Kevin Daum

Kevin Daum is the award-winning author of six books, including ­Building Your Own Home For Dummies.

Articles & Books From Kevin Daum

Building Your Custom Home For Dummies
You deserve a home that meets your specific needs and desires! If you find yourself dreaming of the perfect patio, the ideal kitchen, and inviting rooms where you love to spend time, it might just be time to start building! With Building Your Custom Home For Dummies, you won’t have to feel intimidated as you plan, finance, and oversee construction on your new oasis.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-18-2022
Building your own home is an exciting and exacting process that can be daunting, as well. Make your home-building experience easier by first having a firm grasp on your financial picture. You also need to find the right contractor, prioritize design elements between must-have and would-like-to-have. And, you need to keep track of all the people who are helping making your dream home a reality.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
If you're building your own home, you need to keep track of myriad details and the related contacts (people). Make a physical list of contacts and make copies to keep on-site, in your car, at your office, and anywhere else you can think of. People to put on the list include: Architect Contractor Loan of
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Making the decision to build your own home leads to a search for a contractor. To find the right person to oversee the building of your home, touch on the following topics with each contractor you interview. The contractor's responses can help you determine whether you'll work well together. References: Ask for the addresses of all the houses the contractor has built and ask several owners how satisfied they were with the contractor.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Building your own home means you keep a close eye on the money flow. Determine finances before you start the process of building your home and review them periodically. Fill in the blanks in the following list, and keep this important info nearby for quick recall when you meet with your loan officer: Total cash available: __________ Amount of cash I'm willing to put toward the project: __________ Maximum monthly payment I'm comfortable making: __________ My payment can be increased by __________percent from income tax savings.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Whether you're buying an existing home or building your own, you'll have design needs and design wants. Design needs include number of bedrooms, size of your home (roomy for guests or small to encourage teenagers to move out), while design wants cover items like whirlpool tub, gourmet kitchen, romantic master bedroom.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
A storyboard is a piece of paper with boxes drawn on it that show how every shot in a marketing video will be visually represented. Shots can be quite elaborate creations or simply rough sketches. The purpose is to outline each shot to see how to help the director, the camera person, and the editor put the video together.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
If your marketing video features a sit-down interview or a (mostly) stationary speaker, one mic makes the perfect accessory for your subject’s business attire: the lavalier microphone. This clip-on mic attaches easily to a tie or collar or lapel for close-up sound with hands-free operation. Placing the mic properly is important for the best sound quality.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
All hosting services provide embed codes that let you insert your marketing videos into your web pages. An embed code is simply a small piece of computer code that activates the video player and displays it in the context of your web page. An embed code can be as simple as this snippet of YouTube code:
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Unfortunately, no one has yet invented a robot that sets up YouTube video marketing ads for you. The process may sound somewhat complicated at first because the YouTube ad system is powerful, but it’s fairly easy to start your first campaign. To set up a new YouTube ad, follow these steps: Log in to your YouTube channel by using the Sign In link.