This book shows homeowners how to accomplish perhaps the greatest and most rewarding of all do-it-yourself projects: converting the unfinished space in a basement or attic into comfortable, safe, and truly customized living areas. Many Americans grew up in homes that had "finished" basements (do dark wood paneling and a sloping pool table sound familiar?), and their parents likely used one of the books still available on the how-to shelf. But today's homeowners are claiming their unfinished square footage for more specific uses: high-tech home offices, fully equipped home theaters, and secondary living spaces for aging relatives. For these new "home spaces", Finishing Basements & Attics is the up-to-date guide they need.
An Ideas section at the front of the book provides inspiration for a variety of creative, functional options, followed by an overview of basement and attic Dos and Don'ts. The rest of the book is devoted to useful projects. These cover the essentials, from framing around pipes and ductwork to building knee walls in an attic, as well as popular specialty jobs, like wiring a home theater and installing a skylight. The projects are designed not only to appeal to today's consumer but to teach readers the fundamental techniques of each task, so that they can adapt the given project for their specific situations.
Highlights:

Contains over 300 color photos and illustrations.

Features dozens of step-by-step projects, including plumbing a basement bathroom, adding forced-air ducts, and installing a window in a gable wall.

Aimed at consumer trends toward cocooning and working from home offices.

Shows all aspects of the remodeling process, including wiring, plumbing, insulating, finishing walls and ceilings, and installing windows and doors.

Includes an idea section with color photographs of successful basement and attic conversions.

Excellent Place to Start, March 19, 2003

My wife brought this book and 5 others home from the library for us to review as we are just starting to finish our basement. This book is the best of the six by far. It's drawback is that it is not comprehensive - if you don't have some basic knowledge/experience and you want to do the work yourself, then you will want more detail. For the few pages that are there, however, the book does an excellent job showing the work at hand and gives some good ideas. I'll likely buy the book to have it on hand as we progress. Enjoy your project!

great book, November 7, 2002

This is a great place to start with if you're a do-it-yourselfer planning to finish your basement. The only drawback I found is that it leaves you wanting more. I ended up buying more books on plumbing, flooring, and building in general. I managed to find several good used books. I'll probably end up buying a book on electrical work too (I'm still working on my basement). I also did a lot of research on the internet. Also, there's a lot of variation on local building codes, so you need to talk to your governing authority to get specifics. In the end, you might decide to do some parts of the job yourself and leave other parts for professionals. In any case, reading through this book will give you a lot of ideas to get started.