To those who live in an old house, all the foregoing advice should prove a source of helpfulness in making the best of the old home, rather than of dissatisfaction with its seeming shortcomings. There are many simple, inexpensive ways of making it conform to the model house. Expense need only be incurred in sanitary improvement, such as the better drainage of the cellar, enabling it to be utilized for purposes which now crowd the "work-rooms" of the home, and the alterations of the windows to permit better lighting and ventilation. Very often a room can be made to exchange purposes by a simple transference of furniture, thus saving the housekeeper steps. A woodhouse can be converted into a summer kitchen, and the old one, during this season, used as a dining-room, though it may be found even pleasanter to eat out of doors under an arbor or on a wide piazza. A porch may be partitioned off into a laundry, and the attic ceiled and partitioned for use as a bedroom. Very often an old boxed-off stairway, built in the days when it was thought unseemly to show a connection with the upper bedrooms, can be relieved of its door and walls, to the increase of space in the lower room, and of the beauty of its appearance. Indeed, as a rule, there are too many doors in an old house. Some of these can be altered into open arched entrances, making one large commodious room out of two little inconvenient ones. Unused out-buildings can be turned into playrooms for the children, and even sleeping quarters. All these are changes that make for the beauty no less than the utility of home, as proved by the fact that many artists, especially those who have studied abroad where old country houses are more or less of this unconventional character, go into the country and alter in this fashion old and even abandoned houses into houses admired for their charming individuality. Illustrations of such "hermitages" frequently appear in the magazines, and may be studied for suggestions. Sometimes the alteration is of the exterior only. The repainting in a proper color, or the simple creosote staining of a weather-beaten house, with the addition of a rustic porch or the breaking of a corner bedroom into a balcony, will sometimes so transform an old house that it looks as if it were a new creation.
CHAPTER VI
FURNITURE AND DECORATION
The Qualities to Be Sought in Furniture—Home-made Furniture—Semi-made Furniture—Good Furniture as an Investment—Furnishing and Decorating the Hall—The Staircase—The Parlor—Rugs and Carpets—Oriental Rugs—Floors—Treatment of Hardwood—Of Other Wood—How to Stain a Floor—Filling as a Floor Covering.
Necessity invented stools,
Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
And Luxury the accomplished sofa last.
WILLIAM COWPER—The Task.
Utility, comfort and elegance are, as Cowper shows, the three successive purposes for which furniture was designed. And to-day the order of development remains also the order of importance. The first things to be desired in any article of furniture are durability and simple application to its purpose. These being found, a person naturally looks to see if the use of them will contribute to his physical pleasure as well as his convenience, that the back of a chair is the right height and curvature to fit his back, and the seat is not so deep as to strain his legs; that the table or desk is one he can spread his legs under in natural fashion, and rest his elbows upon with ease; in short, that the furniture conforms to his bodily requirements, as the chair and bed of the "wee teenty bear" suited exactly the little old woman of Southey's tale. Last of all, the aesthetic pleasure, the appreciation of beauty by the mind, decides the choice in cases of equal utility and comfort. The artistic considerations are so many that furniture has become a branch of art, like sculpture or painting, with a large literature and history of its own.
Since most authorities on the subject largely ignore the questions of utility and comfort, devoting themselves to the questions of aesthetic style, it will be useful to our purpose here to confine the discussion to the neglected qualities. As a rule, a durable, useful, and comfortable article is a beautiful one. At least it has the beauty of "grace," by which terms the old writers on aesthetics characterized perfect adaptation to purpose, and the beauty of what they called "homeliness," or, as we would now say, since this term has been perverted, of "hominess," the suggestion of adding to the pleasure of the household.
The quality of "hominess" is greatly increased in an article of furniture by a frank look or "home-made" appearance. There is no more delightful occupation for the leisure hours of a man or woman, and no more useful training for a boy or girl, than the making of simple articles of home furniture. Really, the first article of furniture which should be brought into the house is a well-equipped tool-chest, and the first room which should be fitted up is the workshop. A vast amount of labor will be saved thereby in unpacking, adjusting, repairing, and polishing the old and the new household articles, so that life in the new home be begun under the favorable auspices of the great household deity, the Goddess of Order. When it is further considered that often small repairs made by a carpenter cost more than a new article, the tool-chest will be valued by the family as a most profitable investment.
If it is not possible to procure the proper materials and tools for making the entire article, some part of the work, the shaping, and certainly the staining and polishing, can be done at home. If the visitor does not recognize the home quality in such an article, the maker does, and will always have a pride and affection for it.