Finding the perfect house is never easy. Rebuilding one from a crumbling pile—to say nothing of making it into a home—is even harder.

With their infant son in tow, David Giffels and his wife comb the environs of Akron, Ohio, in search of just the right house for their burgeoning family. Running through David's head the whole time are the lyrics of a Replacements song, ". . . Look me in the eye, then tell me that I'm satisfied," and it gives all the more purpose to their quest. But nothing seems right . . . until they spot a beautiful, decaying Gilded Age mansion. A former rubber industry executive's domain, the once grand residence lacks functional plumbing and electricity, leaks rain like a cartoon shack, and is infested with all manner of wildlife. But for a young man at a coming-of-age crossroads—"suspended between a perpetual youth and an inevitable adulthood"—the challenge is exactly the allure.

All the Way Home follows Giffels's funny, poignant, and confounding journey as he and his wife and a colorful collection of helpers turn a money pit into a house that will complete their family. Nothing could prepare them for a home restoration epic that includes evicting squatters (both four- and two-legged), battling an invading wisteria vine, hunting a ghost, and discovering thousands of dollars in hidden Depression-era cash. But the story's heart lies deeper, in an unexpected series of personal hardships that call into question what "home" really means, and what it means to grow up.

Written with the humor and insight of Bill Bryson and John Grogan, All the Way Home is the engaging tale of a young father's struggle to restore a house and find his way . . . without losing himself.

"This Old House meets The Money Pit in journalist Giffels's search for an affordable home. The Giffels family settles on a run-down, soon to be condemned early — 20th-century mansion, but when he arrives at the mansion to begin his work — aided eventually by scores of workers — he finds leaks in several areas of the roof, crumbling brick, dry-rotted wood, warped floors, vermin droppings and nests, as well as a beautiful old staircase, a fireplace in the bedroom and gorgeous brass hinges and other fixtures. Convinced that he can recover the former glory of this house with a little elbow grease and perseverance, Giffels sets out on his mission — fueled by the strains of R.E.M. and the Clash — to renovate the house one room at a time. Giffels fights a losing battle as he seeks to remove squirrels, mice and a raccoon from his abode — his attempt to scare away squirrels from the attic by using an electric guitar is especially amusing — and he discovers that every victory carries with it a failure somewhere else. Sometimes humorous, Giffels's memoir comments sadly on one man's stubbornness and selfishness (even his wife's miscarriages don't stop him from his work) in his quest to make a house a home. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Well-tended houses are all alike. Every ruined house is ruined in its own way.

Two new memoirs about extreme fixer-uppers illustrate this point. Each will appeal to those who like stories of real estate gone wrong, with plenty of rotting plaster, curling linoleum and basement beams chewed to powder by termites. But amid the wreckage, the books also reveal as much about the interior... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) needs of their authors as they do about the houses they rescue.

David Giffels, a columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal and a former writer for "Beavis and Butt-Head," needed a larger house for his wife and baby. But instead of taking the easy path and buying a tract house with a manageable mortgage, Giffels gave his heart — and years of his life — to a tumbledown turn-of-the-century mansion in a city sunk under hard times. His memoir, "All the Way Home," is not only a chronicle of this renovation but also an homage to Akron, Ohio, and an affirmation of his place in it.

The details of ruin are delicious. The once-grand house was built by a rubber executive during the Gilded Age. But when Giffels bought it a decade ago, it was struggling just to stand, vines prying apart its brick walls and decay eating the wood out of the window frames. One upstairs bedroom floor was lined wall to wall with aluminum roasting pans set there to catch water from the nearly useless roof. Most of the electrical outlets were dead, the pipes were corroded, and the boiler in the basement spewed streams of water at the fuse box.

The author's D.I.Y. skills, like his toolbox and budget, were no match for the challenge. But what he lacked in experience and financial resources he made up for in hubris and in sheer determination to salvage, scavenge, improvise and prevail. But over what?

Giffels is a man deeply in love with his hometown and its history. He has paid tribute to it in two previous books: "Wheels of Fortune," about the glory days of rubber production in Akron during the 19th century and "Are We Not Men?," about the emergence of the band Devo at Kent State in the '70s. He's had a job offer in New York City and felt the lure of Los Angeles but remained rooted in place, upholding his local paper. He can't make Akron into the Big Time — or even into what it once was — but he can shore up a piece of its fading glory, with his bare hands.

But as the renovation project began to consume weekends, savings and marital good will, it became a mirror for self-discovery, and what it reflects is not always flattering. Giffels' determination swelled to obsession, keeping at bay other responsibilities and connections in his life — friends, family, marriage and fatherhood. One low point, among many: Giffels on a clammy basement floor at midnight, scraping decades of paint off kitchen hinges while his wife lies alone upstairs, worried about miscarriage.

Gradually, as the house revived, Giffels began to recognize his folly. Toward the end of the book, he quotes a family proverb: "It's only finished when you sell it or you die." And in the meantime, other things, like reading his son a story at bedtime, matter more.

"Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block" is less about the house and more about the block and is as likely to appeal to social activists as to serial renovators.

After more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent covering such places as Rwanda, Chechnya, Colombia and Sudan, Judith Matloff was ready to unpack and call someplace home. Newly married and with her biological clock ticking, she left her journalist husband alone in Moscow to find them a house in her hometown of New York City. Intrepid by nature and toughened by experience, Matloff followed the classifieds to the only neighborhood in Manhattan she considered suitably vibrant and affordable: West Harlem, which in 2000 was an essentially ungovernable area caught in the crossfire between Dominican and African-American drug dealers. Just 20 blocks to the south, a "new Harlem renaissance" had brought shops, cafes, real estate agents and, soon, Bill Clinton's post-presidential office. But none of that had yet reached 145th Street.

By any standard of prudence, Matloff's decision to buy a once stately 1888 row house there was reckless. But after breezing past the Romanesque facade, six fireplaces, four bathrooms, chandeliers and cast-iron tubs, she offered cash — on the spot. She even prevailed over another bidder in $10,000 increments, getting what seemed to her a steal at $200,000. All hers, then, were 4,860 square feet of decay, where squatters, termites and plumbing leaks had ripped out or ruined the fine old wainscoting and high plaster ceilings. She had barely paused to notice the crack dealers leaning on her front gate, syringes tossed in a corner of the backyard and the lingering stench of men behaving badly in stairwells.

There are chapters that slog through the fixing of this, but Matloff's real interest was less in restoring the house than in feeling at home. And for her, doing that seemed to entail seeking out the most perilous place in Manhattan to live. With barely a second thought, she exchanged Chechnyan militants for crackheads, Colombian drug lords for knife-wielding street thugs. Her tough exterior softens when she describes her emotions after the fall of the World Trade Center: grief mixed with jealousy and depression about being home with a baby, away from the action. But at least she can say she has gone to the edge, and made a nest there.

Belle Elving is the former editor of The Washington Post Home section.

Reviewed by Belle Elving, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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The memoir follows Giffels' funny, poignant, and confounding journey, as he and his wife and a colorful collection of helpers turn a money pit into a livable house. But the story's heart lies deeper in the series of personal hardships that call into question what home really means. Illustrated.

David Giffels is an award-winning columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal, has been a contributing commentator and essayist on NPR, and is a former writer for MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head. He has won dozens of journalism awards, including the 2006 national award for commentary from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. He lives in Akron, Ohio, with his wife and two children.