Lawrence Dworin's guide covers a variety of topics essential to the purchase and renovation of homes for profit. Included are chapters on remodeling for profit, selecting the right house, using real-estate agents, buying a home, getting the appropriate financing, repairing structural and mechanical problems, decorating the interior, selling the house, and keeping rental property.

Fences and Retaining Walls, is a practical manual for the fencing professional and has all the information for quality fence work. An important book as well for house builders and home remodelers.

Contains alphabetically arranged entries that provide step-by-step instructions, with tips, techniques, tools, and templates, for residential construction projects, including tiling, dry wall, electric, heating and air conditioning, siding, and much more. Includes CD-ROM with instructions for each job.

Location & excavation -- Concrete & masonry -- Foundation walls & piers -- Concrete floor slabs on ground -- Floor framing -- Wall framing -- Ceiling & roof framing -- Wall sheathing -- Roof sheathing -- Exterior trim for cornices & eaves -- Roof coverings -- Exterior frames, windows & doors -- Exterior coverings -- Framing for plumbing & heating -- Thermal insulation & vapor barriers -- Ventilation -- Sound insulation -- Basement rooms -- Interior wall & ceiling finish -- Floor coverings -- Interior doors, frames & trim -- Casework & other millwork -- Stairs -- Caulking & flashing -- Adding a porch or garage -- Chimneys & fireplaces, masonry & metal -- Driveways, walks & basement floors -- Painting & finishing -- Protection against decay & termites -- Protection against fire -- How to reduce building costs -- Protection & care of material on site -- Maintenance & repair -- Estimating construction costs.

This complete guide explains what painters and paint contractors need to know to thrive in the paint contracting business. It's loaded with how-to information you'll use every day when preparing surfaces for coating, applying paints, bidding jobs and running your paint contracting company: Doing Professional Quality Work: Selecting the right tools, preparing all types of surfaces. Tips for repainting kitchens, bathrooms, cabinets, eaves and porches, handling new construction, getting good results from your airless spray rig, and much more Paint Problems and Their Cure: Why coatings fail, testing for blisters, chalking, poor adhesion and condensation, removing all types of stains, what to do about voids, skips, holidays, pulls, wrinkles, color changes, gloss spots, streaks, yellowing, peeling, alligatoring, powdering, chipping, checking, cracking, fish eyes, graining, roller stipple, water stains and fire damage.Using the Right Paint and Color: Avoiding paint oxidation, chalking, and fading, creating special effects, using stains, varnishes, lacquer, shellac, plastics, preservatives and primers, avoiding customer complaints about color match, tried and true color schemes for every job, cutting costs by mixing your own colors, making touch-ups blend in perfectly.Setting Up Your Business: Selecting your area and specialty, where to get start-up cash and how much you need, protecting yourself with insurance, controlling expenses, staying legal, getting top value for your advertising dollar, typical budgets for paint contractors, keeping your paperwork straight, tracking job expenses.Finding Your Gravy Train: Over 30 profitable specialty painting businesses you shouldconsider, how to sell the job, estimating areas, material quantities and labor costs for walls, overhangs, gables, molding, trim doors and windows.

This book covers the whys and hows of sound construction, with step-by-step instructions showing how to handle the details in all construction.

Buying and selling a home are the biggest financial transactions most people will ever tackle. Well, help has arrived. This revised edition of Buying and Selling a Home For Canadians For Dummies prepares you to get what you need and want when buying a new home or selling the one you're in. Everything from arranging your finances and hiring an agent, to inspecting prospective homes and assessing home values, to making or fielding offers is presented in a clear and humorous way to help you get the most out of the process.

According to a recent national survey, more construction contractors use QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks than all other accounting programs combined. And for good reason. QuickBooks Pro excels at all the routine paperwork in a construction office: writing checks, keeping track of your bank balance, sending out invoices and statements, creating up-to-the-minute profit and loss statements for the month, year or by job, writing payroll checks, paying suppliers and subcontractors, tracking job costs, comparing estimated and actual costs for each job, and much more. But there's a lot to learn in QuickBooks Pro. And converting to a new accounting system can be a complex and confusing task, even if you have a strong background in accounting and plenty of time to install the new system. That's why this book was written -- because most construction pros aren't accounting experts and have more important work to do at the job site.

Packed with plumbing isometrics and helpful illustrations, this guide makes clear the code requirements for installing materials for plumbing and gas systems. Includes code tables for pipe sizing and fixture units, and code requirements for just about all areas of plumbing, from water supply and vents to sanitary drainage systems. Covers the principles and terminology of the code, how the various systems work and are regulated, and code-compliance issues you'll likely encounter on the job.

Easily master QuickBooks Pro 2003 and quickly learn how to generate reports to help you analyze your company's progress. Includes a FREE CD-ROM with preconfigured construction company files for QuickBooks Pro, including one for Canada. Just drag the company file onto your hard drive and then fill it in with your vendors, subs, and customers. Also included is a complete estimating program with a cost database to help you estimate your jobs, and a unique translation tool to transfer the estimate to QuickBooks Pro for job costing. Includes 40 FREE construction forms.