| | |  | Design Books | Home » » Cabins: A Guide to Building Your Own Nature Retreat | | | | | | | Description: | | "Clear, practical book ... full-color photos help do-it-yourselfers realize their dreams." -- Log Homes Illustrated The best-selling Cabins is back in print, at the same great value of its original price. This authoritative how-to title gives readers all the information they need to build their own cabin, including: A useful list of essential questions to consider during the planning process
Types of cabin construction, such as pole built, stick built, post and beam, stone, cordwood, wood siding, and the advantages of each
Site preparation, foundations, windows and doors, ladders and stairs, insulation, roofing, electricity, water systems and heating
Essential information on log cabins
Cabin designs and their advantages
Furnishings and accessories Construction methods are clearly illustrated in meticulous line drawings and precise plans with measurements. Cut-away cross-sections and exploded diagrams give the builder the true perspective and detail needed to obtain the best result, allowing readers to get the most enjoyment out of their newly built wilderness retreat. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Jeanie Stiles | | Paperback:
| 240 pages | | Publisher:
| Firefly Books | | Publication Date:
| March 03, 2001 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1552093735 | | Product Length:
| 11.0 inches | | Product Width:
| 8.46 inches | | Product Height:
| 0.6 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.6 pounds | | Package Length:
| 10.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 8.4 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.05 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 23 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 23 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
35 of 36 found the following review helpful:
 Just great!Oct 19, 2001
By Donald J. Berg
This book is an absolutely essential guide for anyone planning to build a getaway home. It takes you, step-by-step, through the process of choosing your site, planning and designing your cabin and then building it. It includes plans, details and do-it-yourself hints on building all types of cabins: pole-frame, A-frame, timber-frame, log, stick and stone. Designs included range from Thoreau's 10'x15' cabin on Walden Pond to a big, comfortable lakeside cabin with all the extras. If you're dreaming of a little place in the country, get this book.
19 of 19 found the following review helpful:
Even Better Than Stiles' Usual Excellent WorkAug 06, 2001
By Jonathan Pote
I have always enjoyed books by Stiles and her group of architects. I built a tree house from one and a play structure from another. This is the most thourough book I have seen by her. Lots of good tips, superb drawings, construction details, etc. This is not just a pretty picture book (although there are some of those, too. This is a book for the real do-it-yourselfer.
22 of 23 found the following review helpful:
Has Everything You NeedMar 30, 2003
By Eliza
This book is wonderful. It contians all the information you could possibly need for building a cabin, whether you want a one room hut with no amenities, a two-betroom beach house with running water, electricity, and a bathroom or something in between. It covers everything I can think of and gives clear instructions for projects.
This book lives up to its title: it really is for someone who is serious about building, with more diagrams than "arty" pictures of the wilderness. However, there is a nice section of color pictures in the middle of the book to give a taste of what sort of results you can expect from your efforts.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
Terrific Informational Read - NOT Blueprints or Plans, ThoughJan 30, 2006
By PG
"Cabin Fever"
I'm tending to agree with both sides here! And I think it's a great book. I have been reading building and cabin books for a year (we're building this Summer). This one is pretty great - a good way to inform yourself about options, the decisions you need to make, kinds of cabins, etc. Another reviewer writes as if I were going to go out and build my cabin based on the info in this book. Now that would be silly wouldn't it? I need architect drawn plans. So read this wonderful book, and go buy some plans. No, yt's not a how-to, and it shouldn't be used that way. But it's still a great book.
13 of 13 found the following review helpful:
 Many good ideas and a few good laughsDec 28, 2006
By Steve M.
"Steve"
As others have noted, this is a useful book for generating ideas and getting the creative juices flowing. I bought it to obtain those features, and it did not disappoint me.
The Stiles are, apparently, a prolific couple on this and similar topics, and they certainly deserve credit for effective packaging and marketing. David Stiles has filled the book's pages with material--some good, some irrelevant, and some good for entertainment--but he certainly has filled it nonetheless. The layout and tone of this book is vaguely reminiscent of a copy of an early 1970s Mother Earth News. The reader's challenge is to extract the kernals of insight from the volumes of chaff. What the book lacks in detailed engineering and construction discussion and techniques it makes up for in peripheral and, in some cases, funny advice. Consider the detailed description of the electronic vehicle-arrival and gate-unlocking monitors--this in a book purported to find ways to get one in touch with mother nature and perhaps forego electricity entirely. Or the sketch plan for the garden-hose remedy against racoons infiltrating your metal trashcan. The advice is intriguing enough, but one suspects that a bit more discussion on well-installation or obtaining running water might be in order before turning to a technological solution involving the use of pressurized water for a racoon problem. Given the Stiles' ties to Manhattan, maybe the accepted security measures of their current environment don't seem quite as ridiculous or irrelevant as they probably do to anyone who actually lives in a rural area. Or consider their admonition against Coleman lanterns being "Scary and hard to light." Hmmm, I, too, have fears and I'm certainly not the most dexterous fellow, but I've learned that five minutes of hands-on practice can turn even the most hardcore urbanite into a safe and proficient Coleman-lantern lighter. Something tells me Mr. Stiles has not taken the time to do the same, and this casts a disconcerting pall over the value of much of his other advice. How much of it has actually been tried?
But this book is valuable for the focus it gives to architecture and perhaps encouraging one to pick up a tablet of graph paper and start sketching floorplans or facades; extract those ideas and use them as fodder for formulating your own. Read the rest with a grain of salt. For a more focused, pragmatic, and obviously tested perspective on cabin-building, get a copy of G. Wayne Fears' "How to Build Your Dream Cabin."
See all 23 customer reviews on Amazon.com
| | |
|
