In my own dining-room, where there is a gas fire, the dirt and dust is most noticeably less than in the drawing-room, where we burn coal.
I said at the beginning of this chapter that there were at least two methods of turning labour-making into labour-saving houses. Let us now suppose that we have to deal with another basement house, but that in this case the basement is neither deep nor dark.
PLATE XV
A WELL FITTED BATHROOM WITH A GAS-HEATED TOWEL RAIL AND FIXED WASHSTAND
A Second Suggestion for a Labour-Saving House.
The front room is quite light and cheerful, with a good view of the street. The back room is rather dark, and has a narrow area facing into a strip of garden. The house contains but five bedrooms, so that the basement cannot well be spared. Here I would use the front room (made very light and gay with paper and paint) as a combination servants' sitting-room, pantry, and store-room. The kitchen should be tiled if feasible—if not, papered with a white-tiled paper—and floored with black-and-white linoleum in order to make it as light as possible. The back area must be enlarged so as to give more light and air, and some steps should lead into the garden, where the maids can sit in hot weather. At present the basement consists of a front room and kitchen, coal cellars under the pavement, a lavatory, and a little piece at the end of the passage leading to the back area, which can be arranged for a knife- and boot-cleaning place. But there is no larder. This must be built. A door is cut to lead out of the kitchen into a tiny lobby, out of this lobby one door opens into the white-tiled, well-ventilated larder, and the other into the area.
The basement is now as light and airy as any basement can be. There is no scullery, but that apartment is unnecessary in most houses and certainly unnecessary in a small house where two, or at most three, servants are employed, and which contains a pleasant room in which they can sit and have their meals. The kitchen should be fitted with a gas or electric cooker and a gas or coke hot-water furnace. The front room is warmed by a gas stove, and in order to make up for the extra work entailed by the basement, a service lift is installed, with double hatches opening from kitchen and pantry, and from dining-room and smoking-room, which are directly over the kitchen and pantry.