October, 1911 AMERICAN 
A corner of the library, showing the newly constructed fireplace 
English windows substituted. The owner’s chamber was 
then designed to include another large diamond-pane, and 
this bedroom was placed directly over the dining-room. A 
child’s room was put in the rear, and a brace of closets and 
the master’s bathroom arranged in between over the back 
stair well. Plans were then made for placing a guest-room 
and a study upstairs in the tower wing, with a stairway to 
the servant-room in the attic. 
With the first thaws of spring, laborers began to dig 
a cellar under the kitchen and to run a field-stone founda- 
tion under it and its extension out to the front-face line of 
the tower. 
by nightfall the owner was carrying on his literary labors 
in a furniture-crowded tower, while outside was a kitchen 
without any front wall; a main section without any porch, 
windows, or doors—just gaping holes through which the 
zephyrs played—and a back yard littered with the remains 
of the bathroom. 
By the second day the neighbors were sure the house- 
wreckers had come at last, but by the third they became 
aware that the house began to take on a decidedly patchy 
appearance. A thick layer of red hair-felt paper spread 
itself all over the clapboards, rough, ragged furring and 
lath began to show in spots, and above and around the 
kitchen tall, slender studding was in sight. 
Then they knocked all the plaster off the kitchen ceiling, 
exposing the ancient solid beams. Then the roof cornices 
came off, giving the house an indescribably bald aspect; 
wagon-loads of lumber spread over the grounds, and the 
entire place became abandoned to the carpenters. With a 
man digging an arched doorway through the two-foot wall 
of the kitchen, a continuous rattle-tattle of small hammers 
going on all over the outside of the clapboards, and blows 
resounding from the kitchen, where they were pushing sec- 
ond-story beams into place, the owner retreated aloft, where 
he could get a little relief from the intolerable noise. 
Then the tall gable rafters began to loom up over the 
middle section and kitchen; plasterers started coating the 
house all over with fresh white stucco, and the neighbors 
began to realize that there was something here slowly taking 
HOMES AND GARDENS 
The carpenters began work one morning, and 
a 
on the aspect and proportions of their own. So by the end 
of summer the shingles were on, the stucco done, the half- 
beams and exterior trim stained, and the house roughed out 
somewhat as in the illustrations. 
At least it was presentable—though at sixes and at sevens, 
since the tower still remained in its original state. The car- 
penters closed in the hip roof to fit the future gable of the 
tower wing with roofing-felt, making it weather-tight, and 
the owner closed out all their contracts, for the cash was 
running low and little was left for the tower, while the 
problem of finishing the trim was staring him in the face. 
The next stage of this remodeling was the hiring of an 
Italian laborer who could do a little of everything at $9 a 
week. He could paint, hang wall-paper, do rough car- 
pentry, lay floors, beat carpets, and make roads. He was 
indispensable all that winter. As for the owner, he had 
added the trade of joiner to that of his profession, and for 
his exercise would take, for example, a doorsill, two jambs, 
and a couple of stiles, and arrange them until they would 
fit a given opening. The mistress of the house returned 
from the shore to find the October gales whistling through 
a windowless and a doorless abode, with all the furniture 
still in the tower and no place to put up a bed or put down 
a rug. It was necessary to get into the upstairs new wing 
and make it habitable forthwith, so all its windows were 
fitted and nailed into place for the time, and the old front 
door was stuffed into the opening for the new front door, 
while callers climbed in through the kitchen window. The 
mid-section was still a runway filled with lumber and shavy- 
ings, but each successive fortnight saw one more room done 
in the wing, with all the trim on, doors hung, and walls 
papered. Whereupon it would be decorated and blessed as 
finished, and the procession moved on to the next room. In 
this way the owner’s chamber, nursery, and both bathrooms 
were finished in turn, and even the large living-rooms in the 
middle section soon began to show a readiness for occupancy. 
It is just two years since the farmhouse was bought. It 
cost originally, with its ground, $4,500, and to improve it 
took between two and three thousand dollars. To-day the 
house, under present values, is worth about $12,000. 
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A bit of the hallway, showing the opening into the library 
