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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



February, 1908 



Built-in Furniture in the Home 



By Louise Shrimpton 



j>HE perfect house is rarely found. It is 

 seldom that the test of living in a place 

 fails to reveal its deficiencies, and even if, 

 when built, a house completely suits its oc- 

 cupants, time necessitates changes. 



When a room is unsatisfactory, when no 

 amount of furniture or of bric-a-brac avails 

 to really furnish or decorate it, the reason usually is found 

 in the lack of structural features. Every room should have 

 some center of interest. This may be a fireplace nook, a 

 window-seat with interesting outlook, a group of built-in 

 bookcases, or some other fitment. Whatever it is, its treat- 

 ment must serve to make it the most important feature of 

 the room, with other points of interest subordinated to it. 



This matter of interest does not belong entirely to the 

 pictorial aspect of a room. An uncomfortable room is never 

 interesting. An air of comfort, of restfulness, is a vital ne- 

 cessity in a house, and conduces to mental as well as to 

 physical ease. 



This lack of comfort and of convenience is often felt by 

 women, who realize the need of these qualities in some room 

 in their own homes, and yet who dread to undertake what 

 seems to them a difficult problem. The building of a special 

 piece of furniture to fit a particular place in a room will re- 

 quire, they imagine, the services of an architect, and the 

 making of careful plans, as well as the employment of a 

 skilled cabinetmaker. This, it is felt, would mean great 

 expense as well as a great deal of trouble. 



Any clever woman who engages a good builder, one whose 



specialty is the making of alterations in houses, or a good 

 cabinetmaker, can, with his assistance, do her own design- 

 ing, and contrive fitments for her house that are both con- 

 venient and beautiful. The expense is rarely greater, and in 

 many cases much less than would be the cost of purchasing 

 good pieces of furniture to serve the same purpose as the 

 fitments. 



Each fitment that is built into a room should be simple in 

 construction. If carefully adapted to its purpose, a "simple 

 piece is far more effective than one covered with moldings 

 and machine-made ornament, which increase its cost in pro- 

 portion as they decrease its real value. Good construction 

 and beautiful finish must constitute the chief attraction of this 

 class of furniture. In planning a design the lines of base- 

 boards, frieze and picture molding in the room must be 

 considered, and the fitment made to conform to these or to 

 other architectural lines in the room, or at least to combine 

 agreeably with them. All fitments should be of the same 

 finish as the interior woodwork in a room. In designing 

 cupboards or sideboards, drawers and shelves should be made 

 of proper dimensions for holding table cloths, tray cloths 

 and serviettes. Commodious accommodation for table linen 

 is not often found in the sideboards and serving tables on 

 sale in the shops. Ingenious devices in these and in other 

 pieces of built-in furniture, such as desks, may be indulged 

 in, and opportunity is given to the amateur designer to con- 

 sider in every possible way her own comfort and convenience. 



One of the charms of the structural feature built into a 

 room lies in its perfect adaptability to its place. It is difficult 



A Unified Arrangement of Dining-room Fixtures 

 Built-in Sideboard and Closets 



A Grandfather's Clock Built 

 Into a Corner 



