Elements of House Framing

The gutter is formed with three pieces, a bot tom and two side pieces. The side pieces are put in sloping. No gutter should be formed with perpendicular sides, making square angles in the bottom, for they are always causing trouble by freezing and bursting. Sloping sides will allow the ice to expand without any danger of injuring the gutter.

Lookouts are nailed to the ceiling joists and allowed to project in front as far as required for the cornice, and a plate spiked on top of the lookouts supports the rafters. This porch is de signed for a shingle roof, but the framing of the roof is such that any pitch can be used, even to a very flat pitch for tin roof, or any kind of a flat roof it is desired to have can be applied to this construction, for the pitch can be varied to suit without in any way interfering with any other part of the design.

Fig. 101 represents a section of house framing from sill to cornice, showing the ordinary window construction. The sills in this are framed similar to the porch, but in addition have a 2 by 4 plate put on top, which laps over on the joists, as shown. The advantage of this kind of sill and framing is that it saves the time required to cut gaines in solid sills. This kind of a sill, made of a 2 by 6, 2 by 10 and a 2 by 4, requires a little more lumber than a solid 6 by 6 sill, and if well put together we consider it fully as good as the solid sill cut full of gaines for the joists. In some large cities there are building laws prohibiting this form of construction. We presume this is principally on account of making the walls more susceptible to the spreading of fire than for lack of strength. We have good reason to believe that sills made in this way, that is, well made, are fully as strong as the solid sill ordinarily put together. If the walls were bricked up inside to level with top of floor joists, then all danger of the spreading of fire is avoided, there is something to hold the buildings solid to the foundation wall, and the result cannot fail to be satisfactory in every particular.

At C in Fig. 101 is shown the outside base water table and mold. At D the double floor, base, base mold and quarter round, the ordinary base finish of the average job. At E is shown a section through the sill of an ordinary window in a frame building, the sill, subsill, stool and apron. At F is shown a section of the casing. At G is shown a section through the side jambs and cas ings, showing outside casing, blind stop, jamb, stops, inside casing, studding and weight box.

At H is shown a section through the head, show ing outside casing, cap and mold, jamb and stops, inside casing, cap trim, etc. Above this, at K, is shown the general construction of the cor nice, etc. In this the ceiling joists extend out over the building as far as required to make the cornice. A plate on top of the ceiling joists sup ports the rafters. The roof is concaved at the bottom by nailing on circular pieces to the bot tom ends of the rafters, as shown. A standing gutter is placed on the third course of shingles on the roof. This makes a very nice finish and one much used at the present time. The porch finish and main cornice, as here shown, will work in harmony on the same house, and are well adapted to houses of the hip roof class.

Cutting Window Open ings.

There are many carpenters who cannot really figure out the proper size to cut window openings. That is, how wide the space should be between studding and how high between headers. Windows are nearly always listed and sizes given glass measure, as 24 x 32, 2-light, which *means that the window has two lights with glass twenty-four inches wide and thirty-two inches high. The width of the opening between studding should be ten inches wider than the width of the glass which, in this case, would be thirty-four inches between stud ding. The height between headers should be eleven inches more than the length of the two lights, thus two lights of thirty-two inches each will be 64 inches and eleven inches added to this will make 75 inches, or six feet and three inches. In regular two-light windows six inches is allowed for wood or sash in height, two inches top rail, one inch meeting rail and three inches for bottom rail. To this add one inch for top jamb, one inch for subsill, two inches for sill and one inch for play, which, all told, makes the eleven inches. If these figures are carefully followed no trouble in setting frames will ever occur. In large frames, such as cottage front frames, with glass 40 by 44 or approximately this size, allow eleven inches more than the width of the glass if the windows are to be hung with weights, because these win dows will require extra large weights and, conse quently, will require a little more room; but the average window will have plenty of room for weights when ten inches is allowed for the sash, jambs and weights.