Mary! What are you doing?  Mrs. Jones raised her arms in amazement as she watched her daughter emerge from under a big chair and cried again,  Mary! Your hair

Hull, Thirza

English

"Mary! What are you doing?" Mrs. Jones raised her arms in amazement as she watched her daughter emerge from under a big chair and cried again, "Mary! Your hair!"</p

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2 THE IOWA HOMEMAKER Refinishing Your Personality "MARY! What are you doing?" Mrs. Jones raised her arms in amazement as she watched her daughter emerge from under a big chair and cried again, "Mary! Your hair!" "It is just old dry paint, mother, and it will shake right out when I am through. I just couldn't stand living in this room another minute! Everything is so shiny and hard and nothing matches. And the curtains are so bright and harsh that they make the furniture all the worse. It's such old furniture that you don't mind, do you-my trying to take the shine off?" Mary ran to the shiny oak dresser she hated so and came back with her hands full of printed material. "See, mother, bulletins from the Home Economics Ex· By THIRZA HULL tension Service at Ames on 'Refinishing Furniture'-so if I follow direct:ons I really can't hurt the furniture much. And it will look so much better. I feel out of place in her as it is. See, it says here-" Before she knew it, Mrs. Jones was busily reading the bulletins that Mary thrust in her hands. After a while she said, "It does sound all right, Mary. You can do what you want to with your room. I guess it's no harm to try things once." Left alone to do as she pleased, Mary worked harder than ever. At last her room was to be her own, was to look as she wished it to and was to be the ex-pression of herself. Mary was an eigh-teen year old school girl with soft brown hair and blue eyes; with the des;re for dainty feminine things. She had a room planned out in her mind which was really lovely and excellent in taste-a color scheme of lavender and green with a touch of soft orange and dream furniture of walnut. When she thought of that room and then looked at her ugly black bedstead that vied with the golden oak dresser and nondescript chairs and tables she almost lost faith in herself for a moment. But now she had a fresh hope; her mother approved. As she industriously scraped off paint from all the furniture she held the vision of her room before her, for refinishing furniture takes lots of time and plenty of strength and endurance. But Mary was young and strong and the paint came off easily under the combined instru· r Continued on page 15) Changing a House Into a Home By R. M. BAILIE Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering. Before. I ~ almost every city or town one sees old houses, or even comparatively new ones, which possess little architectu· ral distinction, but which offer possib~ li~ ties of improvement. In some cases the cost involved in making the desired changes might be too· great; in others, much could be accomplished with moder~ ate expenditure, or the cost might be lightened by extending the contemplated changes over a period of years. In purchasing a house with remodeling in view, one should consider its struc-tural condition, its general layout, and the possibilities of improvement. A thor~ ough examination of the foundation . walls, floors, windows, doors, etc., is most important, since only good construction would justify the additional expenditure. As an example of how a "house" may be changed into a "home," the accom~ panying illustrations are submitted. In~ spection of the plans will show that no exterior openings exce.pt those in the liv~ ing room have been changed, and no bear~ ing walls have been removed. On the other hand, a few windows have been added, and some partitions taken away. The most radical change consists in the removal of the front porch and the ex~ tension of one side of the front gable to enclose a sheltered approach, vestibule and coat closet; three essentials of any house planned for this climate. By the change, additional closet space is gained in the two principal bed rooms on the second floor. The original front porch was too nar~ row to be practicable, and its place could be filled by the addition of an enclosed porch at the rear of the house, where pri~ vacy and a view of the garden may be ob-tained. This addition may be made at some future date when the budget will permit. The floor space of the living room has been increased and the room brightened by the addition of a large bay window, which in turn adds character to the exterior. The closets and built-in wardrobes in the bed rooms have been removed or changed to increase the floor space and • to reduce the number of breaks in the walls of the rooms. Windows have been added to secure cross ventilation. The broad overhang of the eaves has been cut back and replaced with a close cornice of modest character. The appli-cation of stucco, which may be had in a variety of textures and colors, increases the beauty of the exterior, forms addi-tional insulation against heat and cold, and greatly reduces the cost of upkeep. · Rep:acement of the plain glass win-dows by divided glass might not prove economical or necessary, but would go far toward increasing external charm. Some of the windows might be further dress ed by means of blinds with plain panels or shutters. The interior of the house may be brightened by refinishing the walls, trim and floors in the order given. It is not necessary to do this all at once, but as permitted by the budget. For refinishing walls, flat paint will be found more economical than water color. While its first cost is greater, it permits cleaning, and will retain its fresh appear-ance longer than water color. If the lat-ter has been used, it is desirable to re-move it by washing before applying s;ze and paint. Adjoining rooms, such as the living room, dining room and vestibule, should be treated with the same color. Bed rooms may receive individual treat-ment. The kitchen and bath room should be finished with flat wall enamel or some similar finish which will stand many washings. The wood trim may be stained and waxed or stained and varnished or enam-eled. H enameled finish is desired in place of either of the other two finishes, it will be necessary to apply varnish re-mover before proceeding. A coat of flat paint, a coat of half and half, and a coat of enamel gives a satisfacwry result over old woodwork. If the floors are in bad condit:on, they should be re-sanded, stained and filled, shellaced, and waxed or varnished. If they are not in bad condition, a light sanding before applying wax or varnish may suffice. Linoleum makes an econom-ical covering for kitchen and bath room floors, and its life is greatly increased if it is properly cemented to the wood floor. After. • • Refinishing Your Person~ ality (Continued from page 2) ments she used-a knife blade, a p;ece of glass and a razor blade. Before she start-ed to scrape paint she had chiseled off the meaningless machine made carvings that had embellished the golden oak dresser and the bed. The bed resisted all efforts to be scraped clean of its paint and varnish until a commercial varnish remover was applied. The remover dis-solved the varnish and it came off easily and with it went part of the black paint under it. When the bed stood in all its revealed glory of black walnut, Mary was elated until she discovered some stains on the wood. Part of them came off under the application of oxal!c acid and the rest disappeared when the surface was smoothed with sandpaper and steel wool. 1-n using either of these, the proper way is to start out with a coarse grade and follow It up with a finer grade. The stains removed, Mary next applied a thin coat of raw linseed oil, rubbing it in well because the wood was old and dry. Then she applied a coat of wax, rubbing it in and polishing it with a circular mo-tion, following the grain of the wood. Mary was overjoyed at the result. She hardly recognized this lovely walnut bed as the one that had been so black and ugly such a short time before. The oak dresser looked hopeless to Mary. She knew from a careful perusal of the bulletins that stain would never cover up the terrible yellow of the wood, so she decided to turn it into a dressing table. The dresser was not a large one, and after Mary had taken off the elabo-rately carved structures that held the mir-ror it looked even smaller. She covered the top of the dresser with lavender sateen, fastened it down we .. and then put a piece of glass over it. The offend-ing yellow of the drawers was covered completely by a shirred cover of apple green organdie over lavender sateen. The irame o,· the mirror she painted apple green and hung it from the molding with lavender cords. One of the nondescript chairs was painted apple green to match and a cushion was made of black sateen and piped with lavender and orange. Mary was so enthusiastic after this complete transformation of her old oak dresser that she called her mother, and Mrs. Jones, becoming as enthusiastic as her daughter, started to make curtains of lavender and green voile while Mary went on scraping and staining and paint-ing. At the end of a week Mary's room had begun to express her personality. The dressing table had acquired ·a pair of orange candles, the bed boasted a quilt appliqued in lavender and green that had belonged to Mary's grandmother, and the little walnut table by the window with the ladder back chair to match had a lamp with a lavender base and a dainty green shade shirred to match the dress-ing table. When Mary finds time, be-tween the moments when she is refin-ishing the rest of the furniture in the . house, she is going to crochet rag rugs for her room and make covers for some of her favorite books that are always on her table. When anyone sees the room, he expresses the wish that he might meet the owner of such a charming person-ality. THE IOWA HOMEMAKER As Mrs. Jones said, "It is no harm to try things once." We agree that it is certainly not harmful to take the ugly shiny finishes off lovely old walnut pieces or to paint over the ugly golden oak rock-ers in the living room. The home is sup-posed to express the personality and taste of the owner. This does not mean that in striving to express personality we should purchase a lot of new furniture-the old would do just as well if it was re-finished. By taking what we have and making the most of it we can have homes that expres personalities at little expense. Just as Mary realized that the dark, ugly furniture in her room did not fit her personality, so we should see how our surrounaings fit us. Some people can live for years with the furniture arranged in the same places, with the furniture cluttered by carvings and adulterated by poor varmshes and stains. Others will realize that personality cannot be dictated by a fasliion in furniture and finishes, and will get out the steel wool and the razor blade and refinish their person-alities. Impressions of a Marketing Trip (Continued from page 9) There we were divided into two groups and my division was guided by a some-what "washed-out" and insipid young man, who acted as tho he feared we might snatch as many cookies as possible. Well, they did look good, but his eagle eye never left us. It was interesting, how-ever, to watch the cookies from the time tne dough was mixed in huge tubs, thru the rolling and cutting machine into the huge ovens (650 degrees F.), where they remained for only about three minutes, up the "lift" to the packing and frosting room. Some were packed "bare", some glVen single "dabs" on top, still others given adu1tional fancy coatings. We also saw the frosting mixed, put into pastry tubes and placed on the cookies. The girls · who worked in this room were nearly all dexterous and speedy. The most striking phase of the machinery used in this plant was the long rack con-tainmg thousands of prongs to hold the drying cook;ies. This rack was over 8,000 feet long and it took about six hours to dip all the cookies into frost-mg. tne first ones in being almost dry by the time the last ones had gone thru. There was also another frosting machine for using the kind which requires low temperature to harden it, in contrast With this air-hardening one just men-tioned. We next · inflicted ourselves updn an-other wholesale grocery company, and here we saw some of the same things we had seen at the other house. In the basement we saw the equipment for handling carload lots of groceries. They are bought and sold again with the least possible shifting. Twelve carloads a month are shipped into the house be-sides about one car a month as local freight. This seems like lots of groceries. In the basement were kept the fresh fruits and vegetables and the heavy items such as sugar, syrups, milk and some canned goods. On the top floor was the light weight, bulky materials. The packing room was interesting. It is in the form of a retail grocery, and it is here that small oruers are packed. Groceries in a J'ttlc town often are unable to handle things in case lots, so this arrangement 15 ·>~~~~.-..:. I THE "TRIXIE" I Beautifully simple and simply beau-tiful is the "Trixie," a tailored pump in patent leather, trimmed I! with the new blonde kid. Only the better class of the new Spring shoes can afford to rely so entirely upon graceful lines and rich mate-1 ,ia,, ::~:~~OTERY I '.--o-o-u-o-o~-o~~-.o~~(• ---------------------------~ PARTY GOODS We carry a complete line of Dennison Goods for mak-ing Party Favors Sealing Wax Tags and Labels I Covered Wire Crepe Paper I The Dennison Party Books 1 will help you make your party 1'1 a success. REYNOLDS & IVERSEN l Ames News Stand L-----------------~-~·-·-----·-·-··-·-• II Make Her a Lovely Tied and Dyed Scarf For Easter A Complete Showing of Scarf Material at STEPI-IENSON'S Opposite Campus ._,II._ _Q_Il_D_O_O_Q_O_G_D_D_G_II_ ft 

Refinishing Your Personality

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Refinishing Your Personality

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