114 in. Great care should be taken in laying the sub-floor, especially for the thinner parquet. The boards should be in narrow widths of well-seasoned stuff and well nailed, for any movement in the sub-floor due to warping or shrinking may have disastrous results on the parquet which is laid upon it. Plated parquet consists of selected hard woods firmly fixed on a framed deal backing. It is made in sections for easy transport, and these are fitted together in the apartment for which they are intended. When secured to the joists these form a perfect floor.
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| Fig. 6.—Built-up Skirting tongued to floor. |
Skirtings.—In joinery, the skirting is a board fixed around the base of internal walls to form an ornamental base for the wall (see fig. 7). It also covers the joint between the flooring and the wall, and protects the base of the wall from injury. Skirtings may be placed in two classes—those formed from a plain board with its upper edge either left square or moulded, and those formed of two or more separate members and termed a built-up skirting (fig. 6). Small angle fillets or mouldings are often used as skirtings. The skirting should be worked so as to allow it to be fixed with the heart side of the wood outwards; any tendency to warp will then only serve to press the top edge more closely to the wall. In good work a groove should be formed in the floor and the skirting tongued into it so that an open joint is avoided should shrinkage occur. The skirting should be nailed only near the top to wood grounds fixed to wood plugs in the joints of the brickwork. These grounds are about 34 to 1 in. thick, i.e. the same thickness as the plaster, and are generally splayed or grooved on the edge to form a key for the plaster. A rough coat of plaster should always be laid on the wall behind the skirting in order to prevent the space becoming a harbourage for vermin.
Fig. 7.
Dados.—A dado, like a skirting, is useful both in a decorative and a protective sense. It is filled in to ornament and protect that portion of the wall between the chair or dado rail and the skirting. It may be of horizontal boards battened at the back and with cross tongued and glued joints, presenting a perfectly smooth surface, or of matched boarding fixed vertically, or of panelled framing. The last method is of course the most ornate and admits of great variety of design. The work is fixed to rough framed wood grounds which are nailed to plugs driven into the joints of the brickwork. Fig. 7 shows an example of a panelled dado with capping moulding and skirting. A picture rail also is shown; it is a small moulding with the top edge grooved to take the metal hooks from which pictures are hung.
Walls are sometimes entirely sheathed with panelling, and very fine effects are obtained in this way. The fixing is effected to rough grounds in a manner similar to that adopted in the case of dados. In England the architects of the Tudor period made great use of oak framing, panelled and richly carved, as a wall covering and decoration, and many beautiful examples may be seen in the remaining buildings of that period.
Windows.—The parts of a window sash are distinguished by the same terms as are applied to similar portions of ordinary framing, being formed of rails and styles, with sash bars rebated for glazing. The upright sides are styles; the horizontal ones, which are tenoned into the styles, are rails (fig. 7).
Sashes hung by one of their vertical edges are called casements (fig. 8). They are really a kind of glazed door and sometimes indeed are used as such, as for example French casements (fig. 9). They may be made to open either outwards or inwards. It is very difficult with the latter to form perfectly water-tight joints; with those opening outwards the trouble does not exist to so great an extent. This form of window, though almost superseded in England by the case frame with hung sashes, is in almost universal use on the Continent. Yorkshire sliding sashes move in a horizontal direction upon grooved runners with the meeting styles vertical. They are
