windows

In order to realize my dreams of matching the watercolor below,

 

 

 

I have realized that buying a customized gang of windows(five no less), I will need a much larger budget.  Also, by the time I cut into my 12 foot wide wall, there is not going to be much left to support my roof.  So, I looked at my options at Home Depot.  The American Craftsman line that they carry will do fine for me.  The white is just what I want, so I do not see how I can make a better choice in this situation.  They have horizontal glider windows that come in a number of sizes.  I looked the sample over in the store, and I fell for that size.  They are available at 36 wide by 48 high.  Two of them with a couple of 2x6s between will give me some of this effect.  If I become desperate, I can add a stationary single window in the center.  Not quite the same, but I can live with that.

The rough opening on these is half an inch additional, vertical and horizontal. and at 170 dollars, I can squeeze that out of the budget. 680 for all is not bad.  So, both south facing rooms on the first floor can have a set of these windows.

Ideally I might get custom casement windows ganged in the pattern in the picture...but I just don't see that happening.

 

I love stained glass.  It amazes me how much new windows cost for a little extruded PVC and glass. I can, however get antique stained glass panels from churches or homes and build a frame for the house to hinge mount the stained glass for half of the cost of a window, new, and when I am done, I have a work of art to look at in my house.

 

 

Both Bill and I wanted this window, but in the end it went for too much money.  At the time $200 seemed like too much...then I found out how much a new window costs.

Just one last comment.  Always use standard sized windows.  You are building from scratch.  You can choose anything.  If you were retrofitting, you would have to follow the old openings but you can use the less expensive standard sizes that are very likely already in the store and ready for pick up.

Why two story or story and a half.

One of the biggest expenses you will have in building a house is the foundation.  Building 600 square feet on the ground is quite a bit of foundation.  Poured foundation costs would be through the roof and probably more than I would spend on the entire house.  Cutting that figure almost in half is a giant savings.  If you are doing posts with a concrete footings, it cuts down dramatically on the time you will spend with a Post Hole Digger or a shovel, and on the number of bags of concrete you will have to mix.
Also, with a second story, you get to use your heat twice.  In the old days it was not considered necessary to pipe heat up to the second floor, just a grate in the floor works very well as heat rises.  I think that we should revive this practice.
As stated earlier, it is better to cut down on the square footage of building skin exposed to the elements,  A story and a half, with only a 3 or 4 foot upper side wall cuts down dramatically on the exposed skin of the building.  The roof is half the size of one on a sprawling building and heat is conserved.   

Well I Can Dream Can't I

 

When you are first planning a house or just one room, it is a good idea, now that we have these tools, to keep a diary of ideas you have taken a particular shine to.  Some will be possible,  Some will not. But even if they are out of your reach financially or beyond your skill level, you will eventually develop a style and preserve some ideas that you will kick yourself for forgetting when you see it again after you have committed yourself to a design.  In my present design, I will not have a basement. Under stairs space could easily be wasted.  In this case I have been dreaming of a reading nook under the stairs.  The problem is that there will be minimal lighting.

 

 

So, perhaps this will be a better choice.  On the other hand, we are talking about central New Hampshire here, and heating with wood which tends to have chilly  corners and recesses.  It might be tempting fate to have a blind recess with a big window in it and frigid winter temperatures at night. 

 

I suspect that I will have few visitors, but when I do, this type of nook might be wonderful for overflow sleeping accommodations.

 

 

 

I love the staircase in the photo before this, but it is a bit colonial for this space.  High end turned spindles will be very pricey. The Craftsman style above might be just the thing.  It is easy to do with a scroll saw and a drill, and would look great in white paint.  I suggest that you look at the interior of Henry Higgins' mother's house in "My Fair Lady" or to rent a copy of the "French Lieutenant's Woman" for a glimpse of the room at the end of the movie in all white to give you an idea of the look that I usually favor.  Don't get me wrong. I love color and wood, but in a house in the far north where lighting may be minimal as this will be a bit "Off Grid", can leave a space very dark.  Amber yellow. gold, orange and brown can really take the light out of a space.  White or very light colors just seem logical to reflect light.  Don't let your HYPER MALE neighbors deter you.  You must be practical first.  The tendency to fill houses with wood tones is not very bright...if you will forgive the pun.

I just redid a dark and dark painted guest room for a friend, in fern green with white woodwork, white shutters and white curtains.  It transformed a dark room into a light and elegant space.

 

 

 

This is not far from the size of the rooms in my planned house.  I love a library.  I have donated my entire, rather eclectic, book collection to a local library.  I suppose it is time to rebuild my collection.  My reading has shifted from non fiction to classic literature, local history  and classic novels that I am ready to re-read or read for the first time.   Having this space would be wonderful, but remember that book shelves greatly diminish space available.  A foot off all walls in a room is a lot of space. That is 46 square feet in a 12 by 12 room. 

 

 

Another library with fewer bookcases and a more open look would help the space to feel larger. (But oh, how I love all that woodwork in the previous photo.)  Notice the small windows.  This might be a solution for my desire to have wall space and light.  Outside, you can make false shutters to make it look like there are full sized windows to balance the design of the building. You could just set a rectangular frame in the siding and paint them a slightly different color.  Cream on white would do it. Gray on white would mimic glass.

 

 

 

Again, space gets sucked up with window seats and book cases, but would it not be wonderful?  Curl up with Robert Louis Stevenson on a cold, snowy but bright winter day, a snifter of Calvados or a cup of tea and a cat or a puppy on your lap!  No cats you fool, your furniture will be destroyed!!!  Perhaps I could add another two feet to the dimensions of the house?!

 I would paint the hot air register though.

You cannot have outdoor declawed cats in the far north as the first passing coyote would have a meal of a cat with no defenses.

 

As far as the kitchen is concerned, I found a rather wonderful photo of a kitchen in France.  the entire room is beyond my means (no matter how I moon over the picture) but the left hand wall has a series of cupboards that I love.  I have seen video of this same room with those cabinets face on.  Unfortunately this photo just acts as a reminder of cabinet trim that I like...also the colors.

 

 

 

 

Here is a close up view.  I love the pendants at the top and the bracket supports under the upper cabinets, making it look a bit like a Welsh cupboard, or in this case a French one.

 

 

Here is a different version.  They were eventually painted an historic yellow.

 

 

The First Order of Business

The first order of business is to decide what to build.  Square footage will dictate how much of an area to clear for building, but the style and shape will dictate the intended approach to the house,, where windows and doors will be best and a host of other issues relating to the style of house.
Most of my friends and I love Cape Cod houses.

The beauty of the Cape Cod is unparalleled in a country sort of way.   They are also very energy efficient.  The closer to square and low a building, the less surface area there is in the building and therefore there is less heat loss.  But in my case there is a basic drawback.  In order to build one accurately, there is a lot of wasted space in the middle with a central chimney, and there is a central front entry hall with rooms leading to each side to eat up space.

I feel that I can compromise without that loss of space and still keep the surface area pretty small. 
I have always loved Greek Revival houses as they appear in rural areas.  High style is not practical for a country house.  The same floor plans appear in Gothic Revival houses as they are roughly contemporary styles to each other.

The floor plan and general arrangement of the exterior facades recurs too, all the way up into the first decades of the 20th century. Scale and decoration changes dramatically, but the same general plan.

This is a larger version of my Greek plan

 

 

This similarity gives you a larger search to find the floor plan on the Internet.

Basically the house is rectangular.  On the narrow side of the rectangle, there is a gable roofline.  In classic Greek houses the pitch will be rather low, and in Gothic rather high.  In country styles, it will be roughly 12:12 on top of a stub wall to raise the upstairs ceilings a couple of feet.
Across this end façade(generally used as the front) there will be a door and two windows evenly spaced and the door to one side.   This sort of breaks up the symmetry that I like, but as you see in the house above, they helped that by making very tall windows.
Inside you generally enter the house facing the foot of the stairs.  The main living space is two rooms, one behind the other to the side of the stair-hall.  Behind the staircase and adjoining hall, there is a narrow room that  fills the space to the back of the house(often later added on to through this small room by means of an ell of some kind).
In my case, I plan to eliminate the hall beside the stairs, and make the narrow back room even smaller(narrower) to install an outer wall kitchen between the back of the stairs and the back wall.  This will be open to the back main room  with perhaps a decorative arch, and perhaps a wall of screens, or drapes to hide the kitchen if desired.

And another large version in New England

 

 

The first (front) main room will be living room.  The back space will be the dining room with the kitchen open to it.(this is because the kitchen will be basically only as deep as the width of the stairs enough room for the kitchen counter and basically you will be standing in the dining room to prepare meals in the kitchen).
Upstairs, the stairs will rise to a landing and turn to face the middle of the house.  Either the entire upstairs can be one room, or there can be a tiny room(Bath?) just in front of you as you stand on the stairs, and a room to the right and one to the left.  These two rooms will have one or two windows in the gable ends of the house.
The downstairs living spaces generally have windows all along the three sides of the house.  In my case, I plan to save energy by eliminating the two windows in the front gable beside the door, and the three windows generally at the opposite gable end.  I plan to put a large window or bank of windows on the long wall in each room. This plan will save energy and provide solar gain, being on the south side in my case.
I have always loved a watercolor painting by Swedish artist Carl Larson.  He painted a room with a bank of windows along one wall that had plants on the sills.  I may never be able to afford a whole bank of windows, but perhaps three in each room would be possible.
I rather hate the idea of losing the two windows beside the door, so perhaps I will relent if good windows can be afforded.  I also like the idea of solid wall space for that wall for display.

 

This might be a good place for window seats to sit and read in as well.

 

 

The gable end bedrooms upstairs would allow one to use one room as a library, guest room or den and the other for a bedroom.  One would get morning sun to wake you, and the other, evening sun to extend the daylight...you choose which is best for you.  I could do a dormer in each room, but they break the skin of the house and so become an energy waster, and add to the expense of the build.

Also, every break in the seamless character of a roof makes it vulnerable to failure.  Valleys, dormers, ells all compromise the seal of the roof....if not at first then as it ages.  I simply do not understand all the jogs and angles and additions to a house that seems the norm in modern construction and design.  yes, I love a Queen Anne house with all the turrets and dormers and jog, but they are endlessly difficult to maintain.  Leaks are always creeping up.  A simple outer skin to a house, like a Cape Cod or a simple single shed roof or gable roof will be easy to install and easy to maintain through the life of the house

 

If you need to add space in your house, add an ell at right angles to a wall and drop the roofline down to below the overhang of the main roof, either the gable end or a side overhang.  Alternatively, cover new space with a continuation of the old roof so that it is seamless and does not form an angle that will require a valley.  Obviously this is a recommendation, but take it seriously, don't test my logic by finding out ten years down the road that your roof is leaking. You do not want to have to tear off a whole or part of a roof that still has twenty years of life in it, and may not be still available so you have a terrible looking patch with non matching roofing.

 

The dimensions of the house are modest.  I have not quite settled, but have a good idea of them  I want inside dimensions to be about 16 by 24.  I had a living room that size and always loved the space.  That may be fine just building the house 16x24, or if the framing seems to take up too much space, perhaps 17x25 or 18x26 to end up with the same space as I planned inside.

This should give me just enough space for the furniture I have and keep it small to be affordable and easy to keep clean and repaired.

 



I do not have a penny to my name, so all this will be on the tiniest budget. Small and simple will make it possible to build myself, the only thing that will allow me to accomplish this.

My Friend's Adventure in Building

My friend Robert is planning a new home in New Hampshire.  As he has no computer, I will let him take over the administration of the blog for a time.  I may still post to it, as he is planning to spread this over a long time, He can relate his adventure in building to you.  I am of course all the way in my terribly unfinished house, with little opportunity to use the computer, so I guess this is the best of all worlds.
So, welcome Bob to the world of blogging and building.

Thanks.  I am planning to build here in New Hampshire so I can have a comfortable retirement home.  I already have a Tiny House, that is how I met Bill with a common interest before he went away to start over. 

I have always wanted a small house, but it is a little difficult to live in the tiny space I constructed.  I really do not mind the lack of space, but I miss all my possessions.  I got rid of most everything when I retired, but I have retained many of my best things that are sitting in storage here, not far from Conway.
I have purchased a piece of land that has a couple of sites to use for housing.  One site is not too far from the road, is easy to get in and out of and as it is already cleared and rather "park-like" will be fine for my Tiny House.  It will be a fine guest house when I am finished with my new venture. 

The other end of the property, on the high ground of a topographically diverse lot will need a great amount of work to site the house.  This is fine, as I will have to do a lot of saving up and preparatory work...basically finishing old projects...before I can build.  That is in addition to the fact that I have very little money. The tiny house consumed a lot of my ready funds, and now I will have to accomplish all this on my meager retirement income.  It will not help that I am paying roughly 40% of my income for the land.

 

I look at this as an opportunity to... Do it right... Slow and steady will be the watchword.  I hope that you will not get bored with my project as it will be at least two to three years before I finish.  Meanwhile, I must move and finish my current screen house in order to use it to store the furniture I have in storage.  That will free up some money to devote to the new project.

At the same time, I hope that doing this project so slowly and with so little money might inspire others to do the same.  You can do a great deal with just your two hands to drive a project forward.

Period Fireplace.

Some of the problems I am finding with the Internet have been terribly obvious this week.  I want to know more about building a period fireplace.  I search with every possible combination of words to find period designs, to find construction videos...anything really that will give me a clue as to how to begin. 
The problem I find is that first of all, no matter what I input, all I get is results of how to hire a local contractor.  It also offers ways to purchase fireplace inserts or mantle shelves or any number of ways to purchase something.  But the Internet and you tube is determined to be of no help whatsoever with design and construction. 
I would think that perhaps no one wants to be responsible for giving faulty advice and then be responsible for a fire in someone's house , but it is painfully easy to find ways to slap together a mud and stone fireplace that is so obviously dangerous that it is frightening.  I cannot figure out why this is so terribly difficult.
 So while I am still writing about period houses, I am going to make it my mission to provide the information that I can to help you out.  Now I am not a mason, and I cannot give full instructions on how to do this, but having lived with plenty of 18th century fireplaces, I can at least describe what I know 
So painfully slowly, I will add to this and the period house posts so that we can get a relatively comprehensive set of instruction for both goals.  So, be patient.

BUILDING A REPRODUCTION OF AN EARLY HOUSE

My main interest is in Federal and Georgian houses, both formal and country.  Many of the things I talk about apply to all old houses.  Later Victorian, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate houses, etc., have many similar issues, but I intend to speak about my first love here...all the rest may be treated as I have the opportunity to study the specifics. Early houses are familiar to me because I have had the opportunity to study and work on them.  Of course I grew up in a big Victorian, so I am not totally unfamiliar.

First you must understand that we are living in the 21st century, and building codes enforcement people do not have a sense of humor, or any sympathy for your dumb ass desires.

People in the 18th century were smaller.  That does not mean that the men were 5 foot 2, but the average was much smaller than today's average.  Also, they did not work with 2x4s and 1/2" plaster board.  Materials were heavier and thicker, so if you were doing 8 foot posts in your walls, your layers of materials that led to the finished ceiling mounted up, lowering the ceiling a bit.  Chairs were lower, so chair rails were lower....well you get the point.

Your codes people are not going  to let you copy a house from the 18th or 19th century exactly, in any location where codes mean anything to them.

There are locations in the world though, where it is unlikely that the city will give a damn.  I know of rural places where the codes people are only interested in whether you are wiring up to state code, and that you have a good and approved way to handle waste water.

They recognize that you can use a composting toilet to dispose of toilet waste, and that there are alternative methods of getting your water and getting rid of your water and that is just about the end of their interference.

If you can find one of these places then you can build one of these simple houses in the old way without too many compromises. 

If you cannot, then you will have to modify your plans to suit all modern codes. Your windows will not be made in the same way.  Your foundation will be different.  You will have to have higher ceilings, windows that will be a certain size and shape.  Materials will have to be of certain dimensions and you must use minimum R values in the insulation of the walls, roof and cellar.  Then they will be looking at your heating source.... and so it will go.

There are many rules that make good sense, but many are subject to alternative solutions...and that is what I like about rural and reasonable towns.

I love using candles and oil lamps etc. for my lighting.  I like composting toilets... If you want a traditional look, put your composting toilet in an outhouse with a solid floor.  I only use electricity to charge my phone and computer, and that is the way I want it to stay.  My carbon footprint is pretty small.  Over here, it is very common to shop for every meal and so refrigeration is a non-issue. and I only drive to a bigger town once a month or so.  Even my gasoline(benzina) consumption is minimal.

You may wish to make concessions for your comfort, like a gas stove or a modern heat source, but such creature comforts can easily be put into a back room or "ell" if you want your home to retain its pure design.

You really should insulate well, and that can be done without too many compromises.  If you do not, your feet will never be warm again in winter and you will sweat out every summer.  Fortunately there are plenty of modern insulation methods that should do the job efficiently.

In my little stone house in the mountains I heat to temperature in the morning.  It goes most of the day without heat.(unless I am sitting there for some reason)  Then I heat it well when I come home to read or sit with friends.  At bed time...which is fairly early now... I heat it up and turn off the heat till morning except in the bitterest cold.  Good insulation has served me well, even with poorly fitting windows.

That reminds me to mention something I have probably said before.  Before Jimmy Carter and the first great fuel shortage, it was mandatory to have a complete change of air in the house every 8 hours.  When prices went up, houses tightened up and mold started growing inside houses all over the country!

I like my gas heat...It needs air to burn properly and my loose, ancient windows serve me well, keeping be breathing easily.

The gas flame and the fireplaces all lend a beautiful glow to the rooms...flickering their light on the 500 year old chestnut beams and stone interior walls...the exterior walls have a thin insulation.

I used an old method.  Cellulose ground up and mixed with an adhesive was sprayed on the stone... smoothed slightly and spray painted. It will probably be a nightmare to remove, but who cares what happens to my successors!  Oops...I sound like a senator from a coal state or a CEO, don't I.

So, where do I begin....

Very early houses, my favorite being a Cape Cod, were as small as they could be to enclose a rectangular space.  A cube shape is one of the best...and a sphere is perfect, but neither will give you much period charm.

Capes were very efficient.  Most are not too terribly far off a square and the lowish roof contained floor space with the roof covering the square with few cubic feet to heat...Low eaves you know.
I like to build a roof with a 12/12 pitch, but there can be a lot of wasted heat in a high peak.  Tiny houses are no problem as they do not end up with that much headroom.

I love the ticket booth at Blithewold in Rhode Island, but I guess it would be impractical.

 

I guess the Cape is the best choice for maximum space and efficiency...so I will discuss that first.

 

Most 18th century houses...OOPS...all 18th century houses were POST AND BEAM...

The best frames were of oak.  But many regions have a serious shortage of oak, so, perhaps hemlock would do.  Many early homes were of pine, but if you must use a softwood, it might be better to use something that does not mind a little damp without deteriorating.  Cedar might be good, but I doubt if long floor or roof beams will stay very straight for long with gravity dragging them down.  More complex joist patterns might help this.

 

 

Local people might tell you what is traditional in your area, and search for tables on the Internet that tell you how long a span you can get from a certain size beam in various species..  Nevertheless, Oak is the frame of choice.  There will be those who will criticize various woods, but if you check what the spans can be, use what you can get, possibly cutting them for yourself.  (Members that will be inside the house with no possible contact with the weather, might be anything you want as long as they won't sag)

 

 

 

This frame has raised corner posts that give more headroom on the second floor...a later choice than my favorites. and a continuous top plate so probably stick built or front and back bents. probably a barn.

 

My early house in Maine had floor joists made of un-peeled(8-10 inch) pine logs 22 feet long, still in place after 235 years...they needed a little support in the middle, but they still held up.

If post and beam construction is not in the cards, just use modern lumber, and make false corner beam boxes, and use them to hide wiring, plumbing, air conditioning and heat ducts.

 

Post and beam construction might be built stick by stick to make the frame, but most frames were made in "BENTS".

 

Basically, the entire gable end of the building in a cape would be constructed in a single piece(minus the sill).  Then the interior walls would be constructed in a similar way, but with a configuration made to allow doors and rooms to pass through them.  Usually there would be four bents.  The gable, made with even the wall studs attached or notched into them, a bottomless pentagon with a point at the top.  Then one pentagon on the near side of the central fireplace/chimney stack.  Another similar one on the far side of the chimney(the stair hall, fireplaces etc., would be sandwiched between these two) and the far gable end pentagon beyond that.

 

Sill plates went all around the foundation(this could be field stone, or just a big stone under each post.) We might even substitute a rectangle of doubled, pressure treated 2x material, under the sill plate/beams. The sill plates would be the entire perimeter obviously(pegged together at the joints by tenons from the vertical posts of the bents), with two main beams crossing from front to back of the building under the two central bents.

 

Horizontal top plate beams would notch into each bent at the eaves and ridge(sometimes no ridge, but I think you would regret that) and fit between the bents as they are successively raised to vertical.

The vertical posts had tenons that fit into mortises in the sills.

 

A good book on post and beam construction will help a lot, but you would be surprised how different modern frames can be from old ones.

 

I have told you about it before, but I suggest you look for a book called: "The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay 1625-1725".  by Abbot Lowell Cummings which I describe in more detail elsewhere in this blog.

 

The very best thing about a post and beam cape is that you can build most of it completely alone till you get to the roof joists as none of the members are terribly long.  With a "come along" or winch or car and a pulley, you might even get those up alone.  The bents are terribly heavy, but if you do not have a winch, you can build the bents piece by piece standing up instead of lifting the whole thing up after assembly.  Again...you need some kind of winch. (piece by piece you end up lifting the top plates and cross beams and those are heavy, but you have the rest of the frame to help you to lift.)

 

If you have access to very long logs, build an A of two logs,(or a three legged tepee) chained or tied together(consult your boy scout manual from the fifties) and use that A to lift heavy loads into place with a winch. This is great if you do not have an over head point of attachment to lift heavy loads like a very large tree.

 

Your only tricky part in building piece by piece is fitting in the corner braces...more on this later.

 

 

It is tough finding very long trees suitable for sills and top plates, so the size of this house is limited.  The alternative is to join beams end to end with scarf joints to allow more length.  Building piece by piece allows for more length as well.  A house 40 by 36 was a pretty big example.  Also any larger made for a short squat looking house as the height of ceilings did not increase proportionately.  You do not want it to look like a toadstool just emerging from the ground.

 

Ceiling heights did  not often exceed 7 feet, and big Summer Beams(big beams that ran from fireplace bent to gable bent parallel to the front.  These were not always used.) might only be 6 feet 5 to 7 inches. early houses felt higher if no ceiling was applied to the joists.  The  bare skeleton gave more visual height though the dark wood overhead did not help.

 

Old houses rarely had a lot of exposed wood on the inside.  They were very practical people and knew that white plaster would reflect light and make for lighter rooms.  Later, exposed wood would be painted, sometimes in light colors as time went on.  Only wood of extremely high quality would remain exposed almost always at least painted.  As time went on, papers and colored walls were possible and of course lighting improved to help the dark rooms. 

Some paint colors were very elegant...Grays, peaches, forest and pine greens...but others could be real eye openers especially startling cerulean blues!

 

Many of the colors we think of as Colonial have been copied from colors that have been uncovered after being on walls for a couple of centuries...dirty, faded, greasy.  Mount Vernon corrected some of their colors and threw people into a tizzy when they saw them...

 

To be continued.....