This is my first subscription to this magazine and I am scared to miss an issue. My house is already renovated but I love to look at this house and I continue to get ideas to further change and improve my house and what to look for when I finally get a chance to get my dream old house!

This is a very informative magazine. It always has a number of different articles pertaining to a number of remodeling projects around the house,both inside and outside. If you are thinking of doing any projects now or in the near future,it would be great to subscribe to "This Old House" magazine. By reading what the experts have to tell you and seeing the pictures of the projects from start to finish,it will give you the incentive to start that project that you have been putting off. Try it for at least a year and see;I feel that you will be pleased with what you see as well as what you can accomplish on your own.

Have been getting increasingly irritated with the magazine. I finally got fed up and canceled and asked for a refund after finding many errors in the current issue.


I'm no home expert but I saw much misinformation and a lot of dangerously shallow information.

Some of many examples:

* It tells you to drill big holes in a tree branch to hang a swing. To cover the magazine legally, there is vague advice in tiny type about using a sturdy branch. Drilling holes will weaken the branch. And may well eventually kill the branch.

* Supposedly Norm Abram's toolkit has one of those expensive, useless many-bits-in-the-handle screwdrivers, instead of a set of simple inexpensive screwdrivers that actually work.

* They recommend WD-40 as a lubricant. It is well known that WD-40 is a terrible lubricant, due to the solids in it that make it an excellent rust-preventative.

* They say to use a metal scraper blade to clean a glass cooktop.


If you can't trust them on the topics you understand, you sure can't trust them on the topics you want to learn about.


Many of the articles are pushing products, probably from companies that advertise on the TV show. (I don't watch the TV show, so I'm not sure.)

At any rate, the products and tools they recommend are almost always very fancy and expensive.

Despite the endless references to "Master Carpenter Norm Abram" and so forth, the TV stars are barely involved at all in the magazine. How would they have time anyhow?

A lot of effort is put into slick, clever, coy writing and beautiful photos. (If you look at the fine print, the photos are all "produced" and "styled.")

Then I got it. I looked at the info up front and realized that the editorial office is in New York City. The writers and editors are professional magazine writers who live in New York apartments, writing about things they don't have personal experience with!

They must have a problem with people canceling. The phone number to cancel was in the tiniest possible type.


Get "Fine Homebuilding" or the "Journal of Light Construction."

I agree that Fine Homebuilding is the much better investment. You'll gain much more knowledge from watching TOH than reading this magazine. It's chock full of ads and lightweight articles and annoyingly short on reviews and product information. Half the people get this to be part of the TOH following, but to real do it yourselfers and knowledge hounds, the Taunton stuff is much better.

TOH is a beautifully produced magazine but not much more than that.

We have had this magazine before and really like it. We renewed at Amazon because of the more reasonable price. The renewal has not started so unable to rate at the efficiency of the company to set up the renewal to continue the original subscription.