near as possible to your plans. You also
have the satisfaction of knowing that, in the building, the
workmanship has been honest and thorough, and that in materials used
every advantage has been taken of the newest developments.

For instance, behind the plaster is the modern metal lath so superior
to the old wooden variety. The exterior walls are as thoroughly
insulated against heat and cold as any one of several highly efficient
materials can make them; windows and doors are products of large
wood-fabricating factories noted for superior work. All these are
points of advantage with tangible merit, but time and your own efforts
are the only means by which your new home can acquire personality and
charm. This new structure is yours, made to your desires; and what you
make of it is your own problem.

The house that you buy and remodel starts with certain attributes
given by age, as already stated. Here we must offer one caution. It
concerns houses built during the last quarter of the 19th century. The
majority were badly designed and the quality of workmanship was none
too good. Such houses are apt to be perched on high foundations, have
exterior walls that offer the minimum resistance to winter winds,
while architecturally, lines and proportions reflect an age when taste
was either bad or lacking. We know of several attempts to remodel
country homes of such vintage and are convinced that better results
could have been achieved for less money if the operation had started
with wrecking the structure and building anew.

On the contrary, except where decayed beyond salvage, we have yet to
see a country home of the 18th or first half of the 19th century that
did not respond admirably to remodeling. But it is well to be
practical and compare its cost with that of a new building. Among
architects, it is generally recognized that, save for a house with
unusually expensive details or added equipment, definite figures per
cubic foot of size may be computed that will cover the entire cost of
construction. To get the cubical contents of a house, the architect
takes the area in square feet of the ground floor and multiplies it by
the height from the cellar floor to the eaves, plus half the distance
from that point to the ridge of the roof.

For example, if the proposed house is thirty feet wide by twenty feet
deep, its floor plan area is 600 square feet. Then, if the elevation
dimensions are seven feet from cellar floor to livin