This practical book offers creative but achievable ideas for your patio space. Six chapters on favourite styles each offer advice on approaches for flooring, walls and screens, plants and containers, structures and furniture, ornament and water features, and lighting.

Firmly of the belief that a home should be run as an efficient military campaign, Mrs. Beeton, the doyenne of English cookery, offers timeless tips on selecting cuts of meat, throwing a grand party and hosting a dinner, as well as giving suggestions on staff wages and the cost of each recipe. With such delicious English classics as rabbit- pie, carrot soup, baked apple custard, and fresh lemonade - as well as invalid's jelly for those days when stewed eels may be a little too much - this is a wonderful collection of food writing from the matriarch of modern housekeeping.

This collection of beautiful photographs showcases the artistry of those who sculpt outdoor living environments with solid rock, impressed and tinted concrete, and brick in many forms. You will be both inspired and informed. This practical guidebook will help you choose a patio style suitable for your home, learn to speak your contractor's language, pick a plan that fits your budget and style, furnish and organize outdoor areas for entertaining or intimate family dining, create containers and border areas for dynamic gardens and landscaping displays, and develop outdoor sanctuaries with artfully placed planter boxes, shrubs, and privacy screens. There are also step-by-step instructions for the successful installation of your own paver patio

This is the ultimate guide to creating an outdoor oasis in your very own backyard. Hundreds of images illustrate creative ideas for turning a simple lawn into a fresh-air room. Topics covered include using landscaping to create "walls" and a sense of space. Design possibilities of wood, poured concrete, brick, tile, gravel, natural stone, and concrete pavers are explored. Consider decorating loggias, patios, courtyards, covered porches, decks, lanais, and rooftops, as well as temporary structures. Learn how to furnish an outdoor room. A large section on outdoor kitchens provides ideas for outdoor design's hottest trend. Designers, contractors, architects, and homeowners will love the multitude of ideas for fashioning amazing outdoor spaces.

Completing home remodeling projects on a budget is tough. Building with Secondhand Stuff is loaded with all the green construction and money saving techniques you'll need

From deconstruction methods and salvaging tips, to plotting efficient cutting plans and devising creative new uses for everyday items, Building with Secondhand Stuff is packed with clever ways to obtain low-cost (or no cost ) materials and keep debris out of landfills in the process.

Building with Secondhand Stuff answers questions most of us have wondered at some point: Is that pile of used maple flooring on Craigslist worth taking? Can I do anything with those window panes by the dumpster? Can I take a pick up load of bricks from that building they knocked down?

From plywood to hardwood flooring, to windows, doors, carpeting and more, salvaging building materials can save you thousands of dollars (and is about as green as you can get). Building with Secondhand Stuff is a hands-on, do-it-yourselfer's guide that shows you how to identify materials that can be salvaged efficiently and then gives you step-by-step instructions on how to go about doing it.

Plus, it provides over one dozen complete plans featuring clever ideas for putting salvaged materials to good use as useful home furnishings.

Some 40 percent of North Americans live in homes built prior to 1940, and when it comes time to remodel or restore our older homes, homeowners and contractors can find themselves lost in a morass of wildly divergent information and opinion. With Green Restorations, author Aaron Lubeck brings his expertise as a restoration contractor and preservation consultant to this first-of-its-kind guide, leading the reader through the steps for restoring historic buildings using sustainable practices and green building techniques.

In a readily accessible room-by-room and system-by-system format, Green Restorations covers rehabilitation and remodeling questions applicable to old homes, focusing on the core techniques and debates often seen in practice. Here you'll find the answers to restoration questions, such as:

• Is sealing my old crawl space a good idea?
• Should I replace or rehabilitate my windows?
• Are there historic aspects of my home I need to preserve, and what can I change?
• What are the cultural, environmental, and financial implications of my proposed changes?
• Do residential historic tax credits apply to my home, and how can I access them?

Written in such a way as to be accessible for homeowners but technical enough for contractors, this book will appeal to anyone trying to green an older home while preserving its historic and cultural significance.

Aaron Lubeck is a partner with the award-winning Trinity Design/Build, a restoration and preservation consultancy in North Carolina. He is a member of the United States Green Building Council, and has completed the first historic building to be LEED-certified in North Carolina.

What more appealing scene can you conjure up on a wintry day than a pair of comfortable armchairs pulled up to a crackling fire while wisps of smoke curl from the chimney top? All your senses are in use--the sight of the flickering flames, the sound of the crackling logs, the warmth on your face, and the fragrance and taste of wood smoke. The hearth truly is the essential core of every home, whether it is an actual fireplace or merely a mantel displaying the treasures and trophies of intertwined lives. Long past the days of strictly utilitarian purpose, fireplaces and stoves are a design feature in their own right. They are available in an array of styles, sizes, and colors; offer a variety of fuel choices; and feature benefits beyond mere aesthetics, including heat and cooking. Fireplaces and heat sources are also widely found in many rooms throughout the house, including the family or living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom, as well as outdoors. And the latest innovations in fireplace and stove technologies make having one no longer an expensive proposition.
While the building market is seeing growth in the fireplace market, so too is the remodeling marketplace. In fact, many homeowners are refacing their existing fireplace, upgrading their wood fireplace to gas, or simply installing a new faux fireplace where there wasn't one before. In this book readers will find hundreds of examples of all types of indoor fireplaces--from wood to gas, freestanding, and ventless--and stoves, both wood and pellet. In addition to gorgeous photos of a full range of fireplace styles, materials, and decor for indoor and outdoor fireplaces and stoves, solid information on practical designconsiderations--maintaining a fireplace or stove, remodeling an existing fireplace, safety, converting a wood-burning fireplace to gas, and the like--are explained in detail, making this the only book on the market to offer the breadth of content on both the design and practical components of all types of the latest indoor and outdoor fireplaces and stoves. Aesthetic and practical design considerations for hearths and mantels, built-ins and storage, lighting, and accessories like screen, brooms, and bellows are also covered. A thorough glossary, resources, and index provide reference-like information.