March, 1915 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
"filling,” quickly and easily made and fairly inexpensive. So it 
goes. I haven’t yet come to white oil cloth or a red tablecloth, 
but I am no longer horrified 
by those who do! 
Like most of these hill- 
country houses,ours is a story- 
and-a-half house, holding 
hands with the woodshed and 
the barn. When we came, 
the front of the house was 
painted gray, with white on 
the east end. On the barns 
and woodshed, the sides vis¬ 
ible from the road displayed 
a coat of red, but the backs 
of all the buildings were guilt¬ 
less of paint. 
T have not yet ceased to 
wonder where the former 
owner put his family of eight, 
to say nothing of his ‘‘lairs 
and peanuts.” We find that 
our present family of four 
fills the house comfortably, 
and our Lares and Penates 
clamor for larger quarters. 
However, we feel distinctly 
metropolitan because we must 
hoist our upper-story furni¬ 
ture through the window. The 
room now our living-room had 
been used as kitchen, dining¬ 
room and living-room. The 
floor was worn hollow, splintered, and most of the yellow ocher 
paint had worn off. This color had been used on the baseboards, 
and a cold, dingy, drab paint was on the rest of the wood. An 
ugly, flowered paper, with a dominant note of pink, was on the 
walls; the ceiling was black with smoke. The cook-stove, which 
continually leaked ashes be¬ 
cause of a broken casting, 
stood in front of the fire¬ 
place. For forty-six years the 
charm of this fireplace had 
been lost. It was boarded up 
and over the boards a green 
paper hung in tatters. The 
shades at the window were 
old and dingy, perforated like 
a strainer. 
We called in some painters 
and paperers who had been 
imported for a wealthy neigh¬ 
bor's work. Their estimate 
on one room made it impos¬ 
sible for us to consider em¬ 
ploying [them, so we rolled up 
our sleeves and started in. It 
took about four weeks of in¬ 
termittent evening work to 
get that doleful, drab paint 
covered—but, such a trans¬ 
formation! We hid the paper 
with successive coats of tan 
Muresco — eventually we plan 
to seal it with our own wood; 
new shades were ordered 
from a hitherto despised mail¬ 
order catalogue. We made 
mahogany sectional boo In¬ 
cases by applying a mahogany stain to apple boxes. A few bits 
of real mahogany lent an air of verity, and we feel irritated when 
(Continued on page 186) 
Soon I, too, began to watch the growth of the young trees and examine each sus¬ 
picious curl of a leaf 
At the end of the orchard is our “dream tree.” where John and 1 dazzle our minds with plans for the future and feast our eyes on the view of the surrounding hills 
