Sincere statement of thanks from the author

I sincerely thank you for purchasing this do-it-yourself book, instead of one of the thousands of other, much better ones. I want to assure you that there is not a single project in this book that I would not have considered doing myself if I hadn’t been so busy writing a do-it-yourself book.

If you’re like most homeowners, you’re afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The “professional” arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits two assistants whose combined IQ’s would still be a two-digit number, and they spend the better part of a week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after which the “professional” returns and gives you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.

And that’s why you’ve decided to start doing things yourself. You figure, “If those bozos can fix my furnace, then so can I. How difficult can it be?”

Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far less money. This book can help you.

The best way to use this book is to place it on a coffee table so that your guests can place their drinks on it. Or, if you’d like to attempt a home repair project, you can look up the appropriate chapter. For example, if you want to fix a plumbing problem, you’d look up Chapter 4, “Plumbing.” Or Chapter 8, “Masonry.” It won’t make much difference.