I’ve been voraciously devouring every self-build magazine I can lay my hands on since starting Kits and Mortar and have gathered quite a little collection. I thought that it’d be a good idea to review the magazines that I’ve got, and to do issue summaries too. The latter will allow me to keep a track of the articles that I think were interesting or useful, rather than to provide a full summary of what that issue contains. Anyway, on with the first magazine review, Homebuilding & Renovating.

Homebuilding & Renovation is a monthly title costing £3.99, with subscriptions of £38.75 for 12 issues and £18 for six issues. It has a strong focus on case studies, typically including five or six houses, ranging from million pound homes through to budget builds, covering a wide variety of styles. It also has a lot of practical advice, with six or seven articles in the Project Advice section, and several more useful columns and articles in the Building Talk section. It looks at materials, techniques, design issues, technology, legal issues, landscaping, regulations, and planning – and that’s just in the three issues I have!

This comprehensive remit focused on the practical really does make H&R a useful magazine for me, as I’m learning a lot. These are magazines that I’ll keep and refer back to in the future, when the information becomes more directly relevant to my own project. H&R also has a Beginner’s Guide, which is very useful for people like me who are just at the very start of their self-build journey.

The nice thing about H&R is that it is enthusiastic and informative without being pretentious or condescending. Sometimes I get a bit lost with the jargon, but that happens very rarely. I like the tone of voice the writers use – H&R is an approachable, readable magazine – however I’d like to see much more attention paid to green issues and sustainability. They do cover environmental issues occasionally, but they need to embed awareness in every article. I’d particularly like to see them rate the houses they feature for environmental responsibility, not just in terms of energy use but also the sustainability and environmental impact of materials used.

H&R’s online presence is currently quite poor due to “acute technical difficulties”, however they do provide a look inside their current issue, which provides you with access to the magazine’s contents pages, and the first two pages of a number of articles. That’s just enough to give you a feel for what’s on offer, but you can’t actually read anything useful. I’ll be interested to see what H&R do with their new website, and will report back then.

Sadly, there is almost no integration between online and the magazine, except a quarter page “Webtalk” section which reprints comments made in their discussion forum, and a few URLs. Other than that, you would imagine that the internet didn’t exist. That’s a shame, but entirely unsurprising. Maybe I should pitch them an article or two!

Overall, though, I highly recommend H&R. Thumbs up!