and adding a new window in the dining room to bring in much needed light. We both agree the hardest part to do well is the wood trim, and it's what you see everyday afterwards. This book has been a wonderful guide and confidence builder for us both. It's not a beginner's book, but it's not at all too advanced. I pride myself on having learned some basic carpentry and how to use some tools, but with this book I've picked up some of the extras I wished I'd learned from my father (or any other family member when I was younger) about woodworking. The book's full of useful tricks and short cuts, as well as clear explanations about how all the pieces work together, and what the shortfalls we should be looking out for to get professional looking results. I'd recommend it to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of carpentry who wants to take on some real carpentry jobs around the house. Next up for us: Wainscoting in the a bathroom, and then replacing the bland, little trim in our living room with elegant Victorian details!

A superb, well-illustrated book:
Mr. DeKorne-- who I have read for years in Tools of the Trade magazine and the esteemed Journal of Light Construction, has written a marevelous, easy-to-read guide to trim carpentry. I would recommend it to anyone curious about the trade, the tools to use, and the techniques to get a pro-like finish. There is an old saying that "a little caulk and a little paint make a carpenter what he ain't" ... Well, you won't have to use that excuse after following the guidance of this book.