SEVEN LEVERS TO RAISE A HOUSE 307 



prevent farther ravages if its use does not interfere with future color 

 treatment. 



A difference in floor levels, when not so frequent or great as to 

 give opportunity for accident, increases the impressiveness of a house, 

 just as a plant or fountain rightly placed improves the whole aspect 

 of a room and a loggia and porte cochere add value to an exterior 

 far in excess of their cost. 



If on a side hill and the side hill house is the most economical 

 to build a cut off, stone filled trench is laid a dozen feet above the 

 cellar wall and connected with side drainage trenches, straw being 

 bedded on stones below the earth topping, an essential in making a 

 dry cellar. 



The Arched Under House. 



One of the most pleasing houses I ever built was arched-under. 

 Taking advantage of a side hill location, a small entrance vestibule 

 was arranged from which one ascended broad steps to the main hall, 

 which connected with living room, library and den, all on the first 

 floor. The kitchen, butler's pantry, and dining room were on the 

 lower road level, reached also by a stairway from the living hall. 

 This kept culinary appointments and kitchen mechanics remote from 

 gala and living rooms, while allowing more impressive dimensions 

 for the latter. 



In another under-hill house was the garage, with gasoline in a 

 near by earth-buried tank. 



Stone, Brick, and Cement. 



For stone work, the boulder laid-up-rustic, cement bedded, is 

 satisfactory, or rubble, coursed or random broken ashler-random- 

 face, or range laid smooth cut quarry in fact any stone harder than 

 soft limestone, certain grades of which disintegrate more or less 

 rapidly in this climate. Foundations should total at least twelve 

 inches wider than the superstructure. 



Tackling a spring or water course in cellar or cesspool is a try- 

 ing problem. I once spent nine hundred dollars in blasting and 

 attempting to stopper a boiling spring at the bottom of a rock-quar- 

 ried excavation intended for a cesspool. With the house gridironed 

 by pipes connected with a community reservoir, the living spring 

 was a travesty. We had better luck with a water course in the cel- 

 lar, having no ledge with w r hich to contend. Digging sufficiently 

 deep and underdraining at an incline settled the difficulty. 



Cellars. 



A stone cellar wall so built that the stones extend from the 

 exterior to the interior, binding the wall, needs extra tarring treat- 

 ment; otherwise these stones add their quota of moisture to the 

 water drawn from the ground by capillary attraction, encouraging 

 those insidious foes, fungoid growth and ground air. Weather beaten 



