Black & Decker The Complete Guide: Maintain Your Pool & Spa: Repair & Upkeep Made Easy (Black & Decker Complete Guide)

Black & Decker The Complete Guide: Maintain Your Pool & Spa: Repair & Upkeep Made Easy (Black & Decker Complete Guide) Review

Better maintenance means more enjoyment of your pool or spa.

Black & Decker The Complete Guide Maintain Your Pool & Spa will both inspire and educate readers on the practical points of owning and maintaining a home swimming pool, hot tub, or recreational whirlpool.

For those considering a recreational water feature, an exciting gallery chapter and a planning/design chapter will show the latest trends and products, and unique new ways to integrate a pool or spa into the landscape. The book also includes an overview of each type of structure, including above-ground and in-ground swimming pools, stand-alone whirlpools, integrated pool/spa installations, and pool houses and accessories. For readers who already own a pool or spa, lengthy, detailed chapters on basic maintenance, water quality, seasonal upkeep, and routine repairs provide everything needed to keep water features in good operating condition. Even the mechanical systems - pumps, heaters, drains and skimmers - are covered in depth. With this book, no pool or spa owner will need to spend money on a professional pool-care service, and may never need to call a repairman.

Outdoor Kitchens: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Design and Construction (Better Homes and Gardens)

Outdoor Kitchens: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Design and Construction (Better Homes and Gardens) Review

• Insights and ideas for the cook, as well as smart tips for the builder.
• Imaginative and detailed plans for outdoor kitchens in a variety of locations.
• Addresses both form and function to help homeowners assess their needs for cooking and storage space.
• Color photos provide inspiration on how to apply designs to any setting.
• Special section provides all-time favorite grilling recipes and tips for outdoor cooking from the Better Homes and Gardens experts.

Outdoor Living: The Ultimate Project Guide

Outdoor Living: The Ultimate Project Guide Review

This impressive 448-page book with more than 1000 step-by-step full-colour how-to photos provides the thorough and reliable information homeowners want and need to create today's attractive outdoor living spaces. Divided into four categories, the book contains: Part 1 'Landscape Structures and Decks', shows you how to build patios, walkways, water gardens, landscape walls, fences, gates...and great decks. Part 2 'Yard and Garden Structures', helps you create a gateway arch, backyard gazebo, composting bin, cold frame, backyard greenhouse...and a kit-built shed. Part 3 'Backyard Woodworking Projects', guides you through variety of great woodworking projects...every one will enhance your outdoor living experience. Part 4 'Lawn Care and Maintenance', helps you create a yard worth caring for - from information on grasses and fertilizing to accent plantings, border treatment and tree care. With "Outdoor Living, The Ultimate Project Guide", the homeowner does not need to be a landscape or building professional to get great results. These pages guide you every step of the way with the ideas and instruction for creating attractive and useful "outdoor rooms".

The Best of Signature Kitchens

The Best of Signature Kitchens Review

As a showcase of Signature Kitchens & Baths magazine's top kitchens, The Best of Signature Kitchens provides a glimpse of 110 modern, state-of-the-art kitchens from leading designers around the country. With numerous possibilities, it is no wonder why this cornerstone space is one of the most commonly updated and renovated rooms for new and existing homeowners. Over 250 beautiful, full-color photographs and illustrated floor plans show readers how to turn any kitchen into a warm, inviting heart of the home.

The Restaurant Manager's Handbook: How to Set Up, Operate, and Manage a Financially Successful Food Service Operation 4th Edition - With Companion CD-ROM

The Restaurant Manager's Handbook: How to Set Up, Operate, and Manage a Financially Successful Food Service Operation 4th Edition - With Companion CD-ROM Review

The multiple award-winning Restaurant Manager s Handbook is the best-selling book on running a successful food service. Now in the fourth completely revised edition, nine new chapters detail restaurant layout, new equipment, principles for creating a safer work environment, and new effective techniques to interview, hire, train, and manage employees. We provide a new chapter on tips and IRS regulations as well as guidance for improved management, new methods to increase your bottom line by expanding the restaurant to include on- and off-premise catering operations. We ve added new chapters offering food nutrition guidelines and proper employee training. The Fourth Edition of the Restaurant Manager s Handbook is an invaluable asset to any existing restaurant owner or manager as well as anyone considering a career in restaurant management or ownership. All existing chapters have new and updated information. This includes extensive material on how to prepare a restaurant for a potential sale. There is even an expanded section on franchising. You will find many additional tips to help restaurant owners and managers learn to handle labor and operational expenses, rework menus, earn more from better bar management, and introduce up-scale wines and specialties for profit. You will discover an expanded section on restaurant marketing and promotion plus revised accounting and budgeting tips. This new edition includes photos and information from leading food service manufacturers to enhance the text. This new, comprehensive 800-page book will show you step-by-step how to set up, operate, and manage a financially successful food service operation. The author has taken the risk out of running a restaurant business. Operators in the non-commercial segment as well as caterers and really anyone in the food service industry will rely on this book in everyday operations. Its 28 chapters cover the entire process of a restaurant start-up and ongoing management in an easy-to-understand way, pointing out methods to increase your chances of success and showing how to avoid the many mistakes arising from being uninformed and inexperienced that can doom a restaurateur s start-up. The new companion CD-ROM contains all the forms demonstrated in the book for easy use in a PDF format. While providing detailed instruction and examples, the author leads you through finding a location that will bring success, learning how to draw up a winning business plan, how to buy and sell a restaurant, how to franchise, and how to set up basic cost-control systems. You will have at your fingertips profitable menu planning, sample restaurant floor plans and diagrams, successful kitchen management, equipment layout and planning, food safety, Hazardous and Critical Control Point (HACCP) information, and successful beverage management. Learn how to set up computer systems to save time and money and get brand new IRS tip-reporting requirements, accounting and bookkeeping procedures, auditing, successful budgeting and profit planning development. You will be able to generate high profile public relations and publicity, initiate low cost internal marketing ideas, and low- and no-cost ways to satisfy customers and build sales. You will learn how to keep bringing customers back, how to hire and keep a qualified professional staff, manage and train employees as well as accessing thousands of great tips and useful guidelines. This Restaurant Manager s Handbook covers everything that many consultants charge thousands of dollars to provide. The extensive resource guide details more than 7,000 suppliers to the industry virtually a separate book on its own. This reference book is essential for professionals in the hospitality field as well as newcomers who may be looking for answers to cost-containment and training issues.

Annie Sloan's Painted Garden: 25 Easy Outdoor Paint Effects to Transform Any Surface

Annie Sloan's Painted Garden: 25 Easy Outdoor Paint Effects to Transform Any Surface Review

The play of light and shade can make outdoor painting projects more daunting than interior ones, so world-renowned decorative painting expert Annie Sloan begins this book with a lesson in understanding and managing color. Sloan shows do-it-yourselfers how to create a cozy dinner nook, accent open spaces with converted salvage, and paint an old plastic pot to resemble an elegant metallic planter. Full-color photographs accompany each stage of the process, with step-by-step instructions that encourage readers to use every imaginable material - paint, pebbles, sand, plastics, ceramics, glass, cement, mirrors, and tiles - to give grace to a garden or panache to a patio. Sloan's enthusiasm is so contagious that any outdoor surface will look like a blank canvas crying for color.

How to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers

How to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers Review

In this groundbreaking resource, two school garden pioneers offer parents, teachers, and school administrators everything they need to know to build school gardens and to develop the programs that support them.

Today both schools and parents have a unique opportunity - and an increasing responsibility - to cultivate an awareness of our finite resources, to reinforce values of environmental stewardship, to help students understand concepts of nutrition and health, and to connect children to the natural world. What better way to do this than by engaging young people, their families, and teachers in the wondrous outdoor classroom that is their very own school garden?

It is all here: developing the concept, planning, fundraising, organizing, designing the space, preparing the site, working with parents and schools, teaching in the garden, planting, harvesting, and even cooking, with kid-friendly recipes and year-round activities. Packed with strategies, to-do lists, sample letters, detailed lesson plans, and tricks of the trade from decades of experience developing school garden programs for grades K-8, this hands-on approach will make school garden projects accessible, inexpensive, and sustainable.

Reclaiming a piece of neglected play yard and transforming it into an ecologically rich school garden is among the most beneficial activities that parents, teachers, and children can undertake together. The book provides all the tools that the school community needs to build a productive and engaging school garden that will continue to inspire and nurture their students and families for years to come.

Encyclopedia of Kitchen History

Encyclopedia of Kitchen History Review

From the discovery of fire to the latest space mission, the Encyclopedia of Kitchen History brings together the rich diversity of kitchen history in one accessible volume. Students, researchers, scholars, and culinary aficionados- from beginners to experts- will find this Encyclopedia to be a fascinating look into the history of the kitchen from the foodstuffs prepared to the tools and implements used as well as the innovators who shaped its function and utility.

My Grill: Outdoor Cooking Australian Style

My Grill: Outdoor Cooking Australian Style Review

Australian chef, restauranteur, and TV presenter Pete Evans brings his favorite style of cooking--grilling--to readers in this gorgeous full-color book. Tongs in hand, Pete takes you through 100 sizzling recipes appropriate for all grilling occasions, including camping-and-fishing weekends away; lazy afternoon barbecues with friends; and sophisticated al fresco entertaining. Each chapter also includes Pete’s signature cocktails that will add a little extra fuel to the fire.

Trail Food: Drying and Cooking Food for Backpacking and Paddling

Trail Food: Drying and Cooking Food for Backpacking and Paddling Review

" . . . a book that will appeal to everyone who has ever choked down the pre-packaged, bargain-basement camp food (or gone bankrupt buying the good stuff)." --Canoe & Kayak

. . . if you're on the lookout for a way to bring real meals to the field, [this book] might have the answer." --Field & Stream

Life in the outdoors revolves around food--cooking it, eating it, packing it, carrying it. We even fantasize about it, especially after a week of eating store-bought provisions. This book is all about fulfulling those food fantasies and avoiding those expensive disappointments. Trail Food tells you how to remove water from food, to make it lighter and longer-lasting, without removing its taste. Learn to plan menus and prepare meals just like the ones you left behind, using fresh foods from your garden or market, prepared and seasoned the way you like them.

Why fantasize when you can have the real thing?

Black & Decker The Complete Outdoor Builder: From Arbors to Walkways: 150 DIY Projects

Black & Decker The Complete Outdoor Builder: From Arbors to Walkways: 150 DIY Projects Review

Adding beautiful, functional patios and walkways to the yard has never been easier thanks to this book. Over 150 projects and hundreds of instructional photographs combine with informative tips, tricks, and inspiration for the most comprehensive patio and walkway book on the market. From low-cost, curb-appeal walkways to expansive, estate-quality decorative concrete patios complete with outdoor kitchens, this book presents each project with step-by-step instructions and full-color photographs as well as informative tips, tricks, and inspiration. Each project uses the most current materials, tools, common practices, codes, and construction techniques to help readers add value to their homes and allow them to enjoy their outdoor spaces to full potential. Whether an existing patio needs to be freshened up or an unused space in the yard is just waiting to be put to use, this book is a crucial resource for do-it-yourself homeowners.

Ultimate Outdoor Kitchens

Ultimate Outdoor Kitchens Review

Everyone loves a backyard barbeque in the mid-summer sun-author Michelle Kodis shows how to take that idea to an innovative new level! From a "Whimsical Outdoor Martini Bar" to an "Adobe Kitchen Enclosure," Ultimate Outdoor Kitchens features projects that reflect a range of styles, from sleek modernism to rustic country, with a wide array of architectural influences. With twenty-six chapters divided into three easy-to-navigate sections, Kodis makes it easy to determine which design style and budget will fit your backyard best.

Black & Decker The Complete Guide to Patios: Plan, Build and Maintain (Black & Decker Complete Guide)

Black & Decker The Complete Guide to Patios: Plan, Build and Maintain (Black & Decker Complete Guide) Review

Outdoor living made elegant

Patios have been featured in landscapes for thousands of years, but never have they been more popular than now, as homeowners discover the elegance, long life, and easy maintenance of stone and decorative concrete surfaces. TodayÆs homeowners can build with mosaic tiles just like the ancient Persians, or natural stone like the Greeks, but they also build amazing patios with colored, interlocking concrete pavers cast in geometric shapes, or they can stamp or stain poured concrete for truly amazing effects.

Black & Decker The Complete Guide to Patios is a comprehensive guide that includes an introduction to the most popular building materials: a fool-proof method for design, planning and layout; detailed step-by-step projects to help readers build any one of 12 different types of patios; instructions for building popular patio accessories and features; and tips for maintaining and repairing all types of patios.

Wildlife in the Kitchen:and Other Great Animal Tales (Amazing Stories)

Wildlife in the Kitchen:and Other Great Animal Tales (Amazing Stories) Review

Every year, thousands of wild animals across Canada are injured or orphaned. While many perish in the harsh conditions of their natural habitat, some survive and thrive thanks to the compassionate individuals who rescue and rehabilitate them. From caring for baby birds and raccoons to ensuring the safety of beluga whales and polar bears, special Canadians have opened their hearts and sometimes their homes to animals in need. Roxanne Willems Snopek has collected some of their heartwarming stories.

American Dream Homes (v. 2)

American Dream Homes (v. 2) Review

Walk through the front doors of more of the most exclusive homes in the world.

American Dream Homes is another remarkable beautiful photographic collection of 50 stunning show homes.

The book is like a walking tour, walking you step-by-step through the design and decorating details.

Each outstanding home is the collaborative vision of a unique design team. From accessories to landscaping, these gorgeous homes represent the best of the home-building and decorating arts.

Best of all, readers may purchase blueprints of these fine homes and build a dream of their own.

Ranging in size from 3,000 to over 10,000 square feet, these designs include virtually every imaginable luxury: sweeping staircases, grand entries, soaring ceilings, awe-inspiring interiors and magnificent master suites.

From every corner of North America, American Dream Homes, showcases the finest projects of the brightest residential designers and decorators working today.

Outdoor Kitchens & Fireplaces (Schiffer Books)

Outdoor Kitchens & Fireplaces (Schiffer Books) Review

Outdoor living is heating up the marketplace today, and more and more people take their leisure time outdoors. Toward that end, they're bringing the kitchen with them, along with a blazing fire to warm and illuminate their yards into the later hours. This book offers the largest collection of images of landscapes, outdoor kitchens, and fireplaces available on the market today, and with those gorgeous photos come hundreds of ideas. Live vicariously as you leaf through these pages, and then make the dream come true in your own backyard with some of the many inspirations found here.

The Insider's Guide to U.S. Timeshares (635 resorts)

The Insider's Guide to U.S. Timeshares (635 resorts) Review

An indepth look at 635 timeshares in the U.S. The most detailed book about timeshares ever written. Each resort is described in detail, along with area attractions, golf and ski information, 800 numbers, resort activities, unit information, location, services, and more. If you are an owner of a timeshare or just work in the industry, this book is a must.