Construction is not a nice sound early in the morning -- or at any time. (Photo: iStockphoto)

There’s nothing like waking up to a noise so loud that your house actually shakes. That happened to me this morning, and it has happened, on and off, for the past three months.

My neighbors across the street, you see, are renovating their house. Scratch that: They aren’t just renovating, they’re tearing it down to the studs and starting over …Full Story

Actor Brad Pitt has been a significant part of a green-building movement in New Orleans. (Photo: Bill Haber/Associated Press)

I just read this fascinating story in The Atlantic by Wayne Curtis about the emerging architecture in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina …Full Story

A page from the National Association of Home Builders' online coloring book -- the coloring is my own.

In hopes of fostering a future generation of home builders and home buyers among tech-savvy tots, the National Association of Home Builders has introduced this online coloring book …Full Story

This real-life home was built completely out of Legos. (Photo: www.dailymail.co.uk)

My daughter sent me this link  the other day about the world’s first full-sized, functioning house made of LEGOs. We have a fondness for LEGOs at our house. My husband mentioned wistfully last year that he’d never had any LEGOs as a kid – I hadn’t known that -- so I got him a small castle-building set for Christmas as a stocking stuffer. He was genuinely thrilled, and played with it for most of the day. He especially liked the working catapult …Full Story

Could the Chinese drywall in so many American homes be toxic? (Photo: iStockphoto)

I spend a lot of time scanning news related to home building, so I’d seen plenty of stories about Chinese drywall in the last several months. I didn’t pay much attention to them, though. I figured it was another tariff dispute, a shortage here because the Chinese had bought up all the drywall, or U.S. suppliers complaining about the Chinese flooding the market with cheap product …Full Story

Weep holes are essential for brick veneer homes, but they also let vermin in.

I was cruising around TweetDeck and saw a tweet about faucet maintenance on LennarCares.com. Since I do a fair amount of writing about kitchen and bath topics, I checked it out. It was good information, but it was the item right below it, "What are weep holes?" that really caught my attention …Full Story

Earlier this week, both on this blog and across the Web, it was reported that actor Stephen Baldwin's home in Rockland County, N.Y., was going to put on the block next week in a foreclosure auction. However, his rep, Brad Taylor, says that's not the case. (Check our previous post for more information on Baldwin's home.)

"Stephen is presently going through a legal situation regarding his mortgage and that situation is still in process. No auction will be happening and all things related to this matter are being handled by his legal representation," People.com quotes Taylor …Full Story

Once the siding was removed, the cause of my home's window leak was obvious.

Last week, I wrote about a leaky window in my home that I was finally able to get fixed, thanks to a contractor friend of a friend. The window had been leaking for at least three years, but I couldn't find a contractor who was willing to come out to my home for just one window. (And actual window companies don't want to come in unless I buy a minimum of four windows.) …Full Story

The flashing for my home's window comes up short.

Earlier, I blogged about my leaky living room window that drips water from the drywall above whenever there is a hard, driving rain. In that post, I also mentioned an excellent story by Wall Street Journal reporter Nancy Keates, who is having a brand-new home built. In that story, she mentioned how every single window in her home was installed without flashing. She wrote that this is a recurrent problem with brand-new homes and that it can cause severe damage in a house …Full Story

Imported drywall may turn out to be a big mess for some unlucky homeowners. (Photo:iStockphoto)

Many homeowners in Florida and some in other states are feeling trapped in their homes, and it's not because they are under water in their mortgages or because they can't sell their homes in today's sluggish real estate market.

It's because their homes are literally making them sick, say these homeowners, who complain of dizziness, insomnia, bloody noses and swollen joints. Their homes appear to be ailing too, with walls emitting a sulfur, rotten-egg smell, lights unexplainably blinking on and off, air-conditioning units conking out, and stains appearing on wood furniture …Full Story