About the House with Henri de Marne : How to Maintain, Repair, Upgrade, and Enjoy Your Home

This is a complete manual for homeowners. When things go wrong, or when you are ready to remodel, you need expert advice. Henri de Marne is one of America’s best-known and most trusted experts, who has answered just about every question a homeowner can face. For example:

§ What is the green stuff growing on my roof?

§ Why does my basement stay damp?

§ How can I get rid of carpenter bees?

§ Can I paint my basement floor?

§ What can I do about the rust stains on my driveway?

§ Which heating and cooling systems are most efficient?

§ How can I scrub the little black spots off of my vinyl siding?

§ Does the asbestos on my pipes put my family in danger?

§ Why do my plumbing pipes make a banging sound?

§ Why do cracks appear between my walls and ceiling every winter?

Those are just a few of the thousands of questions Henri de Marne has addressed in his syndicated newspaper column, First Aid for the Ailing House. With this book, you can find the answers whenever you need them. De Marne has updated all the answers for this book, to reflect the latest in research, materials, methods, concerns, and tastes. The result is a comprehensive manual for today’s homeowners, a ready reference to consult whenever things go wrong or improvements are planned.

Henri de Marne is perhaps America’s most trusted expert on residential housing, with a nationally syndicated column that has been running for over 40 years in newspapers throughout the US and Canada.

He began his construction career in the mid-’50s, concentrating on all aspects of residential construction, repair, and remodeling. As a skilled researcher with an avid curiosity, he accumulated a vast store of knowledge in order to solve the myriad problems besetting the average homeowner.

In addition to his column and this blog site, de Marne has served as a consultant for homeowners, architects, engineers, builders, and condominium associations. As a member of ASHI (American Society of Home Inspectors), he has inspected hundreds of homes for prospective buyers. He has taught courses on home inspection to the real-estate industry, lectured construction-industry groups on building techniques, written numerous articles for builders as a contributing editor of the Journal of Light Construction, arbitrated construction disputes, and served as an expert witness in construction cases.

He contributed the first chapter of the Consumer Reports book Preventive Home Maintenance, and was senior consulting editor for an edition of the Readers Digest book New Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual.

His newspaper column, “About the House,” began in early 1974 with the now-defunct Washington Star, which was at that time a large-circulation afternoon daily in Washington, DC. The column was syndicated nationally by United Features Syndicate (now Universal Uclick), and has appeared ever since in newspapers throughout the US and Canada, under the title “First Aid for the Ailing House.”

In that time, he has provided thoughtful answers to countless thousands of questions posed by his readers. It is hard to imagine a single question about houses that wouldn’t have been raised and responded to. In his book, About the House with Henri de Marne, he has sorted through the archives in an attempt to cover every major issue, along with many minor (but interesting) ones. An expanded version of that book is now available in all major eBook formats.