Fine Homebuilding

[Tom Godley]

I received FH yesterday -- The Kitchen and Bath issue. It has been discussed recently that FH and FW are not the magazines they used to be and the K&B issue is always the least interesting issue for me. But, I can not believe how dull this issue is -- and I am thinking about a new bathroom for my house!

I did a quick run through and for the most part there is nothing I want to go back over. I understand that you can only say say so much, but they used to be more cutting edge on design and especially construction.

[Jason Roehl]

I subscribed to FH for a while, but I dumped them quite a while ago. I get The Journal of Light Construction, and I noticed that FH was more or less following JLC, but just putting a very-high-end flair on it. They were featuring designs that just plain wouldn't sell very well in my area because they were just too outlandishly expensive. Interesting, to be sure, but they seemed to have the them that everything had to be unique or it wasn't print-worthy. I still get JLC, and have about 10 years worth of issues, with many, many construction details, advice and how-to's.

[Jim Becker]

It's a tough market for print magazines these days. In all frankness, great publications such as Fine Woodworking and Fine Homebuilding have had to adjust their content to compete for readers and advertising dollars. All of them are a lot thinner than they used to be, too. While I still like FW the best and it's the only woodworking magazine I subscribe to, there is a much higher percentage of more "basic" articles these days than in times past. They are trying to get more readers and as such, are trying to tap the very competitive space that other magazines typically have catered to...and who are also hurting. FHB faces similar competition. I subscribed before and during our addition project, but eventually dropped it for relevance. It was a good magazine, but there was growing crossover to TOH which I still receive since it was "very cheap" and make for good bathroom reading... :)

[Prashun Patel]

A couple years back I got the complete editions of FHB on dvd. It was a good reference for a while.