154 HOUSE PLANNING

Every woman should know how to read architectural plans.
This ability will help her to visualize a house when looking at
plans. It may save her unnecessary fatigue and inconvenience
throughout the years when she occupies a house that has been
built for her. It may in fact be an important factor in orderly,
congenial home life. The best way to understand house plans is
to draw them to scale. A brief course in house design would be
of great value to a prospective builder.

Architects often use the word plwi to mean the horizontal rep-
resentation of an area, or what is commonly known as the floor
plan. Such plans usually show walls as thick lines, windows as
thin lines, and doors as blank spaces. Complete plans should show
the direction in which doors swing and also the location of electric
outlets. Actual working drawings are further developments of
preliminary plans.

Elevations are representations of vertical areas, such as walls.
A fyfttde is the face of a building, usually the front,

Scale drawings are easily made on squared graph paper. Sheets
of paper can be pasted together for large drawings. A drawing of
convenient size results from letting % inch on the paper represent
1 foot in the actual house. When drawing the lot to scale, % inch
may represent 4 feet,

When experimenting with plans it saves time to work on firm,
transparent paper placed over the drawing on the squared graph
paper. When making changes in plans it is well to trace that por-
tion of the plan which is not to be changed. A drawing board,
T square, and triangle are helpful in drawing plans* Special pen
points and inks are useful too,

Approximate sizes of rooms of a fairly small house are given
below, These may be changed freely,

Living room-14 x 22 ft Halls-4 ft. wide,

Dining room-12 x 14 ft $tairs~~J*/2 x 12 ft

Dining alcove-7 x 9 ft, Bathroom-6 x 7 ft

Kitchen~8 x 12 ft, Lavatory-~4 x 5 ft

Bedroom-12 x 14 ft Swiroom-lOx IS ft

Bedroom-9 x 12 ft Utility-8 x 12 ft

Study^lO x 12 ft Gange-11 x 20 ft

Qo$ets~2 x 4 ft Garagt~-l8 x 20 ft