House Should Fit Family

When the walls seem to crowd in on you and everything is in a mess with no place to put anything, did you ever feel like screaming and throwing things? Don't build your house that small.

There is a tendency, after a person has had to put up with crowded quarters for a long time, that when an opportunity comes to expand, instead of a reason­able and gradual expansion, something like an explo­sion occurs. We want to go all out for a bigger and better house, with expansive room, space for every­thing. Remember that every square foot costs money and has to be kept up - - so you should consider it in your house plan. That snug, cozy, warm feeling that comes over one when he is seated with his family around his own brightly glowing fireplace may dis­appear if a house gets too large, particularly if it isn't paid for.

The number and size of rooms needed in a house depend largely on the size of the family and the manner in which they are accustomed to living. In some parts of the world, a room 8' square is con­sidered adequate for most purposes, and two or three such rooms make a complete livable house. Much depends on one's style of living—and what the neighbors have is sometimes a consideration.

Avoid cutting up a house into a large number of tiny cubicles for specific purposes. Remember every wall costs money and will often be in the way. More­over, our ideas of suitable activities are continually taking on new forms as we and the children grow older. We can't keep moving the partitions to keep up with our changing activities. It is a mistake to think that every different type of activity requires a separate and distinct room of its own. A given area can often serve efficiently for several different pur­poses at various times of the day and of the year.

The types of activity that are interesting to a family will determine to a large extent the size of the room needed. If your favorite indoor sport is to read the newspaper, you do not need a very large room. You need even less space in which to read a maga­zine or book. A real bibliophile, however, needs a lot of shelves in which to keep his voluminous li­brary. If you like to entertain with large parties, you will need a large beautiful living room.

In this country every young couple wants a house that is exclusively its own. In many places of the world, a family is likely to include what we would call several families, including grandparents and sev­eral married children and their offspring. With a house for only two people, perhaps we can get along with a moderate amount of space.

It is a mistake to build a house with only one bedroom, even for a couple without children who seldom have overnight guests, as such a house is hard to finance and is often difficult to sell. Select a lot where all the houses are approximately in the price class as the house that you want. Sometimes it is all right to build a little below your neighborhood if you are sure to make the house especially attractive in appearance.

Where to Get Ideas

Where should a person look for ideas? Visit houses under construction and subdivisions near you. These houses will indicate the popular trends in your area. Many magazines are full of house plans and ideas for beautifying the home. The trouble with many of them is that they show only what is different or spectacular, and do not spend much time on the ordinary house for everyday living. There is more news value in the unusual, the bizarre, the different, and even the ridiculous, than in the things that you can live with right along.

The Building Budget

Most of us have to be careful to keep the cost within a certain limited budget, and sometimes it seems very limited indeed. But that is not always the handicap that it may seem. If there were no limit to the cost, we might get such a monstrous house with so many rooms and so many fine things we could not half care for them and would be worn out with so much housework.

To keep the taxes as low as possible, do not let the house get too large, but do not on this account cramp your rooms too much. Have the living space you need and can use to advantage, but do not go too much beyond this just to impress the neighbors. What a person wants is happy and carefree living.

The budget limit requires us to do more careful planning, to use our space wisely. Of course, the actual number of square feet in a house is not a true measure of its cost. The things you put into a house are what actually determines the cost. You can keep a house warm with a $500 heating system or with one that costs $3,000. You can get a fireplace for $400, or you can spend $1,500 if you wish to do so. The cost will be determined by the kinds of ma­terial used and the amount of labor required to pro­duce the kind of building you want. You can pay $7 a yard for carpet, or you can pay $35 or more per yard, depending on the carpet and the pad under it.

There are many qualities of nearly all building materials and furnishings. We have to balance the space we need with the quality we can afford. A smaller house of better quality is usually to be pre­ferred to a large house built in the cheapest possible manner.

Houses are costing anywhere from $8 to $20 a square foot, depending on where they are and how they are built. I know of a good warehouse that was built recently for less than $3 a square foot, and it is a good substantial building. The cost is not so much for enclosing the space as it is for what is put into that space.

What Can an Architect Do for You?

When you decide to build a house, you may want to employ an architect to help you with your plan. What can you expect him to do for you? He can help you decide what kind of house you want, by suggesting the various possibilities, by studying your family and your living habits and showing you the kind of house you need. Besides helping you find reliable contractors and supervising the work to see that it is done right, he can help you steer clear of financial difficulties, by certifying when it is time to pay for certain phases of the work.

He can draw the plans and write the specifica­tions. He has been over the ground often enough to know most of the pitfalls that lurk in the path of building.

Do not expect an architect to save you money in the total cost of your house, although he should be able to see that you get a better than average house. Since the contractors know he will probably insist on using the very best quality of material and work­manship, they will often raise their prices high enough to compensate for the better job they know they must do in order to satisfy the architect. If you want a really superior house, get a good architect and put him to work.

If you want a less expensive house, you may find that an architect is a luxury, although there are many architects who take pride in the fact that they can build inexpensively and still do a good job.

Most Expensive Materials Not Always Necessary

If you must economize, sometimes the best and most expensive ways of building may not be neces­sary. Where a feature of the construction does not show and does not weaken the stability or jeopar­dize the integrity of the house, logically the cheapest way of building is the best, especially where the budget is strictly limited. Many builders believe that the place to put your money is where it will show, or where it is necessary to make a durable, comfort­able, and weather-tight house; otherwise use the cheapest things that will do the work. This is the theory followed to the limit by the builders of sub­divisions and tract houses.

Defects in construction can sometimes be cor­rected, but a serious defect in planning is with you as long as you keep the house and may be a great hindrance in selling. Although there are places to save time and money, planning is not the place to start your economy drive.

Get Someone to Review Your Plans

In case you draw your own plans, it is usually a good idea to get some experienced builder to look them over to help you get most of the "bugs" out of it before you start to build. These could be waste space, awkward corners, poor circulation through the house, freakish features, unusual methods of build­ing which increase the labor involved, crowded places, or inconsistencies.

Getting an experienced house designer to double check your plans would usually be a profitable investment, which might keep you from making absurd mistakes. After they are built, things do not always look the same as they do on paper. If you do not believe that people make many queer mistakes, drive up any residential street and take a critical look at the houses people have built in the mistaken notion that they were creating works of art.

There are many good planners who will work for a modest fee. Although they have not had the experience on large buildings to qualify as archi tects, they are willing to take time to give careful, personal thought to your house and to draw you a good plan. Since you are the one who has to decide what you want anyway, find someone who can help you and who is interested in seeing that you get just the house you really want.

Some contractors and builders are good at plan­ning and some of them are not. Most contractors are good at the details of construction, even though they may be poor or indifferent planners as far as room arrangement, convenience, and appearance are con­cerned. Although you might be wise to leave many of the construction details to the judgment of the contractor, insist on the room arrangement you want and any special features you consider important. If you want a screened porch, do not let anyone talk you out of it. You are building the house to get what you want, not what someone else thinks you ought to want.

Much depends on one's personal preference. Since you are building instead of buying because you want something that is not just run of the mill and ordinary, because you want something different from what everyone else has, plan your own house to suit you and your family.

In all your planning allow enough room, but do not waste any space. A common mistake of the be­ginning planner is to fail to allow enough room for the thickness of the walls. Walls are usually 5V&" thick; if you draw them 6" the plan will be about right. Some people crowd things in the mistaken no­tion that they are saving money. The size of the house is just one of the many factors that enter into the cost of the building. Some odd corner or pecu­liarity of construction will often cost more than an additional hundred square feet of floor space.

Economical Room Sizes

Lumber comes in even foot lengths. If you need a 13' joist, it might just as well be 14', as you will have to buy the 14' piece and cut off 1' to get the 13' you want. A dimension like 12' 6" is especially wasteful. If rooms can be made with outside dimen­sions, that is, including the thickness of the walls, in even feet as 12, 14 or 16, it is more economical than dimensions like 9, 11, 13, etc.

Erasers Versus Wrecking Bars

The time to make changes in plans is while they are in the formative stage. Study carefully your every need. Let your friends see your plans and welcome their criticisms. After getting all the suggestions you can, you will have to sort them over, discarding many and deciding between those that are contradictory. You will get some good ones that you can use.

Be sure to get into the plans everything you will require in the building, as the contractor will charge you a much higher rate for the "extras" than he will for the things shown in the plans before the con­tract is let. If you are doing the building yourself, you will find that changes often complicate your work, as one change often makes a change some­where else necessary, and that still another until you do not know where to stop changing.

While the plan is being drawn, it is well to re­member that a five-cent eraser can erase a thousand dollars worth of building and show but little wear. Most of the problems can be foreseen without the aid of a prophet. If you study your needs carefully and consider the entire plan objectively, you should be able to find the plan that is exactly suited to your tastes and to your needs and is still within your limit­ed budget.

A poor time to think about changing a part of the structure is after that part is built. It costs to build in the first place, it costs to tear down, and it costs to build again. The most costly item, and the one that gives the least return for the money spent is a change in the plan after the work is started. It costs money, time, and effort to use sledge hammers and wrecking bars.

Changes are sometimes necessary, usually be­cause the planners did not study their problem enough, or failed to see it with sufficient clarity, or failed to consider the details. A multitude of changes is a sure sign of poor planning, or a vacillating na­ture. Make your changes during the planning stage as erasers are easier to use than wrecking bars, and cheaper.

Of course, if you find a serious error in the plan, or something that will make you definitely unhappy in your new home, go ahead with the change, pay for it, and charge it up to experience.

If money is scarce, why not try planning an en­tire house just the way you want it, and then build­ing only part of it at present, reserving the rest until you are in a financial position to build it.

You could plan the house so that you could build the kitchen, the bath, and one or two bedrooms, and take a rest before you start on the remainder. You could use one of the bedrooms for a living room temporarily and have a complete three-room house. Or you could build the kitchen, the bath, the family room, and one of the bedrooms. That would give you a very comfortable house. Then later, you could add the other bedrooms and bath, and the living room. It might be better to build on the installment plan than to pay for it that way.

Unless you plan the whole house, however, be­fore you start to build any of it, you are sure to get some part where eventually you want some other part. It is hard to add on to a small house satisfac­torily, whereas it is easy to build only part of a larger house and finish it later.

A person can get along in an apartment, con­sisting of a living room, a kitchenette, a bedroom, and a bath, and not feel too crowded. Why couldn't he build the same amount of room as the begin­ning of a house and get along with it for a time? Some people live in trailer houses with two or three hundred square feet of floor space and feel that they have enough room for comfortable living. Other people feel crowded in any house with less than two thousand square feet of floor space. Between these extremes, a house should be found to meet the needs of almost any family.

A Model Will Help in Planning

If you have time to make a cardboard or ply­wood model of the house, you will get a much clearer picture of the finished building than in any other way. Make a model in which the roof lifts off and shows the room arrangement, with the furniture in place. Then imagine yourself walking around in the house, sitting in the den, or working in the kitchen. This will help to discover the good points of the plan and to reject those that are objectionable.

Cardboard boxes cut out and put together with model airplane cement can be used to good advan­tage in making a model. Get a piece of plywood for the foundation. Have it larger than the house, so you can landscape it. Use a scale of V2" equals 1' if you have the room. Otherwise make the model the same size as the plans, which is always XA" equals V. The model can be made out of scraps of wood and plywood if you prefer it to the cardboard. Use crepe paper for the drapes, plastic for the windows, small blocks of pine or other soft wood for the fur­niture. Time spent in making a model is time more than well spent. With cardboard, plywood, glue, small pieces of brick and tile, a few small stones, and some sand, crepe paper, plaster of paris, soap to carve into the shape of plumbing fixtures, and a little paint, you should be able to make a very attractive model of your new home. This will aid greatly in deciding on what the exterior is to look like and will also be a real help in arranging the rooms, win­dows and doors so that suitable places will be pro­vided for the various pieces of furniture.

Do not be in too big a hurry to decide. Take time to study every angle.

Entrance

Did you ever drive up in a car and wonder where the front door is? The entrance to a house deserves special consideration. It should be set off with some very attractive feature: a bright color, a different material, a wrought iron railing, or other special fea­ture to identify it definitely as the front door.

When friends drive up in a car, it is the most natural thing for them to come to the back door if it is the closest to the driveway. If you prefer it that way, well and good. But if you want to be a little more formal, be sure that the front door is easy to recognize and that the back door is placed where people will not find it first.

Some kind of door bell or chime is often desir­able. Or if you want to go all out, a telephone by the front door is a good thing. When people ring the doorbell you can ask them through the phone who it is and what is wanted. Then you can make up your mind whether or not you want to open the door. When a woman and her children are often alone in the evening, this is a good safety measure, which aids in keeping out undesirables.

A small lens set in the door will give a person a view of the porch before the door is opened. This is a good safety idea. A catch with a small chain at­tached that permits the door to be opened a few inches only may also be used, but the telephone or the lens is probably superior to the chain.

When a person steps through the front door, where is he? In the middle of the living room, shak­ing snow all over the rug, or in an entrance hall, where he can take off his overcoat and place it in a proper closet on a hanger, with a receptacle for his umbrella and a shelf for his overshoes? Perhaps the powder room also opens off the entrance hall and his wife has had opportunity to inspect and adjust her make-up. Plan the living room so that people can enter it gracefully.

Concrete blocks laid in a novel pattern to screen an entrance

Many good housekeepers feel that an entrance hall is of vital importance to a complete house. If people come right into the living room with their muddy feet, with no preliminary place in which to get ready to make their entrance, a happy result is difficult.

The entrance hall should have a good durable floor that can take a beating without a murmur. A floor of quarry tile, ceramic tile, slate, stone, or mar­ble will be found very durable and can be a beautiful part of the entrance hall. Snow, mud, water, and hard usage can't harm it.

A car-port and, entrance combined. Note used brick wall and shake roof.


An interesting entrance with wrought iron railing and stone decoration.

Carpet is hardly the best material for the entrance hall floor, unless you have a special piece, different from the living room car­pet, that can be changed every two or three years, or as necessary. But to have it a part of the living room carpet can be to invite disaster.

The entrance hall should be warm and cheerful, to give the guests the proper welcome to your house. It need not be large, but should be at least 5' wide, and perhaps 1' long, and of course, a larger size will be more useful. Planning a house is largely a matter of finding the best use for the space. What­ever you use for the entrance, beyond the bare minimum, is just so much space taken from some other part of the house that may need it worse.

The more use you can make of a given space, the more efficient your planning. The entrance hall can often double as the telephone booth.

Multiple use of space is an evidence of good plan­ning. Consider the human body: if a separate organ were provided for each function, we wouldn't be able to carry them all around with us. Think of the mouth and its many uses. Aside from its principal uses as a base for lipstick and for kissing, it is used for talking, for sucking and blowing, for emergency breathing, including snoring, for biting off thread, for taking in food and grinding it up preparatory to swallowing it, for holding pins in sewing and nails in shingling, for forming a smile, a grin, or a grimace, for laughing, clucking and whistling, and too rarely to say a kind word.

The Living Room

When you pass from the hall into the living room, what kind of room do you like to be in? There are almost as many types of ideas as to the size, shape, colors, and uses of the living room as there are people. Some have the idea that a living room is similar to the old-fashioned parlor that was shut up all week and was opened only on Sunday, was usually musty, and generally unused and uncomfortable. Others go to the other extreme and think of the living room as a place where the children study, where people lounge and read the paper or the latest magazine. A living room is to be lived in, isn't it?

Oh, to get away from this bedlam! How often have you thought that when the children get to play­ing Indians and cowboys, or some other equally exciting and din-producing game! A house needs a quiet spot, a den, a library, a family room, or some other place where some members of the family can escape from the rest of the gang at times. A quiet retreat from the din of living.

There is usually the need for more than one area of living: the children want to look at the TV; Dad wants to read his paper; Mother wants to telephone; the older brother has to study and do his homework for high school; friends drop in for a short call; someone comes to see Dad on some kind of busi­ness. These things must all go on simultaneously. They can't very well all be in the same room at the same time. Open planning is fine, but it has its limi­tations. Some families have hobbies that they work on at home, whereas others are content to read the newspaper, turn on the television, and drop off to sleep in an easy chair.

If a quiet corner can be found for a writing desk or if a well-lighted alcove with an easy chair and a bookcase can be managed, the livability of the house will be greatly enhanced.

The living room must not be the principal hall­way through the house, although careless planners often make it just that. Every living room should have a point of interest aside from the television set: a fireplace, a picture window, a mural, an interest­ing grouping of elegant furniture, a music center, or something that reflects the tastes, personality, or interests of the owner.

The living room should be spacious, well-light­ed, well ventilated, with durable floors and walls that can stand hard usage and still look presentable. This fact should be kept in mind at all times in se­lecting carpets, furniture, drapes, and wall finishes.

The house and furnishings must be suited to the family. If a house has a family room, to take the brunt of the hard wear, the living room can be a bit more delicate than where it has to take the beating all the time.

Plaster is still the accepted thing for walls; if you can get along with wallboard, don't expect it to take quite the hard knocks that plaster can.

Wood paneling can be very effective as a living room wall. One end of the room can often be of brick or stone with good effect. Sometimes one wall can be papered with a very pleasing result.

I have seen rooms papered on all four sides, but with one side of figured paper and the other three sides with the same paper without the figures on it.

Oak makes a good durable floor with natural beauty built right in. A large rug and a few small rugs can be used with good effect with the oak floor.

Wall-to-wall carpeting is popular at the present time. It has several advantages: it is quiet, warm, easy to clean with a vacuum cleaner, and if of good quality, it wears well.

An elderly couple without children, or whose grandchildren do not come too often, can have a more fragile living room than a family that has sev­eral hard playing, fast growing boys and girls.

How big should a living room be? Some people feel crowded in a room 16' by 24', while others feel that such a room would be spacious.

In Korea a good-sized room would be 8' x 10'. In Japan a living room is rarely more than 12' square, but there they can remove the sliding par­titions and add the other room which is usually 9' x 12', making the total size of the principal room 12' x 21'. The kitchen is only 6' x 9'. The bathroom is usually 6' square. This makes the average Japan­ese house about 500 square feet in area, compared with perhaps slightly over 1000 square feet for Americans.

The popularity of trailer houses seems to indi­cate that people can get along with less space than was formerly thought desirable. Trailer houses have from 150 to 500 square feet of floor area, and some of the larger ones seem rather spacious.

Still, good planning indicates that the living room should be fairly good sized, even if the rest of the house has to be rather small.

A living room should seldom be smaller than 12' x 16'. Perhaps a medium-sized house, say 1400 square feet, should have a living room 15' x 20' up to 16' x 24', or about 300 to 400 square feet of floor area. But a large house of over 2000 square feet of floor area could afford a living room of from 450 to 500 square feet of floor space.

The number of doors entering a living room must be kept to the minimum, preferably one or two. If sliding doors can also open on to the patio, that might be very desirable.

If the transition from outdoors to indoors can be made by easy, almost imperceptible stages, so that there is not so much distinction between the outside and the inside, a more spacious and charming living area can be created, in the milder climates. In severe climates it is a cozy feeling to have the outdoors seem as remote as possible in the winter time. But provision should also be made for summer and au­tumn living.

Facing the Rear

It has been customary in this country for many years to face the house toward the street, with the living room in front. Although rocking on the front porch and passing the time of day with those who travel in the street is now out of style, many people, especially in the smaller towns, like to see who is passing in the street, or who is coming up to the door. Women like to see what their neighbors are doing. You can draw the blinds or the draperies when you do not want to be seen. There are disadvantages in facing toward the street, for your view is your neighbor's yard. You may want the windows open and still not be as conspicuous as a goldfish.

Many houses are now being built facing the rear. People say the advantages are that you can be as private as you want to be; your parties can over­flow from the living areas into the outdoor spaces easily and smoothly. With outdoor living coming into style, facing the rear is a natural solution. You can create a beautiful view with careful planting. Make the back yard a thing of beauty. You do not have to worry so much about drawing the shades. It encourages outdoor living. You can have a barbecue, a patio, or any number of simple things to help you enjoy living in your own back yard.

Of course families differ greatly in their ideas of living. Some are living only when they go down­town, eat at swanky places, and attend elaborate en­tertainments. Others are happier wearing shorts in their own back yards and barbecuing steaks and ka-bobs. The choice is yours. It costs less to entertain yourself and your friends at home, as well as being more interesting if you have fixed up your house and yard to do it easily, gracefully, and with fun.

Circulation

The circulation of traffic in a house has impor­tance similar to the circulation of traffic on the highways. People who are constantly moving from one room to another must be able to do so without disturbing the activity going on in another room. It is important to keep the hallways to the minimum, as they take up space and add to the area to be kept clean. A certain minimum amount of hallway, how­ever, is indispensable in a well-planned house. The entrance hall will often do its full share, but a short back hall is often necessary to make the circulation natural and easy.

Do not make the living room the principal hall­way from the kitchen to the bedrooms; a living room should be so arranged that it is not necessary to in­terrupt a party to put the children to bed.



A professional office can often be combined -with a dwelling, if a separate entrance is provided.

Some housekeepers who have a regular wash day will want a full-fledged utility room, complete with washer, laundry tubs, dryer, with plenty of working space. For many families who send their laundry out, and others who have automatic wash­ers, perhaps this room can be trimmed to the mini­mum by putting the laundry in the back hall, en­closed by a pair of louvered doors, or even left in the open, as the machines are good looking and may be more usable if left exposed. This makes the space of the back hall also usable as working space for the laundry, thus saving several square feet in the total floor space of the house.

If the floor of this back hall can be made of quarry tile, or some other very durable material, that is also easy to keep clean, it will be an economy in the long run. Of course good inlaid linoleum is also satisfactory.

Bedrooms

A bedroom should be a pleasant place in which to sleep. If you live on a busy street, put the bedroom at the back. Put it as far away from distracting noises as you can. Insulation in the walls and drap­eries at the windows will help to shut out part of the noise.

A bedroom should be well ventilated, with win­dows on two sides of the room if possible, to insure a good circulation of air on hot sultry nights. Win­dows in bedrooms should be given careful study. If they are carelessly placed, they interfere too much with placement of the furniture. Many people have found that high windows, 4' or 41/2' from the. floor, but extending over a wider area horizontally, give a better distribution of the fresh air with less drafti-ness, and make it a lot easier to place the furniture where you want it without interference from the windows.

The bedroom should be painted in soft colors, which are soothing to frayed nerves. Strong, vibrant colors may be all right in the family room or in the bathroom, but the bedroom should be a place of rest, with subdued tones.

If a bedroom is merely a place in which to sleep, it can be rather small and still be quite satisfactory. After all, in the last sleep, all they allow a person is a space about 3' x 6'. It you want a bedroom with a fireplace in it, two or three easy chairs, a desk, and an extensive bookcase, you will need a considerable amount of space. If you also want to do your sewing and ironing in the bedroom, you will have to allow room enough for that, too.

How large should a bedroom be? At least large enough so that the bed can be moved around or turned around in it. Large enough for a full-sized bed and a chest of drawers, a night stand, a chair, and perhaps a dressing table. Perhaps 8' x 10' inside measurement might be considered as the absolute minimum. Most building codes do not permit rooms smaller than 80 square feet in area, and this would just meet that requirement. Certainly a room 9' x 12' would be much better, while 11' x 14' or 12' x 14' would seem rather spacious. In an ordinary house a room 12' x 16' would be adequate for almost any master bedroom.

A bedroom isn't greatly in need of a view as a person usually isn't often in a bedroom during the daylight hours and then he usually isn't looking out the window.

People are in the living room usually in the evening when the landscape is dark, unless the view is over towns or villages where the lights make an interesting pattern.

The kitchen should, if possible, open on the sunrise. When one is working at the sink, an occa­sional glance out the window overlooking an in­spiring view can be very refreshing. The breakfast nook should also have a good view if at all possible.

There should be at least half as many bedrooms as there are people in the family, and a guest room is an important adjunct, if it can be managed. Two boys can occupy the same room when they are small, but, of course, the ideal is for each child to have his own room when he gets older, if at all possible.

Perhaps the master bedroom should be large enough so that two beds can be put in it in hot weather. When it is cold, probably only one of them will be used.

Where there are small children, the mother will probably want their room to be near hers, but for adults, if bedrooms can be separated from each other, one noisy or restless person will not bother the others quite so much.

A private bath for the master bedroom is a good idea, but not an absolute necessity. A good rule to follow is to have at least one bath for each two bed­rooms. A three-bedroom house should have two baths. In the morning rush hour, when the children are hurrying to get ready for school, and Dad has to shave, and mother has to do her hair, enough bath­rooms will save a lot of frayed nerves. Better econo­mize somewhere else and have enough bathrooms.

A guest room can be kept to the minimum. A private bath with the guest room will be greatly ap­preciated by the guests, but if this strains the budget too much, some compromise will have to be worked out. A smaller room with the private bath would be much better than a large room without it. Try to keep the guest room somewhat isolated from the rest of the house, so the guests can be off to them­selves at times. This will give them more opportunity to rest and will permit the regular activities of living to go on with less interruption.

Storage

Organized storage space is very important in designing a house. When you move in, where are you going to put the suit cases? Well! Where are you going to put them? Of course there is no place to put a trunk. A closet or wardrobe for a bedroom must have a rod to put the clothes hangers on. A piece of V^" pipe or a piece of electric conduit is much better than a round wooden pole, as the hang­ers slide more easily on the pipe, and a piece of wood gets black looking if not painted, and if painted, the paint gets scraped and scarred very soon.

Shelves at one end of a wardrobe are very con­venient for hats, purses, gloves, etc. Boxes to fit on these shelves will help in holding small things and in keeping them clean and away from the dust. Sometimes wire shoe racks fit conveniently at the end of the wardrobe opposite the shelves. These are very handy, as they keep the shoes off the floor and in order, each pair easy to get without disturbing the others.

Where at all possible, it is a good idea to have separate wardrobes, particularly in the master bed­room. (A man likes to have a small place in the house that he can call his own.) A man will not usually need as much room as his wife or daughter does for clothes, but it helps to keep the arguments down if he has some space of his own. Even if he may not have many pairs of shoes, a rack for them should also be planned.

With building costs the way they are, every square foot of floor space must be used to the best possible advantage. Of course, a place for laundry, heating plant, and storage of larger items must also be found.

Fireplace

Some people have no use for a fireplace, whereas others find it an absolute necessity. Do not build a fireplace because it is the accepted thing to do. If you do not like a fireplace, and do not expect to use it, you can find a better use for five hundred dollars than to put it into a fireplace.

If the hearth fire is the center of the house, and you and your family and guests like to sit by the fire, by all means have a good fireplace even if you have to skimp on something else.

A fireplace should be located where traffic through doors will not disturb the circle sitting around the fire. A corner is not the ideal situation for a fireplace as it restricts the circle of seats around it. The end of a room or the side is much better than a corner. Although a fireplace exposed on two sides may look modern, if you are going to use it regularly, there is far less danger of its smoking if the fireplace is set back in the wall and exposed on one side only.

A woodbox opening from the outside so the wood does not have to be carried through the living room is very handy and not expensive.

The hearth should be wide enough to protect the carpet, and a good screen is a necessity to control the sparks.
house blue print
Two Stories

Some people wonder about two-story houses. When are they advisable? If your land is too restrict­ed to get all the space you want on one floor, then the logical thing is to build on more than one floor, but if it isn't necessary, why climb steps all your life? It takes valuable energy, steps take up room, and they cost money, more in proportion than al­most any other part of the house. Of course, some builders say that since the same roof and foundation will serve two stories as well as one, therefore the two-story house is cheaper. It isn't necessarily so the framing has to be heavier to support the second floor, and the joists have to be larger to span the large rooms on the first floor. It costs more to work higher up, with scaffolding and all, so there is not much, if any, economy in building two stories if one would serve your purpose better. Although, if you prefer two stories, go ahead and build that way. The cost is about the same. Ordinarily, housekeeping is simpler and easier in a house all on one level. Great efficiency is usually found in the one-story house.

Basements

What about a basement? In sections where base­ments are considered a part of every complete house, the thing to do is to keep in step with the locality. In sections where basements are considered entirely unnecessary, the thing to do is to keep in step—but in either case, if you have good reason to be different from your neighbors, why not go ahead and do as you please?

A small basement makes a good air raid shelter, and a shelter from atomic fallout that we hear so much about nowadays. In fact, it might be a good idea to build a partial basement just for this purpose. You could also find other uses for it too, as a recrea­tion room, a den, a boy's hobby room, etc. You will usually find use for any room that you have.

Although the latest fads do not have to be fol­lowed, a person should be careful not to make the house look as if it had been built twenty-five years ago. The new houses are more straightforward, not having so much that is put on just for decoration. The decoration has also taken a different form; in­stead of fancy gables we have "used" brick, instead of "gingerbread," "sugar frosting."

The days of imitation are also about gone. Time was when wood siding was cut and notched to imi­tate stone. (Even Washington's home in Mount Vernon did not escape this subterfuge.) Painters used to use a background color and graining to make pine look like walnut, mahogany, or gum wood. It is now just as inexpensive to use the kind of wood you want as it is to try to make one kind of wood imitate some other kind.