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BOOK REVIEW

How to sound smart when talking houses
By JANE GADD

Friday, June 17, 2005 Page G8

House About It
By Sheri Koones

Gibbs Smith, publisher | 360 pages - $34.95

For newcomers to the world of home building and renovations, much can get lost in translation during baffling conversations with contractors and tradesmen.

They may be speaking the same language as you, but the words don't always have the same meaning.

This chunky encyclopedia-cum-phrasebook can help anyone operate in the foreign tongues of bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and engineers, and interpret the strange utterances of sales people at building supply stores.

"Book size," for example, has nothing to do with books or even bookshelves. It's the term for the measurements of a door before it is fitted.

An "apron" isn't just found in the kitchen. To a carpenter, it means the horizontal trim board under the window; to a mason, it's a transition space, such as the one sloping away from a garage door.

"Flashing" is not just a hobby of exhibitionists, it's also a water-resistant material used to protect the joints between parts of a building.

"Pickling" isn't just for eggs. It's a process of aging wood to make it look antique.

A "knee brace" isn't just a support after careless skiing; it's a small timber that is framed diagonally between a post (upright piece of wood) and a beam (horizontal piece of wood).

And a "stretcher" may be a useful device after said careless skiing, but not if it's the mason's type, which refers to a brick laid lengthwise along a wall with the narrow edge facing outward.

The diagrams, instructions and glossary pulled together by author Sheri Koones, a Connecticut columnist who's tried her own hand at home building, can save a reader many hours of legwork.

"When I started building my own house, I didn't know the difference between a casement window and a double-hung window," she writes. "It took several trips to hardware stores and several conversations with salespeople to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each."

For those who don't know, casement windows open at the side like a door while double-hung windows consist of two halves that both slide up and down.

Of course, there are many more window options and Ms. Koones has been meticulous in listing and describing them. Awning, bay, bow, box, eyebrow, eyelid, hopper, jalousie, mullioned, oriel, palladian, quatrefoil, ribbon and transom windows are all covered in the book.

If the choice of windows seems daunting, consider the variety of bricks and how to put them together.
There are six different words for a brick, depending on its orientation and position in a wall.

There's the already-mentioned stretcher. Then there's header (laid on broad side, short end facing outward), rowlock (laid on narrow edge, short end facing outward), shiner (laid on narrow edge with broad face outward), soldier (upright with narrow edge facing outward) and sailor (upright with broad face outward).

A variety of designs can be achieved using combinations of brick placement. Even if you're conservative and just use tiers of stretchers, your choices aren't over. Ms. Koones details eight different "bonds," or running patterns for laying one row on top of the next, that create different visual effects.