House & Garden 
84 
The simplest type of oak paneling is used in this room in an effective and consistent way. There 
are no moldings, and the panels could be constructed in the manner shown in the lower diagram 
on page 152. This interior in a house at Chestnut Hill, Pa., designed by Mellor & Meigs, architects 
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT WOOD PANELING 
The Simple Facts of Construction Should Be 
Understood by Those Planning to Build A Home 
MATLACK PRICE 
But if these dreams have existed in the 
first stages of planning, it is often indeed 
that they seem not to reach execution in the 
finished house. 
Generally paneling finds itself elimi¬ 
nated on the cost score, when it begins to 
become apparent to the prospective builder 
that economies must be made somewhere in 
view of the cost of the many necessary 
features and equipment of his house. 
At this point, however, two things 
should be given full consideration: one, 
that paneling may not cost as much as you 
think it does; two, that even if it did, 
it Aould be worth it. There is, on the first 
point, a wide range in the cost of different 
kinds of paneling, from the elaborate 
carved kind to the absolutely plain kind, 
made without even a molding on the divi¬ 
sions between the panels. 
Colonial and early American 
paneling is usually of this type, 
with moldings and bevels, and 
was usually made of white pine, 
to paint. This type is also called 
a “raised panel” 
O F all the things that go to make up 
the interior architecture of a house 
there is probably not one more 
favored than the paneled room-—paneled in 
oak, in most of our dreams, and recalling the 
fine, mellow old interiors of the English 
homes of the Tudor and Elizabethan periods. 
Certainly thoughts of a library with an 
open fireplace are thoughts of a paneled 
room, of a room not too high as to its ceil¬ 
ing—probably a beamed ceiling—many 
books, some dark oak furniture and com¬ 
fortable deep-seated chairs. But always 
the spirit and character of this dream-en¬ 
vironment are dominated by the paneled 
walls, of rich, mellow old brown. The 
paneled room is so restful, so certain of 
being always in the same quiet mood. After 
it has been built it does not need decorations 
because it is in itself a decoration, and a 
fundamentally satisfying one. 
Sometimes the house-to-be has more than 
an oak-paneled library. Its hall, too, is 
paneled, with tiled floor, or a floor of wide 
oak boards rubbed down and stained and 
waxed and rubbed to a fine deep gloss. 
