Period Book: The Furnishing of a Modest Home (1908)

It seems like so many blogs and bungalow books feature the "great homes." You know, those homes that cost a staggering amount of money when they were built—like the Gamble house—and have only gotten worse in modern times. I don't have much interest in those homes, except as inspiration. Who has tens of thousands of dollars to furnish one room? Not us. So we have to be more creative.

I am always looking around for inspiration for how to furnish the average middle-class home. So, when I found The Furnishing of a Modest Home by Fred Hamilton Daniels, published in 1908,  available at the Internet Archive (for free), naturally I grabbed it.

Though, Mr. Daniel's comes from a different time. His idea of a modest home still comes with servants quarters. Oh, and one bathroom. But his writing style is enjoyable and he does have some strong opinions.

On painting woodwork, Mr. Daniel's says you should paint the fancy victorian stuff, but the "ordinary woodwork in the modern house cannot afford to have its uninteresting mediocrity or ugliness brought to the front. It should be stained or painted in low-toned colors that it may assume a very subordinate place in the room. In general, grayed, deep browns or greens are restful and unobtrusive, and are colors with which wallpapers will harmonize." He also didn't think the wood should be finished so it would shine because then it would stand out.

Mr. Daniel's seems to have preferred uncovered, wood floors because they are hygenic, but he does discuss floor coverings. "Carpets composed of naturalistic designs of roses are not pleasing, for walking about upon a bed of roses is a thing which we would carefully avoid in the world of nature. The simple, old-fashioned carpets which have little definite design are among the best."

I excerpted the section about portieres in my post in August 2012. You can read it here, if you'd like.

Mr. Daniel's suggests green for wall colors. "In nature we rarely find pure green in all its intensity and harshness. The hue of the color is softened by yellow, orange, or red until we say it is a warm green. This is the green for our walls. Because the human race has for thousands of years been accustomed to seeing so much blue and green, they are the colors which tire our eyes the least."

Mr. Daniel's cautions people to live with a space for a while before rushing into making furniture selections. "It is because we make unwise selections that the constant procession of furniture through the house is noticeable. We buy a chair for the reception room; soon we decide that it is not what we want for the room, and it is moved on into the study, then the bedroom, the attic, the rummage sale. Money wasted!" (However, if you do as we do and buy used furniture for good prices, you quite often don't lose money when you change your mind. We certainly do our share of churning furniture, but now we don't lose much money and we sometimes even come out ahead.)

Mr. Daniel's states art should be hung with two vertical wires.

How Not to Hang Art

The proper way to hang art: two parallel wires and matted to coordinate with wall color.

This is apparently another how not to do it. Too much white art on a low toned wall.

This is a well done den because everything has been carefully placed and is of a good coordinated color scheme. But, LOOK at all that stuff! That's a lot of stuff. It looks crowded to my eye.

And of course one problem we still have now and will surely never be solved, is how we feel obliged to use a decor item simply because it was given to us. "A man was given a vase by a friend. On one side of this vase was painted a picture of a goat—a GOAT! Now, from any standpoint whatever, what possible relation could a picture of a goat have with the purpose or beauty of a vase? If it had been a butter dish—but it wasn't! The friend was a frequent visitor at the house. The man knew that the decoration of the vase was as bad as it could be, but his friend would come and expect to see the goat on the parlor mantel. What was to be done? What would you have done? We all have this problem to settle...." Alas, he doesn't offer a solution.

And to wrap up, one of my favorite quotes: "At the present time most of the house furnishing is left to the mistress. The man has other interests. He is at the service of his wife, chiefly in the capacity of the moving van. Said the guest, "I see that you have moved the piano since I was here." The husband meekly replied, "Yes, we have had it in every place in the house except the coal-bin, and I expect to put it there next."" Apparently some things never change.

Cutting a New Stencil

Now that the dining room is basically finished and put back together, I finally found the motivation to work on the one last project I want to do for this room — stencil the linen table runners I made back in March.

Today I cut out the stencil design I lifted from a 1913 Gibson catalog (specifically, the top right one in this image below):

Since I still have the silhouette cameo, I went ahead and "etched" the design into the mylar first. It's probably faster than hand-tracing the design onto the plastic and then cutting with a craft knife.

Then I carefully went over the lines with a craft knife and finished cutting through the mylar where needed.

It took an hour or two to finish hand-cutting these, but I think I managed to get a pretty decent two-part stencil out of the effort.

Next up, painting practice and putting the stencil on the runners.

New Dining Room Hinges

Since we were planning to have 12 people for lunch today, we finally found the motivation to finish a project that's been sitting unfinished for several weeks now. The dining room built-in has finally gotten its new brass hinges.

The old hinges are really skanky. The exposed portions were mostly black and the painters applying stain over them, certainly did not improve their appearance. And while it seems like it would have been more thrifty just to have these old hinges replated, it isn't. I looked into it, but it was more expensive to replate the old hinges than it was to buy new solid brass hinges.

I tried to buy identical hinges—I carefully measured and scoured the online websites for the same size—but I still failed. The new hinges are about 3/32" larger and, of course, the screw holes didn't line up. So, it was a bit of a slog to take off all the doors, re-mortise the frames and doors, and fill the screw holes. Jeff used a small dowel and wood glue to fill the original screw holes.

After the glue dried, he had to redrill all the screw holes and reinstall all the doors, but we finally have pretty, shiny hinges to go along with our pretty new leaded glass panels.

I've just got to look at it again. I'm so pleased this is finally done.

And for those, just dropping by for the first time, this is where we started in 2010.

And now.

(For more before and afters, visit our "Before and After" page.)

Finding Quality on Craigslist

Stickley rocking chair $500

Those of you who have followed my blog for years know that most  of my current furniture has come from craigslist. Since learning the hard lesson of selling nearly perfect almost new furniture during our move in 2006, I learned the value of buying used. So, over the past few years, I've managed to buy high quality, style appropriate furnishings for a fraction of their original retail price.

Another reason to buy used furniture is if later you find you have to sell a piece because you want to rearrange a room, or you'd like redecorate—if you've been careful to find good deals—you can usually resell the piece for close to or more than the original price paid. (That has been our experience, anyway.)

When I'm looking for a piece of furniture I tend to make a list including the relevant measurements, i.e. looking for a dresser than can not be wider than 48" or taller than 40". I also have a list of "keywords" that I enter into craigslist. I actually write them down on an index card so I don't have to keep trying to remember them every time I do a search.

One good strategy I have found for picking keywords is to know names of some of the high end furniture stores in your area that sell the furniture you're looking for. For instance, in the San Francisco bay area where I started my mission furniture collection, I knew that "Fenton McLaren" sold a lot of high quality, solid oak furniture that would be perfect for us. So, I would also search on "Fenton" and "McLaren" because sellers don't always know what the furniture style is called, but they might remember where they bought it and put it in the ad.

This roguewood solid oak dining set was $1500. Retail for the table alone is more than $2500.

Another strategy for picking keywords is to use brand names of quality furniture, such as "Stickley," "Bentwood," "Roguewood," "borkholder," and "amish." And don't forget the list of relevant styles, such as "Craftsman," "Arts & Crafts," "Mission," or "Shaker." 

Another advantage of finding a brand name is quite often you can find pieces from different sellers. For instance, I have 7 matched Cost Plus World Market mission style mahogany bookcases! Their retail price was $225 each and they came unassembled. I was able to buy 7 matched bookcases, already assembled, from 3 or 4 different people and I never paid more than $75 each.

If I'm looking for furniture, I like to limit my search to "Furniture—by owner." I do this mostly because in my area the antique stores do a lot of listings and their prices are very often well above what you would find offered by owners. I figure it's better not to fall "in love" with the piece that's twice as expensive at an antique shop.

It seems like I spend a lot of time haunting craigslist, but I really don't. When I am on the hunt, I  do some quick searches—usually once a day when I'm watching TV in the evening—for items I am looking for and then email the sellers with questions or if I want to go see the pieces. 

Sometimes I find good pieces where the seller is too far to travel to or the price is too high, so I bookmark the ad (or save a copy for my files) but not contact the seller. Then, if the seller continues to place the same ad for several weeks, or months, I feel justified in writing them asking if their price is firm or if they'd consider a lower offer. I might point out I've seen their ad listed for XX weeks. Because of the long listing time, many are receptive. If they aren't, I move on.

This solid cherry bedroom set by Stuart David was $2000 (retails for $5000).

Given one of our lessons this past year, not all sellers are honest. (Most are, luckily.) Those wicker chairs we bought for the front porch—broken and surreptitiously repaired. So, make sure to thoroughly inspect any furniture before taking it home. Sit in chairs, see if they rock. Look to see if the pieces are good and solid. 

One last comment about buying good quality furniture on craigslist—don't expect to take home a truly solid cherry bed for $50. Veneers are very well done these days, so if someone is selling a "solid cherry" piece for $50, I'd be skeptical that it truly is solid. Write the seller and ask for a brand name and research the company if they send you a name.

For modern reproductions, I stick to listings that tell you the brand name, or tell you what store they were purchased from, so I try to shop on name reputation. Unless the item is truly an antique, then you have to use your judgment a lot more. 

Sometimes the trip to see the furniture is wasted, but over time the savings can be truly inspiring. In my experience, you can expect to pay one-fifth to one-half the original retail price, but usually closer to one-fifth.

I'd love to hear from you all about your successes or failures on craigslist, or any further tips I missed.

Picture Hanging Adventures

We've never had a house with plaster and picture rail before so I'm learning a whole new way of hanging up art. At times, it's fairly straight-forward; there are loops on the back of the art to attach the picture wire and the picture rail is easily accessible. Like these.

But sometimes the picture rail is running at an angle, like in the den. How do you hang a picture on this? This looks stupid and we'll be reworking it.

Quite a lot of the pictures don't have hooks or rings on the back so I need to try and find some to install.

Also, some of the best wall space we have is in the stairwell where the picture rail is maybe 14 feet above the stairs. I have no idea how we'll be getting art up there.

Bye Bye Bookcases

It's taken a while, but I've finally found a new home for our gorgeous solid wood Bentwood bookcases. They've been listed on craigslist on and off for about four months. These are really nice quality, so it's taken a while to find someone who could appreciate their quality and also had the budget to take them away.

I hadn't planned to put anything in them before selling, but as the weeks passed, stuff slowly trickled into them and then when we emptied the basement bookcases, they filled the rest of the way. The buyer comes back tomorrow to pick them up so I'll have to spend some time today packing these books back up.

It will be sad to see the bookcases go, but they proved to be ill-suited to this den area. They are taller than the plate rail so had to be set several inches away from the wall and the space would do better with bookcases with smaller doors.

I'm now on the hunt for barrister bookcases. I'd really like something along these lines. In fact, I'd snatch these up in a minute if they weren't also too tall for the plate rail. Sigh.

Strawberry Season

Strawberry season has finally arrived in Oregon. Jeff and I got to go pick berries at the North Willamette Research & Extension Service test garden because Jeff is a Master Gardener. It was a really good deal; just $3 a bucket. We picked 3 buckets-full (about 18 pounds worth). Perhaps we should have gotten more, but it was hot and we got pretty tired after more than an hour. It still took us several hours to "process" the fruit for the freezer today.

It's well worth the effort to prepare the fruit for the freezer. Jeff first soaks the fruit in a solution of water  and a small amount of vinegar. Then we remove the stems and place the individual berries on cookie sheets.

We put the cookie sheets in the freezer for a few hours. Then, when the strawberries are partially frozen, we place them in freezer bags. Because of the extra effort, the strawberries don't freeze in one great big block and Jeff can pick out individual berries for use.

Now we'll get to enjoy strawberry smoothies throughout the winter.