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A   Craftsman       House Design                HARVEY ELLIS
T is purposed in this design to erect a house for an average
     family, on a city or suburban lot of fifty feet front and not less
     than one hundred twenty-five feet deep. It is further assumed
     that the 'amount available for this purpose is four thousand
     dollars, a sum sufficient, with ordinary economy, to build a
structure that will be in the best sense of the word "homely."
A
house which shall be convenient, harmonious, and related in all its
parts. A structure fit and, therefore, a work of art; for nowhere is
the axiom of "fitness is beauty" so obvious as in a 'domestic struc-
ture. With the amount named, visions of stone baronial homes,
miniature Elizabethan and other architectural bric-a-brac, are, of
course, out of the question, and as a house of wood has always
a look of temporary existence, even if it be substantial, it is deemed
best to build a solid wooden frame, covered in the ordinary manner
with sheathing paper and wooden sheathing, over which is placed
metal lathe. This, in turn, is given a coat of cement, "rough cast,"
which is unimpaired by the extremes of temperature or weather,
rain or frost, and which has an interesting texture and a color vary-
ing from a dead white up to a faint creamy yellow. This, together
with a shingled roof stained a Venetian red, with the exterior wood-
work also stained (not painted) a rich, full yellow olive green, and
the interior of the house exactly expressed in constructive terms,
will reasonably result in a good design. For, to quote an old saw
of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts-"A good plan makes a good eleva-
tion-," and this is true, if the designer is honest and frank with
himself and with his material.
     Varying with local conditions, the foundations of the pro-
 posed house may be of brick or stone; care, of course, being taken
 in any event, that they are so constructed that anything like a damp
 cellar is an impossibility. This, with a competent builder and
 a proper overseer, is a matter of little difficulty.
     The framing of the house depends also on local conditions,
 and may be of either spruce or hemlock, and, in order to obviate
 shrinkage and consequent settling and cracking of plaster, prefer-
 ably what is known as balloon framed.
     It seems desirable from motives economic and aesthetic to
 make the interior finish of selected chestnut, the floors of hard pine
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