Home and house maintenance Books

Learn to attract and feed cardinals with this pocket-sized guide.The vibrant red of the male Northern Cardinal is stunning any time of year-and nothing is more beautiful than the early spring duets of cardinals singing their hearts out. You love these...

Learn to attract and feed Eastern, Western, and Mountain Bluebirds with this pocket-sized guide.The Eastern Bluebird's blend of sky blue and rusty orange is a happy sprinkle of color in any backyard or garden. Easily tamed and full of personality,...

Helpful tips, space-saving tricks and DIY projects for making a shoebox apartment beautifully functional. This handy pocket guide enables readers to transform a tiny apartment into a welcoming, delightful and adorable abode...

Grow twice the fruits and vegetables in half the space on the farm, in the backyard, or in your window! The Ultimate Guide to Soil begins with a personality test for your soil, then uses that information to plan a course of action for...

Prepare your child for the unpredictable through 52 prepper projects. Teach them basic outdoors survival skills, first aid, how to create their own "bug-out bag," and more.

A field-tested guide to surviving a nuclear attack, written by a revered civil defense expert.This edition of Cresson H. Kearny's iconic Nuclear War Survival Skills (originally published in 1979), updated by Kearny himself in 1987 and again in 2001,...

Based on House Beautiful's popular color column, this pocket-sized handbook shows how a simple coat of paint can set the mood and add a designer's touch in any room.  This gorgeous primer showcases more than 450 colors...

Bringing together the collective wisdom of a past generation of craftsmen, Traditional Toolmaking provides an in-depth record of the skills and techniques that made the mass production revolution of the twentieth century possible. When first published in...

In daily life, we can take control of the resources and services we depend on. Electricity and energy don't have to come off the public utility grid-alternatives abound in solar, wind, and water generated power. Design decisions can drastically affect...

The traditional American devices contained in this intriguing compilation date from an era long before milking machines, pesticide sprayers, and industrial hay bailers. Yet the simple inventions described for doing everything from managing young bulls to...

Every woodworker will want to own this colorful, information-packed, mammoth resource for weekend crafting. It's filled with 150 classic projects, and features an introductory section that walks readers through the various planning stages. It's all...

"Eve's brave and honest experiment reveals the shocking impact of the throwaway society we've become and at the same time showing small ways we can all do better." -Rebecca Prince-Ruiz, founder of Plastic Free JulyYear of No Garbage is Super Size Me...

Most people use nail polish remover to remove nail polish. They use coffee grounds to make coffee and hair dryers to dry their hair. The majority of people may also think that the use of eggs, lemons, mustard, butter, and mayonnaise should be restricted...

Simple, practical, and inspiring tips for cooking, baking, and cleaning!The kitchen isthe 'hub' of any house. With this compilation of helpful hints, you can keep it running smoothly.Find hacks for the care of kitchen appliances,...

Over 1,000 Tips for Gardening, Country Cooking, Saving Money, DIY Cleaning Solutions, Home Remedies, and More!This comprehensive collection of practical tips covers all aspects of keeping a country home, from painting a wall to removing wine stains,...

Get started with simple, useful, handcrafted woodworking projects for everyday people - with only 12 basic tools!Lots of people want to try woodwork, but they get intimidated by dangerous power tools and difficult techniques. Good news: there are lots of...

Rental Style, which doubles as a decor piece and handy design guide, shows readers how to decorate and organise small, rented spaces on a budget. The book will cover all home development stages from searching for a rental home to decorating and...

Everything You Need to Know about Natural Parasite Control for Livestock, All in One Place! This concise book is loaded with valuable information about ridding livestock of their unwanted guests. Whether you're raising sheep, pigs, horses, cows,...

With an experienced CIA officer as your teacher, you'll gain the knowledge and necessary tools to protect yourself and the ones you love.No matter where we go, we leave tracks and clues of our existence without even knowing. Our electronic footprint...

A foolproof guide both to lying and to detecting deception,Lying and Lie Detection: A CIA Insider's Guide will teach you how the pros can tell if and when somebody is lying. People lie all the time. Studies show that the average American lies between six...

Build Fences, Make Goat Milk Soap, Create Goat Play Structures, and Much More!Get ready to jump into the world of goats, one DIY project at a time. Owning and raising goats doesn't have to be an expensive venture. With imagination, simple tools, and...

A practical and beautiful guide to companion planting for organic gardening successCompanion planting techniques have been used for centuries to facilitate better, more nutritious, and more abundant crops. With Companion Planting, you'll have all the...

Learn the logistics of choosing windows, insulation, appliances, and lighting. Find out about FSC certified wood and about using reclaimed materials. Here is everything you need to make your home sustainable.Whether the reader is building a new home or...

Easy and Effective Strategies to Jumpstart a Sustainable, Waste-Free LifestyleWe have a worldwide trash epidemic. The average American disposes of 4.4 pounds of garbage per day, and our landfills hold 254 million tons of waste.What if there were a...

Welcome to the world of produce preservation. In Can It & Ferment It, blogger and preservation enthusiast Stephanie Thurow brings the canning and fermenting communities together by offering recipes that work for both canning and fermenting. From a...

Homesteading From Scratch is for people who want to do things differently-the type of people who want to eat real food, grow herbs, make cheese, raise baby animals, hunt mushrooms, pick blackberries, unschool their children, can jelly, ferment kraut,...

Timber! Learn how to wield a chainsaw safely-and other lumberjacking skills.While the lumberjack look may be trending among the fashion-forward crowd, lumberjacking is a useful real-world skill. An amateur with a chainsaw or an ax is dangerous to both...

A stylish and inspiring guide for living a happier life in balance with the natural world.Minimal: For Simple and Sustainable Living offers readers inspiration and tools to embrace simple living and create meaningful, lasting change in their lives. From...

Henry David Thoreau built his small cabin on Walden Pond in 1845 and, for two years, lived there as simply as possible, eliminating the unnecessary material and spiritual details that intrude upon human happiness. Thoreau described his experiences in...

Lloyd, the former shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, has published seven books on owner building, showcasing hundreds of builders, and this is his first book on his own work.Starting with a vacant half-acre piece of land, they built their own...

The Barefoot Architect is a book dedicated to helping economically-challenged tropical builders learn how to provide shelter, clean water, electrical energy, and sanitation by using indigenous,...

This is a thorough, non-technical handbook and guide to the basics of septic systems - the physical process that takes place in the septic system and the simple technology needed to make it work. Emphasis is on conventional...

Updated and expanded! The authoritative guide to conceiving and launching your own home-based food business from idea to recipe to final product. Follow your dream to launch a food business from your home and join the booming movement of food...

Stop thinking about efficiency and start thinking about sufficiency.Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle reveals the carbon cost of everything we do, identifying where we can make big reductions, while not sweating the small stuff.The international scientific...

Expanded and updated second edition of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, 2018, Vegan Category Winner.Learn the craft of making authentic, delicious non-dairy cheese from acknowledged master plant-based cheesemaker Karen McAthy. Comprehensively updated...

The best person to design the property of your dreams is you. This book gives you the tools to succeed. Building Your Permaculture Property offers a revolutionary holistic method to overcome overwhelm in the complex process of resilient land design. It...

Start a peaceful revolution by planting an edible ecosystem and sharing the experience with your neighboursHumans have always thrived in rich, diverse, edible ecosystems. Yet most cities and suburbs are blanketed by lawns, ornamentals, and a lack of...

Grow vegetables year-round in a greenhouse powered only by solar energy Originally developed in China to feed millions, Chinese greenhouses are earth-sheltered, solar-heated, east-west oriented, intelligently glazed, and well-insulated. They have proven...

The updated bestselling guide to laid-back beekeeping for all, naturally! Are you a beginner beekeeper curious about bees or a practicing beekeeper looking for natural alternatives that work? Then this book is for you! In the second edition of the...

Simple green roof design and installation for the do-it-yourself builder Essential Green Roof Construction is a comprehensive, in-depth guide to building simple green roofs for houses and small buildings. Packed with detailed photos, illustrations, case...

The devil is in the details - the science and art of designing and building durable, efficient, straw bale buildings Straw bale buildings promise superior insulation and flexibility across a range of design aesthetics, while using a typically...

Design a rainwater harvesting system for any home in any climate.Water is a crucial resource increasingly under stress. Yet rainfall, even in arid climates, can make up a sizable portion of any home, acreage, or farm's water requirements if harvested and...

From wastestream to mainstream, a practical guide to composting toilet systems.Composting toilets are a key feature for local resilience, money saving, water conservation, resource recovery, septic system replacement, and an improved bathroom experience...

Earthbag construction - building with polypropylene bags usually filled with earthen materials - is a versatile, easy-to-master, low-impact, and highly durable form of building, suitable for structures from houses to root cellars.Containing over 75...

Life on 1/10th the fossil fuels turns out to be awesome.We all want to be happy. Yet as we consume ever more in a frantic bid for happiness, global warming worsens.Alarmed by drastic changes now occurring in the Earth's climate systems, Peter Kalmus, a...

Design your own sustainable homeMany people dream of building a beautiful, environmentally friendly home. But until now there has been no systematic guide to help potential builders work through the complete process of imagining, planning, designing, and...

Permaculture tends to be very much in the domain of home gardeners and property owners. But what if we could take it all a step further, and merge the fields of permaculture and market gardening?In The Permaculture Market Garden, author Zach...

Fresh, local nutrient-dense fruits vegetables are hard to find in winter in cold climates. Growing warm-weather crops like tomatoes, bananas, avocados, and other perennials is nearly impossible using conventional structures. The solution for millions of...