The war with the masons is short and sharp; that with the carpenters long and tedious.  There are ten thousand ways you don’t want a thing done, only one that suits you.  Setting partitions looks like easy work; I don’t believe a house was ever built in which all of them and the doors through them were in just the right places.  I know they ’re not in mine.  I’d give three times the cost of the door if one of them could be moved, two inches, and as much more if another could be made six inches wider.  I tried to have one of the mantels set in the middle of one side of the room, but somehow it got fixed just enough away from the centre to look everlastingly awkward.

The rough work gets covered up pretty quickly, but it pays to keep watch and see that the spikes are put in where they belong; that the back plastering reaches quite up to the plate and down to the sill; that timbers are not left without visible means of support, or hung by “toe-nails” when they ought to be well framed and pinned.  It’s hard to make a carpenter believe that plastering cracks because his joists and furrings and studs won’t hang together, but it’s true a good many times.  You like, also, to have something more than a good man’s assurance, that the furnace pipes are “all right,” and will sleep better on windy nights if you have seen all exposed corners guarded by a double lining.

The gas-man had his work to do over because some of the drop-lights were not in the centre of the ceilings.

I tremble to think of what might have been if I had left the painter to his own devices.  It seems very clear to say you’ll have the outside painted a sort of a kind of subdued gray, with trimmings a little darker, bordering on a brown; but unless you stand over the paint-tub with a loaded revolver, you’ll get anything but what you expect.  It may be a great deal better, but it won’t be what you wanted.  By the way, there’s a great responsibility resting on the painters,—­I don’t mean the old masters, nor the young ones either, who seem to have forgotten that outside decoration was once considered quite worthy the tallest genius,—­but the more modest artisans, who call themselves house and sign painters.  Their broad brush often makes the beauty or the ugliness of a whole village.  I’m ready for any suggestions on the subject.  Hanging the doors is another point that needs watching.  They’ll be sure to open the wrong way.  I’ve had three changed already, and I’ll never hang another door with less than three butts, whatever its size.  I suppose they always settle more or less.  Why don’t the workmen make allowance for it in fixing the catches?  I tremble when I think of the painters, but I rejoice at my watchfulness when I reflect on the plumbing.  The chances for leaking and freezing and bursting; the hidden pipes and secret crooks that were possible and only avoided by constant oversight!  Now I can put my hand on every foot of pipe in the house, know where it goes