Homes for the People, in Suburb and Country: The Villa, the Mansion, and the Cottage, Adapted to American Climate and Wants. With Examples Showing how to Alter and Remodel Old Buildings. In a Series of One Hundred Original Designs

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C. Scribner, 1855 - Architecture, Domestic - 443 pages
 

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Page 185 - Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building: yet it shines not alike from all parts of heaven. An east window welcomes the infant beams of the sun, before they are of strength to do any harm, and is offensive to none but a sluggard. A south window in summer is a chimney with a fire in it, and needs the screen of a curtain. In a west window in summer...
Page 409 - I have, however, built them, when I lived on the Grand Prairie of Indiana, many miles from sawmills, nearly all of split and hewed stuff, making use of rails or round poles, reduced to straight lines and even thickness on two sides, for studs and rafters. But sawed stuff is much the easiest, though in a timber country the other is far the cheapest. First, level your foundation, and lay down two of the 2x8 pieces, flatwise, for side-walls. Upon these set the floor-sleepers, on edge, 32 inches apart....
Page 412 - ... with strips nailed on top, for the joist to rest upon, fastening altogether by nails, wherever timbers touch. Thus you will have a frame without a tenon or mortice, or brace, and yet it is far cheaper, and incalculably stronger when finished, than though it was composed of timbers ten inches square, with a thousand auger holes and a hundred days' work with the chisel and adze, making holes and pins to fill them. " To lay out and frame a building so that all its 'parts will come together, requires...
Page 411 - ... inches wide, half inch deep, and nail on firmly one of the inch strips. Upon these strips rest the chamber floor joist. Cut out a joist one inch deep in the lower edge, and lock it on the strip, and nail each joist to each stud. Now lay this floor, and go on to build the upper story, as you did the lower one, splicing on and lengthening out studs wherever needed, until you get high enough for the plate. Splice studs or joist by simply butting the ends together, and nailing strips on each side....
Page 186 - Let the office-houses observe the due distance from the mansion-house. Those are too familiar which presume to be of the same pile with it. The same may be said of stables and barns, without which a house is like a city without works, it can never hold out long.
Page 187 - God (Grenesis ii. 9) planted a garden eastward, he made to grow out of the ground every tree pleasant to the sight, and good for food.
Page 188 - HE THAT alters an old house is tied as a translator to the original, and is confined to the fancy of the first builder. Such a man were unwise to pluck down good old building, to erect, perchance, worse new. But those that raise a new house from the ground are blameworthy if they make it not handsome, seeing to them method and confusion are both at a rate.
Page 186 - ... on either side. By strength we mean such as may resist weather and time, not invasion, castles being out of date in this peaceable age. As for the making of moats round about, it is questionable whether the fogs be not more unhealthful than the fish brings profit, or the water defence.
Page 412 - ... square rule.' It is a waste of labor that we should all lend our aid to put a stop to. Besides, it will enable many a farmer to improve his place with new buildings, who, though he has long needed them, has shuddered at the thought of cutting down half of the best trees in his wood-lot, and then giving half a year's work to hauling it home and paying for what I do know is the wholly useless labor of framing. If it had not been for the knowledge of balloon frames, Chicago and San Francisco could...
Page 415 - ... stone or other similar objects, with such local coloring, give a brown hue to portions of the landscape. It may be mixed as follows: Yellow Ochre, five pounds ; Burnt Umber, half a pound ; Indian Red, quarter of a pound ; Chrome Yellow, No. 1, half a pound, with one hundred pounds of White Lead. The...

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