SOME DETAILS OF CONSTRUCTION
Setting Batter Boards, Posts, and Sills.—The first step in actual construction was to mark off the lot and set the batter boards. These were made by driving three stakes to form a right angle about four feet from the point where each of the four main corners of the house was to be located. Two rough boards, one for each side of each angle, were nailed horizontally to each of the four sets of stakes, with their upper edges all brought to the same level. It is very important to set these batter boards with accuracy, since their function is to carry the lines which mark the dimensions and level of the ground floor. In the present instance their first use was to locate the concrete posts on which the sills of the house were to rest. Twenty-two of these posts, which were 4 feet long and 8 inches square, were put in position by first setting moulds or boxes, the interior dimensions of which were those of the posts, 3 feet deep in the light soil and filling them with a mixture of concrete and crushed rock. It was not thought necessary to remove the moulds after the hardening of the concrete. In fact, the sills were framed and placed in position resting on these boxes before sufficient time had been given for the concrete to harden. The sides of the boxes, however, were scored with a saw cut so that they could be easily broken off just below the ground, exposing the projecting ends of the concrete posts for about one foot. The sills were of 6 by 8-inch first quality spruce. They were set on the 6-inch face, the two long sills being spliced over posts, using a long halved joint. Mortise and tenon joints, draw-bored and pinned, were used at the corners. The floor timbers of 2 by 8-inch spruce were gained into the sills with the top faces flush with the top of the sill and crowning (i. e., bending) upward if at all. The spacing of the floor timbers was taken off at the sill on a strip of furring—spruce, 7⁄8 of an inch thick by 2 inches wide—which was moved out to the centre near the line of bridging and lightly nailed, bringing crooked timbers into line. The bridging was then nailed in, the outside last to prevent springing the sills.
Plan A. Framing details
Referring to the accompanying sketch (Plan A) it will be noticed that the corner posts and centres were not mortised into the sills, but were simply butted on and heavily nailed or spiked. There was a time when carpenters would have regarded such a method as altogether wrong; but those were the days of great corner posts and heavy studding, placed two or three times as far apart as is the practice now. It was thought that placing the studs 16 inches on centres, which is the common practice in modern house framing, removed the necessity of mortising into the sill. Mortising is still recognized, however, as a good thing to do and is sometimes practised by first-rate carpenters. Plan A also shows how the outside walls were trussed over openings; and Plan B shows how the corners of the building were tied by the lapping of the double plate, and how the ceiling timbers and rafters were placed on the top of the plate.
Plan B. Details of cornice, sill, and roof
The window frame details are shown in a series of cuts (Plan C) which for the sake of completeness are drawn to show also the interior finish, not usually represented in the framing drawings. A detailed description of these features of construction is unnecessary, since the dimensions and relations of the various elements and the technical terms by which they are known are all clearly indicated in the illustrations.
Plan C. Details of interior finish
In the same series of cuts a detail of the base is shown which includes the framing, the base board, and the lath and plaster. It should be stated, however, that a substitute for lath and plaster was recommended to the student architects—a new product in paper board especially designed for walls and ceilings, which it was decided to use. The use of this material removed the necessity of the "grounds" shown in the drawings and always needed as a nailing base for the wood trim when the walls and ceilings are lathed and plastered. In the detail of the dado cap, which will be found on the page of construction drawings, the dotted lines show how the cap was to be expanded into a plate rail, requiring the addition of brackets with a bed moulding between, in the finishing of the walls of the dining-room. Among these drawings will also be found a detail showing a section of the beamed ceiling finish.
It will be readily understood that none of the finishing work called for in the detailed drawings was begun until the rough carpentry on the house was practically completed. All the rough work, which included framing, boarding, shingling, laying of the lining floors, and putting up partitions, was assigned to boys of the woodworking sections of the vocational school. This is an elementary industrial or trade school, admitting from the grades below the high school boys who have attained the age of fourteen years and wish to learn some mechanical trade. It represents a new and promising experiment in American education. The building of this house furnished an excellent opportunity for the boys of this school to show the honesty of their purpose in enrolling themselves to learn the fundamentals of a trade and thus prove their right to have the chance.
So the house was built by the combined efforts of the boys and girls of the public schools of this New England city, unassisted by professional architects or paid labourers. How they carried out with their own hands the designs for decorating and furnishing the house is told in the succeeding chapters of this book, which also suggests wider applications of the principles of household decoration as possible to be made in the homes of clever boys and girls throughout the country. To carry out these suggestions will mean work—but work of a kind that gives pleasure to the worker and to many others. It was work for the young designers and builders of whom this story tells, but they said it was "great fun," and there really is no pleasure quite equal to that found in doing with one's own hands an exceptionally good thing. The true craftsmen of all time have found it so. One of these master workmen, Stradivarius, the violin maker, so George Eliot tells us, made his confession thus:
" ... God be praised!
Antonio Stradivari has an eye
That winces at false work and loves the true,
With hand and arm that play upon the tool,
As willingly as any singing bird
Sets him to sing his morning roundelay,
Because he likes to sing and likes the song."
[II]
DECORATIONS AND FURNITURE
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful—William Morris
The decorating and furnishing of a house have their true beginning in good architectural design. It is a mistake to proceed upon the theory that decoration necessarily implies something added for its own sake—something beautiful in itself but selected and applied without regard to the lines, spaces, and colours of the room in which it is to be placed and without considering the relation of this room to neighbouring rooms and to more remote surroundings. The truth is, a decorative object may or may not be intrinsically beautiful; but however beautiful it may be in itself, it finds its truest beauty in an appropriate setting. And the decorator who is actuated by the true spirit looks to the architect for inspiration and finds his greatest successes in acknowledging that leadership. To attempt to lead when one should follow is neither good art nor good sense.
There is danger, perhaps, that this truth may be taken too seriously. It would also be a mistake to run to the other extreme and adopt at the outset a rigid plan of decoration and furnishing, specified like contract work to be carried out and completed on a certain date soon after the house is built. The problem is one of growing interest, especially as regards furniture, pictures, and the smaller objects of use or beauty, and for its best and happiest solution requires time and study. Only the broad and fundamental features can be settled in advance. The important thing is to have the main lines, dimensions, space relations, and colour schemes settled with due regard to utility and appropriateness and, as the work of construction proceeds, to keep all details in harmony with this general plan.