July, i Q i 6 
House &- 
THE HIGH COST 
OF EXTRAS 
Which 
Puts 
Graphically What Often 
Also Some Don’ts For 
H a p p e n s in Building 
Home Builders 
a House 
JOHN J. KLABER 
T HEY always blame the architect, and 
it isn’t fair. Nine times out of ten the 
thing happens about like this: 
Mr. and Mrs. Commuter decide to build 
a new house. The part of town they live 
in isn’t as fashionable as it was when they 
moved there—all the best people are living 
over on the other side, and Daughter is just 
about ready to come out; and besides, they 
can get a piece of ground in a fine location 
at a bargain, because Mr. Commuter plays 
bridge on the train every day with the real 
estate man, who is a good sport. 
They have a little money laid aside, and 
after buying the ground they decide they 
can afford to spend ten thousand on the 
house. But Mrs. Smith next door has had 
experience with architects, and she warns 
them that it always costs more than you ex¬ 
pect, and if you want to get the job done for 
ten thousand you must tell the architect to 
do it for eight—and then watch him night 
and day or he’ll make it twelve. 
So they make out their program. They 
must have a living-room with a little nook 
for quiet study, and a place for the piano, 
and a big, airy dining-room, and a handy 
kitchen, and about six bedrooms, one for 
themselves, one for Daughter, one for Tom 
when he comes home from college, one for 
the two younger boys, one for a maid when 
they can get her, and a guest room. Daugh¬ 
ter thinks two guest rooms would be bet¬ 
ter, one for her friends and one for the 
boys’, but they decide not. Then, there 
must be three baths, one for the old folks 
and the guests, one for Daughter and the 
boys, and one for the occasional maid. 
Daughter wants a bathroom for herself, 
where she can keep all those little bottles 
full of—of whatever these young ladies 
use to make themselves so beautiful—with¬ 
out having the boys mess with them; but 
Daughter is overruled. And, of course, 
they must have a garage on the end of the 
lot, and a laundry tucked away somewhere, 
although in the absence of that maid they 
send out the wash most of the time. 
It makes a good ten thousand dollars’ 
worth, to get any sort of a job at all, and 
when young Mr. Triangle hears they want 
it for eight, he spends several hours trying 
to convince them of this—they know it per¬ 
fectly well, but they don’t want to admit 
it; and at last they give in, as they intended 
to do all along, but with the proviso that it 
may cost ten thousand, but not a cent more. 
Mr. Commuter is very stern and severe 
about this, and tells the architect the same 
thing ten times over, to make it very em¬ 
phatic and impressive. 
So the architect takes the program, and 
the survey of the land—without levels, be- 
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A FEW DON’TS 
for 
HOME BUILDERS 
Don’t deceive your architect as to what you 
can really afford to spend. 
Don’t be afraid to spend a few dollars for 
preliminary information. It is usually money 
well spent. 
Don’t think you can build for what your 
friends did five years ago. Both labor and ma¬ 
terials have gone up since then. 
Don’t expect solid gold door-knobs when the 
allowance for all the hardware is only fifty 
dollars. 
Don’t try to make your upstairs twice as big 
as your downstairs. 
Don’t change your mind as to what you want 
after it is half built. 
Don’t give the builder his final payment until 
the job is completely finished. 
Don’t assume that the lowest bidder will always 
be the most satisfactory. 
Don’t expect the architect to do his work fo-r 
nothing. Even architects are subject to temp¬ 
tation. 
Don’t think, either, that he knows nothing about 
building houses. He has probably built more of 
them than you have. 
And above all, don’t expect to get something 
for nothing. It can’t be done, especially when 
the other man knows the game better than you do. 
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cause they didn’t want to go to the expense, 
but they think it runs up hill about 5' on 
the north—and he sits down to work out 
a scheme. He has twice as much space to 
work out upstairs as down, so he puts the 
maid and her bath in the attic, and squeezes 
the bedrooms a bit, and makes the living- 
room very large. And he draws up a per¬ 
spective with a Colonial effect, all in shin¬ 
gles and white paint, really very effective. 
But Daughter has been reading Ivanhoe, 
and she just must have some of those cute 
little battlements, and Father thinks he 
knows how to get bargains in brick, from 
a man he met at the club—so the thing has 
to be redrawn in Tudor Gothic. This time 
Daughter thinks it’s just too darling, but 
Mother’s observant eye spots the size of that 
living-room. It’s too big, really, and in 
cutting it down the space Upstairs gets 
frightfully cramped, so they go back to 
the previous scheme. 
By hard work and the exercise of all 
the ingenuity at his command, Mr. Triangle 
succeeds in getting out the plans, and the 
bids run from twelve to fifteen thousand, 
tie told them from the first that this sort 
of architecture would cost more. So they 
go back to the Colonial; but they insist on 
brick walls, because the insurance man has 
scared them by some fire prevention litera¬ 
ture. They decide to have a shingle roof, 
though, to save money. 
The contract is let, finally, at ten thou¬ 
sand five hundred, Mr. Commuter protest¬ 
ing strongly, because houses of the same 
size and style, built ten years ago, cost two 
thousand or so less. And then the troubles 
begin. Materials have gone up, and the 
contractor, who bid low because he hated to 
lay off his men, who were just finishing 
another job, starts looking around for ex¬ 
tras which he can talk on. 
The first thing he finds is that the levels, 
which they had guessed at, because Mr. 
Commuter wouldn’t go to the expense of a 
proper survey, and wouldn’t even let the 
architect go out and look over the place, are 
away out. The ground humps up in the 
middle, just where the house ought to go, 
and the hump is mostly rock. This wouldn’t 
have made a great difference in cost, if they 
had shown it in the plans; but the con¬ 
tractor puts in a claim for twice as much 
