The authors of this self help DIY guide take their metaphor seriously.

Initially, I read meticulously and tried to extract value. And there certainly is value; be kind, be grateful, listen to others.

However, I feel that the family that will get the most value out of this book is one where there is not too much water under the bridge. Maybe a young couple who see each other as equals and want to avoid developing habits that might cause strain later. It is idealistic.

For a couple with kids who have all grown up in an unhealthy and potentially co-dependent environment, this band-aid will not be enough to magically 'remodel' the house. If you need counselling, this book is not going to do it. Go for counselling.

If you're wondering how to make a good marriage into a great one, this might have some useful tips.

I appreciate a book that refers me to other authors, experts and writings. In the Build Trust chapter, they mention Developmental Psychologist Erik Erikson. His writings on the stages of trust that every child moves through definitely caught my attention. They also mention Dreikurs and Adler who I am interested to follow up on.

The use of hashtags is bizarre #Imnotlaughing

This is a great book on how to "remodel" your home life. Set like it is a book on DIY projects for your house you take a journey through a real-life application on how to fix up your home life. It is doable, easy to understand, and incredibly helpful. I'm so glad that I read through this and have already implemented some of these changes.

5 Stars!

Sometimes people is more focused on how a home looks and not how it feels, I want to do it, to try to have a home with peace. Every family needs to forgive, trust, have compassion, and love. Gary Chapman is a favorite, everyone knows him because he thought us about the 5 love languages. It is so amazing to me to realize my children are going to remember certain things because we create or improve things at home. May God help us. Topics covered include Kindness, Gratitude, Love, Compromise, Forgiveness, Communication, Trust, Compassion, and Patience. Tools like Quizzes are provided at the end of the book which I find helpful to implement changes at home. It is a very very practical book. Chapters include useful sections:

The DIY Guide to building a family that lasts* looks at different aspects of family life that people often want to improve. The authors, two experienced counsellors, discuss different negative aspects of family life and provides tools on how to use positive behaviour to improve them. For example Kindness rather than selfishness, Trust rather than control, Patience rather than anger.

I hadn’t heard of the book before I saw it available for review on Netgalley. I was interested in reading it as soon as I saw one of the authors was Gary Chapman. He wrote the Five Love Languages of Children which I read a couple of years ago and really made me think differently about how I communicate with my children.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about the book was the focus on increasing the positive behaviours you want to see instead of reducing the negative behaviours. This feels much more effective and achievable.

I have to be honest that the home improvement metaphor did irritate me for a few chapters because I thought it was being over done and was being forced. However, while reading the chapter on anger and patience a tantrum happened in our house complete with door slamming. It really brought home the connection between shutting people out physically and mentally. After that moment, I realised the authors had created good connections between the features of a house and behaviours of a family, which will make it easier to remember positive behaviours to implement.

The DIY Guide to Building a Family that Lasts by Gary Chapman and Shannon Warden is a fabulous guide to renovating a family from the inside out. The authors focus on internal change and do so in such a beautiful way. This is just as much a marriage book as it is a family book. Marriage is the foundation of a family and the authors clearly understand that. Great book for families of all sizes. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

I enjoyed this read! There were a lot of hands-on practical tools for basic family skills - communication, conflict resolution, love languages, etc. This book was very easy to read and enjoyable! There are a lot of similiarities to Dr. Chapman's other books, but it is still a worthwhile read - especially for anyone who is looking to improve their family life and relationships and isn't sure where to start!

This is an easy to follow guide for parents who are looking to implement spiritual concepts into their daily family life, mimicking Do It Yourself home renovation programs for any easy to understand layout or map for each discipline. Both authors have extensive careers in counseling and have drawn the similarity of literal home improvement to a transformation of your home life.
Each chapter is broken up into sections:
- Home Improvement Goal (what behaviour do you want to get rid of)
- Home Improvement Tool (replace that behaviour with this one)
- Drawing Up the Plans (what do you want to see changed/improved)
- Do-It-Yourself (modeling the behaviour you want to see exhibited)
- All in Budget (all family members must be committed)
- Sweat Equity (the effort and time it will take to implement change)
- Big Reveal (when it will be evident what you’ve been working on is working)

Topics covered include: Kindness, Gratitude, Love, Compromise, Forgiveness, Communication, Trust, Compassion, and Patience. Tools/Quizzes are provided at the back of the book to help parents implement the topics at home.
Some of the material that is touched on has been covered in more detail in other books written by Gary Chapman, so it almost felt like a review lesson for me since I’ve read a few of his other published works.
It’s an easy read, and more of a “toolbox” of items rather than a “how to” type of book, meaning you have to figure out how to implement what’s being written into your own family dynamic. Examples of parents struggling with the topic being covered in the individual chapters are from real life counseling sessions, or experiences from the authors themselves.
There wasn’t anything that jumped off the page at me as to something that was sensational or revolutionary that I could implement into my own parenting practices; though it was helpful to have everything neatly packaged into the groupings as mentioned above.
I received an ecopy from the publisher through NetGalley. All opinions expressed are my own.

So I was attracted to this book because of one of the authors – Gary Chapman. I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading it. Many DIY books seem to be ‘this worked for me so it should work for you’ and I don’t find that realistic. In this book the authors describe different practices that can be tried to help shape character in the home. There are no promises or guarantees, just opportunities to invest in your family.

As a pastor I’m a big fan of Mark Holmen’s “Faith at Home” movement which focusses on nurturing faith in the home. One of the practices I have as a part of that is providing free resources to families to help them nurture faith in the home. I could very much see this book being one of the resources I would provide to families to help them. This book is very well rooted in good practices and I believe recognizes that change takes hard work. This book truly though helps move you forward.

The big question I believe is – would I do any of these things? Well the answer is yes… and to back it up I actually was quite taken with some of the ideas I’m starting with one of them as I felt it would help bring more gratitude into our home and nurture more kindness as well. I can’t report the results yet, but in reality when shaping character anything that moves you and your family in the right direction is a win. I see this book as a great resource for families… and something that will help them get the win.

I was really hoping to love this one, as I admire Gary Chapman's work and loved the idea of A the DIY parallel. But ultimately it came across as a little gimicky and full of advice that has been expressed much better in Chapman's other books.

Fans of DIY who want to build a healthy family will find Gary Chapman and Shannon Warden's book, "The DIY Guide to Building a Family That Lasts" a clever way to meld the two together. Each chapter focuses on areas parents can invest time in to build healthier families that last, including kindness, gratitude, forgiveness, communication, trust, patience and fun, along with other relevant topics. Drawing from the DIY theme, each chapter cleverly includes these sections, :
- an introduction to the topic
- Drawing Up the Plans, which helps readers to identify what they want with regard to the chapter's topic
- Do-It-Yourself, which helps readers first address the topic in their own life before building it into the family
- All-in-Budget, which helps readers get buy-in from the entire family
- Sweat Equity, which gives readers tips for building that character trait into their family
- Big Reveal, which gives readers an idea of how to know when they've arrived at the goal
- Talk It Over, which provides thought-provoking questions to help help readers internalize and process the material, either individually or with others.

I whole-heartedly enjoyed this book. It provides practical and doable steps for families that want to grow but just need a little help knowing how. It's not something to rush into and think you can do everything in the book in one week or even in a month. But, if you take it slowly and actually follow through, one chapter and one topic at a time, maybe even taking a month to work on that one area, you'll find that over the course of time, you'll see true change in your family, helping you build a lasting family with strong connections.

Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed are my own.

What I love about this book is that there are 12 steps that are practical & easy. Some of the topics include forgiveness, trust, compassion, & love. The information is great for a ‘healthy’ family but also for a family that is ‘broken’ and hurting. I can’t wait to put these tools in to practice!