Your Vacation Home Deserves the Right Kind of Furnishings
Many vacation homes are so obviously furnished with discarded town house furniture—odds and ends from different rooms—and with misfit draperies and scraps of old carpet. After a few seasons they are likely to look like a cross between a second-hand store and a rummage sale. Rooms containing such odds and ends can scarcely be called restful and yet a cabin home is supposed to exist for rest and relaxation.
The fold-away bed is popular in well-ordered cabins. You can buy the old-style apartment house beds or construct the folding arrangement yourself with hinges or braces and legs as shown. The shelf and curtain plan is the simplest way to conceal it, but if you want better appearance in the daytime, recess the bed into a closet to fit and enclose it with doors.
Four single bunks arranged Pullman style provide a lot of sleeping capacity in a small room. However, don’t overlook the problem of comfortable ventilation.
Imitation log siding made the framework and finish for these built-in bunks. Note that space between the bunks is sufficient for daytime lounging without striking a tall lounger’s head against the upper bunk.
If you are buying new furniture, give consideration to the newer so-called California style furniture, which retains the Spanish or Mission influence. It is now made by various manufacturers. It has simplicity and sturdiness, is not easily damaged, and does not need a great deal of care. It is perhaps the most distinctive kind of furniture for the purpose and, when set in an environment of rustic simplicity with gay fabrics and correct accessories, is admirably suited to informal living.
Here is a space saving arrangement—a bunk and trundle bunk. The bunk at the right slides through the living room wall and under the high bunk in the bedroom. A variation of this arrangement is a bed that slides through the living room wall to the sleeping porch so you can sleep indoors or out as fancy dictates. From the W. B. Fairweather beach home at Balboa Island, Calif.
TRUNDLE BUNK ROLLS UNDER
If old furniture must be used, try the magic of paint. It is wonderful what may be accomplished with some cans of paint and brushes. Then cover the old seating pieces with some gay cretonne slip covers, use the same fabrics at the windows, and a cheerful, colorful result is obtained.
When refinishing old furniture try remodeling it to fit its new surroundings. Chest and chairs and such, dating from the early days of the century, are likely to have a lot of gingerbread decoration. By removing as much of this as possible and getting down to the simple basic lines of the piece much improvement may be made.
These bunks, attractively curtained with cretonne, fit into the atmosphere of the cabin living room without detracting from its appearance. If the curtains are made to slide closed, Pullman fashion, they provide privacy for an early retirer.
Folding or sliding doors from the living room or bedroom to the sleeping porch help make the beds more accessible to the center of things in the cabin. If you have double-deck bunks on the porch, provide a second door and ladder to it. From an arrangement in the Walter Doty home, Los Altos, Calif.
Before painting any piece previously coated with shellac or varnish go over it with varnish remover or use a hook scraper and steel wool, cleaning down to the bare wood. Apply a coat of flat white and, when dry, at least two coats of one of the quick-drying enamels. Go over each coat with very fine sandpaper or steel wool and brush off the resulting dust before applying the next coat.
If you are working with maple, walnut or cherry, the natural color of the wood is often more pleasing than a paint or stain. Remove all traces of enamel, stain or varnish and sand the surfaces smooth. Then apply a thin coat of clear shellac—orange if you prefer—and after sanding this once more polish with ordinary prepared wax.
Steamer style bunks are particularly effective in the beach house. The ladder provides safe and easy access to the upper one. Don’t overlook the possibility of providing drawers for storage space beneath the lower bunks. From the Seton I. Miller residence, Van Nuys, Calif.
A unique arrangement of fireside seats made from automobile seats, which may be bought at any wrecking yard. Special framework has been constructed to hold the seats at the correct height and angle. The upholstery may be covered with material to match the decorative scheme of the room.
SMALL TABLES
This rustic version of a four-poster bed is made of four-inch posts with a large pine cone on the top. The post may be with or without bark and the framework may also be of poles instead of finished lumber.