Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid

I am completely gutting and restoring/remodeling a house from 1871 and this book is helping me make smart decisions that I never would have made otherwise. I would have continued doing the things that everyone does nowadays that we think is normal, but is actually wrong, and I would have ended up with another bland house that lacks real character.The key to this book is the large amount of illustrations that show what you shouldn't do, and then more illustrations of what you should do. Its awesome. There are words, and you should read them, but the illustrations are what make this book special.From chimneys to casing to porches, windows, and doors, this books covers all the major exterior and a few of the interior elements of a house, and the proper way they should be designed and executed.

This book is so comprehensive and such high quality. Fantastic detail on every imaginable feature on quality pages with sharp printing. I love this book. One of the best values for money I've purchased.

I bought this book about a month or so ago. I have read through it once. While I will skim it again, from time to time, I'll be keeping it as an irreplaceable reference manual for home design or purchase.The illustrations are gorgeous and pure genius. Most of them are NOT CAD drawings, but honest-to-goodness pencil illustrations, which all have a definite artistic flair to them.The premise is simple: the Greeks and Romans got it right, and modern home designers try to ape their aesthetic without doing the requisite homework make awful looking houses. Once you read this book, you'll never be able to go into a rich new suburban development without easily being able to point out the painfully obvious design gaffes that abound. That's the downside--you're an instant architectural snob after one read. But the upside is that when it is time to YOU to buy or build, you'll know precisely what to look for and what to avoid.Marianne Cusato has proven her genius with the "Katrina Cottage" design, which will probably set her for life financially. I hope it does, so she can focus all of her energies toward the classicist movement. I'd sure love to hire her to design my next home (if I could ever afford her now).The modern architectural ethic of the last century, emphasizing a lack of details, machinelike designs, and a material driven ethos (steel, glass, and concrete) is absolutely put to shame by the Greek and Roman orders of proportion, balance, and detail. Hopefully, Ms. Cusato and her classicist colleagues can put the last few nails in that coffin. I could live the rest of my life quite well without having to view another gawd-awful building that looks like it was designed by Fisher Price.This book is a masterpiece.

Let me start by saying that this is a great book, every homeowner and builder who cares about home aesthetics should own this.That said, I think it falls short on some details. The book gives great background on classic architectural orders and how they apply to modern building and trim design. What it lacks, for example, are things like how to size exterior window casings and corner boards, or what height to build wainscot, or how to design and proportion a coffered ceiling. Its also got only a single chapter on interior trim design. I suppose I can't fault the author for this as much as I can recommend that she write an entire book on interior trim design.You should definitely buy this book, but don't expect this to be your only resource for designing a beautiful home.

Phenomenal book that talks about the historically correct way to style an Adam, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, or Neo-Colonial style house. Also quite useful for Victorian style homes, but less authoritative. Once you get into Craftsman-style homes (turn of the 20th century) and later there really isn't anything of value in this book. There's absolutely nothing on mid-century modern. Lots of information about proportion and the Greek/Roman orders of architecture. Great reference if you want to create a historically accurate home from one of the specifically mentioned styles, or need to do historic restoration without butchering its character. The book mostly focuses on the exterior, admitting that interior was beyond the scope of the book. There is one short but useful chapter on the interior, however. For historically-correct interiors I really liked Traditional American Rooms (Winterthur Style Sourcebook): Celebrating Style, Craftsmanship, and Historic Woodwork, which covers the traditional woodwork of homes from the same era, with examples from 12 of the original 13 colonies. Also worthy of note are pattern books from those eras, many of which are still in print, such as the works of Asher Benjamin.The strength of this book is that it explicitly shows common mistakes and explains why they look odd, whereas most historic references (like "The American Vignola") often skip details, or are harder to follow. If you're interested in a more detailed understanding of the classical orders, Robert Chitham's "The Classical Orders of Architecture" has this book beat in its sheer depth, although that book is geared toward architects, not homeowners. Still, this is a great addition to the library and one I find myself referencing more.