Collins Complete DIY Manual: An essential tool for novices, DIY enthusiasts and professionals, covering decorating, electricity, plumbing and more

My backgrond is technical (I'm an engineer) but I have a limited amount of DIY experience. Faced with the prospect of maintaining a house, I wanted to learn more about DIY. I was a little hesitant about buying a DIY book as I thought I'd just find everything I need online. True, there are many good discussion boards on DIY topics. However, I find that a comprehensive manual is an excellent starting point. Unless you know exactly what you're looking for, searching the web is difficult. And if you don't know very much about the subject, it's hard to assess the quality of online advice. So I went ahead and bought the Collins guide. When it arrived, I was surprised at the heft of the book. It's larger and heavier than I expected. Printing quality is very good and it's printed in colour throughout. It's filled with a mixture of drawn illustrations and photographs, and both are of excellent quality. The book is clearly laid out and structured, with plenty of subheadings helpfully printed on page margins. It's very easy to find what you are looking for. The instructions are generally very easy to follow. Compared to, say, a Haynes car service manual, the high quality printing makes it easy to tell exactly what you are looking at. That said, I would probably not use this as my only source of information. An all-in-one guide is great as a good starting point. However, I tend to cross-check any advise against other sources. This is how I like to use the book: find out the basics about a topic; then, as you know the basics and the vocabulary, go online to confirm the advise and find other opinions. Used like this, it's a fantastic starting point for any DIY project, both as a complete guide for novices and as a reference work for experienced DIYers.

This book was recommended to me and I have found that it covers so many topics. When it was recommended to me I was told "it would allow me to build my own house". If you find you can turn your hand to things, but you need a bit of extra knowledge, this book fills that gap. All you need is the tools! See photo of my new sink with new taps and waste.

Amazing DIY book, the most comprehensive I've found. However it's somewhat lacking as it sorely needs updating, especially for the latest electrical regulations (it doesn't even mention WAGOs or WAGO boxes for example anywhere). Hope they come up with a new edition soon.

Had an old edition of this manual - which must be at least 30 years old now and was so well used it has fallen apart - the new one promises the same sound help and advice

Excellent book with step by step guides how to do DIY

This book is in very good condition and good value for money.

This is the go too book for DIY

It's hard to overstate how useful this book is! This is a hefty book that covers just about everything you'd want to know about how your house works, with a lot of illustrations. In the past I had always used YouTube to guide my DIY repairs. The problem is YouTube (and the internet) is great at providing detailed and lengthy step-by-step instructions but is often bad at explaining the big picture: how everything fits together and the many variations of the systems and designs found in different houses. This book bridges that gap. I'm a beginner and have found this book illuminating and easy to understand, but I think it would also be a useful resource for just about anyone who isn't a complete expert in every single aspect of house maintenance. I realise that this book is over a decade old and slightly dated. I still give it 5-stars because I haven't been able to find another book or resource that competes with it (including the internet).

The text is written in very tiny little letters. It's utterly unpractical. If not the book is dick and big. I'm finally disappointed. I'll need to buy a reading magnifying glass in order to read it with comfort.

Shows thr basics good for handyman.

Awesome book. This is the one I have been wanting to buy for a long time. Fast delivery. :)

Es ist so ziemlich alles erklärt in diesem Buch was es rund um das Haus zu wissen gibt was Reparaturen, Umbauten oder Neuanschaffung belangt.

Does a fairly thorough job of explaining different projects around the house. Seems to be written I UK style English, and houses seem to have a little different setup in that part of the world.