Back before my mind floats that phrase, "Buried in this burg." If a person has ability, will not the world learn it?
"If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or sing a more glorious song than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."
That a personal experience story may be utilized to show readers how to do something is demonstrated in the following article taken from The Designer. It was illustrated by a half-tone made from a wash drawing of one corner of the burlap room.
A Bedroom in Burlap
The Most Satisfactory Room in Our Bungalow
BY KATHERINE VAN DORN
Our burlap room is the show room of our bungalow. Visitors are guided through the living-room, the bedroom, the sleeping-porch and kitchen, and allowed to express their delight and satisfaction while we wait with bated breath for the grand surprise to be given them. Then, when they have concluded, we say:
"But you should see our burlap room!" Then we lead the way up the stairs to the attic and again stand and wait. We know what is coming, and, as we revel in the expressions of admiration evoked, we again declaim with enormous pride: "We made it all ourselves!"
When we came to the bungalow last spring the family numbered three instead of the two of the year before. Now number three, a healthy and bouncing young woman, necessitated a "sleeping-in" maid if her parents were ever to be able to detach themselves from her person. We had never had a sleeping-in maid at the bungalow before and the problem of where to put her was a serious one. We well knew that no self-respecting servant would condescend to sleep in an attic, although the attic was cool, airy and comfortable. We rather thought, too, that the maid might despise us if we gave her the bedroom and took up our quarters under the rafters. It would be an easy enough matter for carpenters and plasterers to put a room in the attic, but we lacked the money necessary for such a venture. And so we puzzled. At first we thought of curtains, but the high winds which visit us made curtains impracticable. Then we thought of tacking the curtains top and bottom, and from this the idea evolved. The carpenter whom we consulted proved to be amenable to suggestion and agreed to put us up a framework in a day. We helped. We outlined the room on the floor. This took two strips of wood about one and a half by two inches. The other two sides of the room were formed by the wall of the attic and by the meeting place of the roof and floor—that is, there was in reality no fourth wall; the room simply ended where floor and roof met. Two strips were nailed to the rafters in positions similar to those on the floor, and then an upright strip was inserted and nailed fast at intervals of every three feet. This distance was decided by the fact that curtain materials usually come a yard wide. For a door we used a discarded screen-door, which, having been denuded of the bits of wire clinging to it, answered the purpose very well. The door completed the skeleton.
We used a beautiful soft blue burlap. Tacking on proved a more difficult matter than we had anticipated, owing to the fact that our carpenter had used cypress for the framework. We stretched the material taut and then tacked it fast with sharp-pointed, large-headed brass tacks, and while inserting these we measured carefully the distances between the tacks in order to keep this trimming uniform. The two walls supplied by the framework were quickly covered, but the rough wall of the attic necessitated some cutting, as we had to tack the burlap to the uprights and these had not been placed with yard-wide material in view. Above the screen-door frame was a hiatus of space running up into the peak. The carpenter had thoughtfully run two strips up to the roof and this enabled us to fill in by cutting and turning in the cloth. A corresponding space above the window received similar treatment. Then we covered the inner surface of the screen door and we had a room.