Although not everyone can have a beautiful house on a large lot in an idyllic country setting, overlooking mountains or lakes and still have it acces-sible enough for everyday living, a few can. Why not be one of the few?

This book is intended primarily for those who want to get their money's worth in a satisfactory house whether they build it with their own hands, buy it, or hire it built.

Perhaps the ideal way to buy a car is to go down to the dealer, select the one you want, write a check for it, and drive away in a new Cadillac, Conti-nental, or Imperial. But many of us have to be content with a second hand Chevrolet or Ford, and that on the installment plan of dollars per month for eighteen months.

Something similar may occur in getting possession of a house. The ideal way is to employ a good architect to help select the lot and to prepare complete plans and specifications. Then get a reputable contractor to build it while you take a tour of Europe. When you return, he will hand you the key, and the van will move you in and set the furniture in place under the direction of an interior decorator. Of course, in the meantime, the landscape architect and the nursery men have completed planting the shrubbery and have the lawn under control. Just write a few good healthy checks and all is yours. Alas, most of us have to be content with considerably less luxury.

Look at another way. It is really fun to build a house, and the above method deprives one of much of the joy of accomplishment and pleasure that comes from successfully completing a good piece of hard work.

Almost any energetic young woman can build herself a house, if she gets enough help from her husband.

The aim of this book is to help the reader to be able to plan and build a quality house, eminently suited to the needs of his family, and to do it on a limited budget.

Even if much more thinking and much more work will be required in building your own house, when you really consider how many years you will have to work to pay for the house you buy, perhaps in the long run, there is actually less work in building your house with your own hands in the first place.

This book devotes considerable space to planning and drawing the plans and details, complete with specifications, because careful and adequate planning over a period of time will do much to insure that a house will be all that you have dreamed it would be.