Set Your Posts

to correspond to the level of the string, then place your sill on top of the posts, and test that with your level. If found to be correct, fill in the dirt around the posts and pack it firmly, then spike your sill to the posts. Go through the same operation with the opposite set of posts and sill.

Fig. 68.

The first difficult work is now done, and, with the exception of the roof, the rest only needs ordinary care, and what old-fashioned people used to term “gumption.”

It is to be supposed that you have already sawed off and prepared nine two-by-four-inch beams, each of which is exactly eight feet long. Set these on edge from sill to sill, equal distances apart, the edges of the end-beams being exactly even with the ends of the sills (Figs. 66 and 69). See that the beams all cross the sills at right angles, and toe-nail[10] them in place.

You may now neatly