The Complete Idiot's Guide to Finishing Your Basement Illustrated

Its a good start for the lay-person to catch up with the basics. Especially good, if you want to get familiar with the kinds of tasks needed to completed to finish a basement. A good read, before calling a contractor to give you a bid for your basement.

This book does an excellent job of stepping you through a basement finishing project. It provides help on every step, including some basic electrical that a novice like me can do. If I had one complaint it would be that the pictures are not in color, and some of them are rather small, so when I was looking for ideas on planning the basement, this book wasn't very helpful. However, it's a great help in assessing what needs to be done if you'll be doing some or all of the work yourself.