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Show aBBasaSBBBSBBBBSSSSMaBBBBBBBBjaHBBBBSSSBBBBaaaKBSSSnaBBSBBSBSSSnSn Mr. William A. Radford wP.1 answer fraestions and give advice FRE.E OP COST on all subjects pertaining to the subject of building, for the readers of this paper. On account of his wide experience as Editor, Author and Manufacturer, he is, without doubt, the highest authority on all these subjects. Address all Inquiries to William A. Radford, No. 178 West Jackson boulevard, Chicago, 111., and only enclose two-cent stamp for reply. Most people like large rooms; but large rooms call for a large house. This plan Is 31 feet 6 inches by 36 feet in size and is built on the square order, severely plain in design and general gen-eral treatment. Instead of crowding In as many rooms as possible, they are made larger than is customary at the present time; but it gives to the house an air of old-fashioned comfort that is quite luxurious. Luxury means in many cases something some-thing that is difficult to secure. Since the advance in prices of labor, wages of skilled mechanics, prices of hardware hard-ware and most building materials the tendency has been to build smaller houses and smaller rooms. Probably the after maintenance has as much to do with the general trend towards smaller houses as any other consideration, consider-ation, because it Is almost impossible to obtain help of the right kind to keep a large house in order after you get it Then the extra cost of heating a large house is a serious objection to some people; but the Improvements in hot-air furnaces and in hot-water and steam heaters have gone a long way to reduce cost in this respect. The shape of the house also has a great deal to dc with the cost of heating. heat-ing. A house built after this design is very compact. There are no side rooms to carry the heat to at a disadvantage; disad-vantage; so with a modern heater In the basement this house may be kept comfortable for less money than the heating of a much smaller house would have cost ten or fifteen years ago. These are the days of large living rooms. People have found that at least one room in the house should be as large, as light, and as airy as it is possible to make it. Across the front of this house, 14 by 35 feet inside in-side measurement, is practically one great room with a fireplace in one end and with plenty of large windows that are in keeping with the general character char-acter of the house. This large living room is intended to be one of the main decorative fea interfere with the proper placing of handsome dining-room decorations. Another feature of this house that is well worth consideration is the pantry. pan-try. It is seldom you get such a pantry pan-try in any house. The extension of the back porch to inclose one end of the pantry has been taken advantage of to lay out an arrangement that will appeal to most women. It is large enough to hold considerable china and the 6ink so conveniently situated is a great satisfaction at dish-washing time. I often wonder why sinks are not demanded nearer to the shelves where dishes are kept. If you watch a woman doing up the work after meal time you will notice that she is constantly con-stantly walking back and forth between be-tween the dining table, the sink and the pantry shelves and the china cupboard. cup-board. This combination pantry is a sort of cross between the modern store room pantry and an old-fashioned butler's but-ler's pantry. There are other interesting features about this house indicated by the plans, such as the combination stairway stair-way going up from the kitchen and from the front room, the hall coat closet and the convenient cellarway with shelves for jelly glasses and other storage, all of which require a house about this size if you expect to work them all In. You can have some of the modern Improvements in a small house. If you want them all you must build larger. fiiiiiiii AsSm L, f! M. IJjUi If J 4 ,J tures, the furnishings of which will require a great deal of studying and planning to bring out all its splendid possibilities. Such rooms nowadays are seldom or never carpeted. The Boor is hard wood with a finish that shows the grain to advantage. The floor is nice enough to leave without my covering whatever; but no one likes a bare floor because of the noise and from the further fact that no room has a properly furnished appearance unless the floor has been carefully provided pro-vided with rugs that harmonize with the wall and celling decorations. There Is a good deal in proportioning rugs to the size of the room. This large living room should have two rugs large enough to reduce the outside margin to about ten inches. The space between the rugs in the center should be about the same, but this space directly di-rectly in the center of the archway should be filled in with another rug to avoid stepping on the polished floor. It needs this little rug for looks and it needs it to prevent a bad 6pot by wearing wear-ing away the floor polish. The rugs, wall paper and curtains must of course harmonize in colors. Turkish rups are quite fashionable, and the genuine Turkish rug is a prize, but they have their disadvantages. disadvan-tages. Most of them are too soft to keep their place on the floor, and if the floor is highly polished they are so slippery as to be positively unsafe, especially for old people. A first-claps machine-made American rug is good enough for any room if it corresponds with the surroundings. The dining room offers another splendid opportunity for decorative ability. The room is well calculated to show furniture to advantage. It is 12 feet 6 inches by 16 feet in size and there are no projections or corners to spread among the local farmers and land-owners, who asked them to extend ex-tend their operations. Mr. James decided to accept such invitations, at any rate until he had procured enough skins to make a long coat for his wife. A newspaper correspondent recently recent-ly accompanied them to their hunting ground, where thirty traps had been laid. Fifteen moles had all been killed instantaneously in their little tunnels. Then came the work of resetting re-setting the traps in the center of a line of molehills. A spring trap was placed between the two openings of the tunnel after carefully rubbing the trap and openings with a dead mole. This was done for two reasons first, because the mole would instantly instant-ly smell human hands and would avoid the trap; and, secondly, because moles are great fighters. When the master of a tunnel smells what he takes to be an intruder he rushes off instantly to do battle, but actually meets sudden death. Mr. James said it would be quite easy to make at least $10 a week by catching moles for skins, which can be sold at from five to ten cents each. He now has 400 of the 600 required to make a coat for his wife. Baltimore Balti-more Sun. |
