THE HOUSE
Elements in Choice of a Home--The City Apartment--Furniture for a
Temporary Home--Couches--Rugs--Bookcases--The Suburban and Country
House--Economic Considerations--Buying an Old House--Building a New
One--Supervising the Building--The Woman's Wishes.
Of love, of joy, of peace and plenty: where,
Supporting and supported, polished friends
And dear relations mingle into bliss.
JAMES THOMSON--_The Seasons_
When husband and wife are truly mated, they form a co-partnership in the
building of the home. In this work the man, occupied with his business,
must leave a large part of the direction, even in material things,
to the woman. And these material things are of primary consideration,
as they are apt to be in every problem of life. The happiness of home
is immediately and always dependent on the kind of a house used for
dwelling and its equipment for utility and comfort.
The first thing to be considered is the location of the home. The choice
of a good neighborhood, from both social and sanitary viewpoints, is
essential. Good neighbors are almost as necessary as good air and good
drainage. Even before the children have come, it is a limitation on the
function of a home for husband and wife to be forced to seek social life
entirely outside the neighborhood. If charity (that is, loving, helpful
associations) begins at home, it certainly does not stop at the
threshold, or leap therefrom over those nearest us. The best citizens
are those who take a human interest in the people of their street, or
ward, or village, for influence in civic reform is dependent on
neighborliness.
Children are good citizens in this respect by nature. Limited to
association with children of the neighborhood, they form an affection
for their playmates, which may lead to good or evil results, as these
playmates are moral or vicious in their tendencies. Therefore, at the
formative period of character children should be guarded from the
debasing influences of improper companions, as well as such institutions
as saloons and low dance-halls which are generally found to be the local
causes of bad neighbors.
Of course, a neighborhood should be selected where there are good public
schools, churches, and allied institutions for education and culture.
It is always a loss to a child in this democratic country to be educated
in a private school, and yet, especially in cities, careful parents are
often compelled to resort to private instruction for their girls and
boys because of the lack of refining influences in the public schools.
This is why it is often better for families, when the father works in
the city, to live in the suburbs, where, as a rule, the best public
schools are to be found.
But it may not be feasible to live out of the city, especially in the
first years of married life, and therefore the home life must begin in
an apartment. The same sanitary considerations that obtain in choice of
a neighborhood are essential in the choice of a flat. Good air, light,
space, proper plumbing, and general cleanness are to be sought. Owing
to the general demand for these advantages, and a limited supply of
them which is due to economic conditions prevailing in our cities, they
unfortunately require money, therefore, the flat-seeker is compelled to
do the best he can with that part of his income which he may safely
appropriate for rent. As a rule, this amount is not more than one-fourth
of income.
When an apartment house has been properly built, and the walls are
settled and the plastering dry, it generally comes up to the standard
of comfort and health. Here the latest improvements in plumbing will
be apt to be found, and there will be no danger of vermin. Then, too,
a concession is more apt to be made by the landlord, who is anxious to
secure tenants, by remission of a month's or a fortnight's rent, to be
taken out after the first month. The landlord of such a house is also
readier than the owner of an old one to make decorations, and even
alterations, to suit the taste of the tenant.
The walls in the kitchen should be painted rather than papered, and
other parts of the flat designed primarily for utility. Since light is
the great desideratum, the paint, as a rule, should be light in color,
though soft and tinted in tone for restfulness to the eye. Where
wallpaper is used, it should have the same characteristics. Fanciful
designs should be avoided. Indeed, plain paper forms the best base for
artistic color schemes in the decoration of rooms, the variety in which
is best obtained by the choice of furniture and pictures and other wall
ornaments.
When there is a prospect that living in apartments will be only a
temporary arrangement, the furniture should be chosen with a view to its
adaptability for a house. Thus folding-beds should be avoided, and other
articles that gain space by complexity, however ingenious. Simplicity is
the quality to be desired. Thus if the exigency of space requires that a
living room by day be converted into a sleeping room, a couch should be
bought for it, instead of a folding bed. It will then serve the purpose
of a sofa as well as a bed. If it is a box couch, further economy will
be gained by its use as a place to store the bedclothes. But the
simplest of all arrangements is a divan bed, formed of springs and
mattress alone, and supported on legs nailed to the corners of the
spring-frame. Over it a cover should be thrown during the day, and the
pillows in use, if there is not room for them elsewhere, should be
slipped into covers harmonious in color with the couch drapery. Such
a reclining and sleeping couch may also be used in bedrooms, although
an iron or brass bedstead gives an appearance of neatness and personal
privacy that is desirable in such chambers.
Where there is lack of closet space and lockers, trunks can be utilized
in a flat for storing things. Steamer trunks that can be placed beneath
the beds and couches are therefore the best kind to buy. They can also
be readily converted into window seats by making pads of cotton batting
to fit the tops, and placing over them covers and pillow cushions
harmonious with the decoration of the room. Long flat "wardrobe trunks"
are sold, which contain at one end rods for hanging clothes, so that,
when stood up on the other end against the wall they serve as wardrobes.
They always look, however, like makeshifts, and so are more useful in
travelling than in the home.
Rugs are more desirable than carpets in a city apartment, since they can
be more readily cleaned, and, in case of moving to another flat or a
house in the suburbs, will be more adaptable to the new situation.
Bookcases in a temporary home should be of the unit system, where each
shelf is a separate box enabling the books to be moved without
repacking, and permitting rearrangement to suit the new situation, or
the acquisition of new books. Where, however, the lower part of wall
space is desired to give room for articles of furniture such as couches,
shelves can be built, beginning at four and one-half or five feet above
the floor. Mr. Edwin Markham, the poet, whose home overflows with books,
has greatly economized space by building for them a broad lower shelf,
about eighteen inches wide, and, three inches above this, another shelf
twelve inches wide, and, three inches above this, a third six inches
wide. When these are filled with books the titles of all are exposed,
and, by taking out the volume or two immediately in front, a volume on
one of the back shelves is readily obtained. Thus, by walking about his
room, Mr. Markham can look with level eyes for the book he wants, and
procure it without recourse to a chair or stepladder. This plan of
banking books also lends itself to a decorative arrangement of them.
Except in matters such as these, where economy is imperative, the
furnishing of a city apartment does not differ essentially from that of
a house, and the reader is therefore referred to the discussion of this
in the following pages.
The suburban, village, or country home differs from the city apartment,
or even city house, in that it has been built without the primary
consideration of space. It is separated from other houses, even though
by the narrowest space of green lawn, that gives a house the
individuality and independence without which it is hard for it to gather
the associations of home. Even when a detached house is found in a city,
its architecture is generally hampered by its adaptation to its narrow
grounds. It rarely has that rounded development of character which is
as desirable in a home as in a person.
In selecting a rented home in the suburbs, the cost of the husband's
transportation to and from the city should be added to the rent to keep
this within the proper ratio to income, just as the difference in price
of provisions should be considered in that portion allotted to food.
Provisions, even country produce, are often dearer in suburban
communities than in the city, and less saving can be made by close
marketing, because the farmers and gardeners find it more profitable to
send their produce to the center of greatest demand, and therefore of
readiest sale, even though it costs more for transportation than to the
smaller markets near by. So suburban grocers and provision men are wont
to buy in the city markets, and add the cost of transportation back from
the city, and an additional profit for the transaction, to the price to
the consumer.
Owing to the close competition for householders among real-estate men,
it is now almost as easy to purchase a suburban home as it is to rent
one, and it is therefore advisable to do this. The interest on purchase,
and the fixed charges of taxes, insurance, water rent, etc., should be
counted as rent, but a higher percentage of income may be safely
allotted to these than to rent proper, since the purchase is also an
investment. As a rule, the increase of land value near a growing city
will considerably exceed the diminution in the value of the
improvements. Indeed, owing to the constant advance of cost of building
material in recent years, there is often enhancement rather than
depreciation in the house value.
For these economic reasons it is advisable to buy an old house when
its cost is less than the cost of constructing a new one of the same
desirability. The home-seeker, however, should curb his propensity to
make extensive alterations, for, one leading to another, he will find
at the end (if he ever reaches it) that he has virtually built a new
house at a cost greater than he could afford.
On the other hand, he should avoid those houses built on speculation to
sell. In these a showy appearance is gained at the expense of durability
of construction, and the purchaser will find that he must pay in
plumbing, coal bills, and general repairs an amount he had not
calculated upon as interest on the home, for, unless he rebuilds the
house at ruinous expense, these will be annual charges.
The most satisfactory way, and the one leading to great enjoyment in
satisfying the "nest-building" instinct which possesses newly mated
people no less than birds, is for the owners themselves to plan and
superintend the building of the home. There is an infinite variety of
architectural plans spread before the homeseeker in books and magazines.
An examination of these will be of great value to him in clarifying his
hazy ideas, but he should not settle upon any one of them without expert
opinion. He should employ a local architect, or at least a builder with
practical architectural ideas, to examine every feature of the plan
selected as nearest the homeseeker's ideal, and revise it according
to local conditions, cost and availability of material, etc. Money is
always well spent that relieves one of responsibility, enabling him to
say thereafter, "Well, I did every thing I could to have the thing done
properly."
The woman's wish should be paramount in planning the building. The home
is her workshop, and she should have every convenience she requires to
do her work properly. Things that appear of minor importance to a man,
the architect and builder no less than her husband, are to her most
vital. What pockets are to a man or business woman in clothes, closets
and shelves are to a woman in her house, and yet she usually has to
fight for them with the architect as the business woman does for pockets
with her dressmaker. Unless she has worked out the practicability of her
ideas, however, she will be at a great disadvantage with the experts,
and therefore it is wise for her to make herself as familiar as possible
with the main principles of building and the special details of the
improvements she desires, especially as this knowledge will be of great
use in seeing that the work is done as ordered. Where she has not
acquired this knowledge, and the husband is either incompetent or not
free to undertake this supervision, it is well to employ a contractor,
arranging for thorough, satisfactory work, and holding him strictly to
the contract.
The prime requisite in a house is that it be adapted for home life, be
a comfortable place in which to sleep, cook, eat, rest and read, talk
and laugh, and play and pray; in a word, in which to do all the work that
enables these necessities and pleasures to be obtained. Next to the
comfort of the family comes that of the outside world. It is desirable,
though not essential, that the home contain facilities for entertaining.