|
Page 44 EARLY ARCHITECTURE
and frequently the joists were hewn in the same way. One carpenter
related that when he was called in to construct a house, in
measuring the joists hewn out of trees, he discovered they were two
feet too long. When he called the attention of his employer to this
matter the man replied, "That is too bad. I will have to have new
ones. If they had been too short, we might have spliced them".
Every foot of the lumber that went into these houses had to be
worked by hand, after being dried in a rude dry kiln erected for
that purpose. Very few houses were plastered, for the reason that it
was too expensive. Sand had to be hauled long distances, lime was a
commodity that could scarcely be purchased nearer than Bellefonte,
but the white pine boards were at hand, and the carpenter with his
plane could smooth off the surface, plow and groove the boards, and
nail them on the wall much cheaper than lime and sand could be
obtained. Lath for plastering had to be split from the trees.
Panel doors were all made by hand, as well as the window sash, and
all of the window frames. The flooring was all planed by hand, and
likewise the weatherboarding. The usual size of a house was eighteen
by thirty feet, with a kitchen probably sixteen by sixteen, or
sixteen by eighteen feet, a story and a half, or two stories high.
To build a house required three or four carpenters an entire season.
Of course the shingles were all split and shaved. The inside doors
were usually what was called batten doors, made by planing the
lumber and fitting it together with cross bars. The hardware for a
house of this kind consisted of nails, window glass, and door locks,
and this material was not very expensive.
Some of the earlier door locks were made by blacksmiths, and
occasionally one can be found in the country. If a chimney were
erected, it was usually built of sandstone, and the only part that
would be of brick, if any, would be that above the roof. Bricks were
scarce and had to be hauled long distances, and about all the bricks
anyone could afford to place in a chimny or flue, was from the attic
floor up through the roof. From the stove up to the flue was a stove
pipe, extending through the second floor.
Of course, there was a "raising" in the construction of a frame
house. At this age, it would be considered foolish, but in the early
days when the carpenter got the frame work of the house in shape,
they then called in the neighbors to raise it.
A studding frame was rarely used. Nearly all the houses were built
of two thicknesses of two inch white pine plank, on the outside of
which the weatherboarding was nailed, and the lining was nailed on
the inside. If a studding frame were built, pine posts about eight
inches square were used for corners and then the studding strung
along between, upon which to nail the weatherboarding and the
lining. A house constructed in this manner usually had the spaces
between the studding filled with sawdust, but some of them had short
pieces of white pine scantling laid one upon the other in the spaces
between the studding, the full height of the building.
|
