HOUSE AND GARDEN 
A Y, 1912 
28 
A Southern Maine house which is worth the time of examination for 
remodeling 
occasions some ex])ense. Your lot should be above the road level 
and rather drain onto it than receive drainage from it. Old 
houses, as a general rule, had 
their living-room facing the 
street, and unless there be a 
chance easily to arrange the 
plan to accommodate a good 
rearward view, your being 
below the road or too near to 
it might be a serious objection. 
Our forefathers had little time 
to sit about and view the beau¬ 
ties of Nature, and it is very 
likely that their taste leaned 
but slightly in such a direction. 
This nearness to the road is 
very apt to be a menace, ow¬ 
ing to its lack of privacy 
under most conditions. It is 
rather a hard problem to han¬ 
dle successfully at times, and 
should be considered and Such a building as 
solved, in outline at least, dur¬ 
ing the first survey. 
One thing on which the possibilities of the place largely hinge 
is the outlook. We who have time to take up with the problem 
at all will demand this. Now what is the character of your view? 
Is it unobstructable, i. e.. can future developments destroy it? 
If the view is locally obstructed—that is, on the land itself, one 
can nearly always remedy it, but the outside obstruction is be¬ 
yond this. 
The general character of the surface of the plot is a thing to be 
noted well at the start. On this too, in a measure, depends the 
vital question of water supply and drainage. A local elevation 
or an easy slope is perhaps preferable to level ground, although 
the latter is reasonably safe from the menace of drainage from 
outside sources. It is better that your lot should drain into your 
neighbor’s than his into yours. The local hollow is bad in many 
ways: everything flows into it; it is naturally damp and, being- 
more or less cut off from the winds, is open to the invasion of 
frosts. The too steep grade, however, is a thing to be avoided 
on general principles, as there is a tendency to washouts in all 
your surface contours—gardens, grass plots, drives, walks and 
the like and, further, the climb involved in some approaches be¬ 
comes a hardship, and if one calculates to remove to such property 
later in life, the objection is doubled. 
Another thing as regards land contours is the general objec¬ 
tion to high land in the immediate vicinity in any other direction 
than the north. Land sloping toward the south or southeast is, 
under ordinary conditions, the best that can be had. Of course 
locality has much to do with this as well as the direction of pre¬ 
vailing winds, and as these last play a very important part in the 
summer problem, they should be borne in mind. Although local 
conditions may vary with different localities, the location and in¬ 
fluence of the sun is the same wherever one may go. With this 
to consider it is natural that the living-room of the house should 
be so located as to avoid the hot sun of a summer afternoon, 
and hence the outlook is best toward the east or southeast. Now 
of course it is hardly to be expected that one will find an example 
that embodies all the choicest points of the ideal condition, but 
the vital things should be insisted upon; one may perhaps jockey 
a little with the rest. 
Water supply and drainage should be considered together, 
while in practice they should be kept apart. The ordinary water 
supply of the country is the dug well, and this should be as far 
from your ultimate drainage as is possible. It must cast a sus¬ 
picious eye, too, on the barnyard, pig-pen and the outhouse, and 
if located near these should by all means be well above them in 
grade. It is hard to determine without actually tearing everything 
to pieces just what direction 
the underground strata pitches. 
Therefore it is safer to give 
any source of contamination a 
wide berth. In cautioning the 
water supply to avoid the 
drainage, we are regulating the 
latter to its proper place, yet 
here it might be well to con¬ 
sider that your neighbor has a 
water supply and to consider 
this in your general rough solu¬ 
tion of the problem. 
Do you intend to do a little 
gardening, the presence of good 
soil and a fairly level garden 
plot are important. 
Outside of a rather hasty 
first survey of the land the 
house itself naturally engages 
our immediate attention. We 
will assume that the exterior is 
fairly pleasing or suggestive of possibilities; let us then pass to 
the interior, as this is the key to all our troubles. 
An old home at Gray, Me., that is interesting but really beyond recovery 
this has possibilities for making a livable and 
attractive home 
