CHAPTER XXXIX.
FURNITURE OLD AND NEW.
ONLY the other day we were appealed to by a friend for suggestions on how to furnish a room prettily, and at the same time inexpensively, and we know that there are many girls like this friend who, loving to surround themselves with beauty and comfort, have not the means of doing so in the ordinary way; but must depend largely upon their own skill and ingenuity for the gratification of this taste. After all, there is more real pleasure in planning and contriving the furnishing of one’s room, even with only a small sum for outlays, than there is in ordering a set from the furnishers which is exactly like a hundred others. In the former case we make our room expressive of our individuality; in the latter we walk in the beaten track of those who have little or no individuality to express.
So much for the sentiment of the idea. Now let us turn to the practical side, and find the best way of carrying it out, and putting our theories into practice.
In mentioning old furniture in the heading of this chapter, we do not allude to the antiques in such high favor just now; they are unique and handsome enough in themselves, requiring no contriving to beautify them; but there are few families who do not possess furniture that is out of date, old-fashioned without being antique; furniture that time and hard usage has reduced to a state of shabbiness anything but beautiful, yet not worth sending to the cabinet-makers to be furbished up. It is the renovation of such furniture that will help much toward making a room pretty and attractive.
We need not attempt to restore the furniture to its original state, that would be impracticable. But we can work wonders in transforming it; in turning a homely article into one that will be an adornment instead of a blemish.
Bookcase.
Take, for instance, an old bureau belonging to a cottage set. The mirror, perhaps, is broken, or if it is not it can be used to better advantage elsewhere. Removing that, there is left merely a chest of drawers, which we will proceed to convert into a bookcase by the addition of shelves placed on top. If you have a brother who is handy with his tools the matter is simple enough; without him a carpenter may have to be employed to make the shelves, or, by taking the plan and measurements to a carpenter-shop the materials can be obtained ready for use, and all you will have to do will be to put them together. Although there is a saying that “a girl can never drive a nail straight,” we have reason to believe the contrary, and feel sure that a little practice will enable most girls to do many bits of light carpentry work as well as the boys. Three feet is the height of a bureau belonging to an ordinary set of cottage furniture, so we will take that as our standard for measurement, and make our shelves according to it.
Fig. 366 is the diagram for the frame of the shelves. The side pieces are made of boards three feet four inches long and nine inches wide; the top of each of these boards is sawed into a point as shown in diagram. Four cleats made of sticks eight inches long and one inch thick are nailed to the side of each board, the distance between being nine inches.
The frame at the back is composed of two boards five and one half feet long and seven inches wide, and two, three feet three inches long (the width of the bureau) and seven inches wide. One of these short boards is nailed across the top ends of the long boards, and the other twenty-four inches below. The side pieces are nailed to the back as shown in diagram, the nails being driven through the back board into the edge of the side piece.
When the frame is made it is placed on the bureau, the sides resting on the top and the long back boards reaching down behind where they are nailed or screwed to the bureau. The shelves are thirty-seven inches long and nine inches wide. They rest on the cleats and are not nailed to the frame.
Screws may in some places, answer better than nails.
When the shelves have been adjusted, the whole is painted a dark olive green.
If the knobs are removed from the drawers before the bureau is painted, and brass handles substituted afterward, it will add materially to its appearance.
The bookcase shown in our illustration is finished off with curtains, which hang by brass rings from a slender bamboo pole. The pole is slipped through brass hooks screwed into the side pieces near the top.
Curtains of canton-flannel, or any soft material, are suitable for this bookcase. The colors may be a combination of olive green with old blue, yellow, cherry, copper color, dark red, or light brown.
The Chair
in the same illustration is an ordinary rocking-chair painted olive green, with cushions at the back and in the seat stuffed with excelsior, covered with bright cretonne, and tied to the chair with ribbons.
Chairs of this kind look well painted almost any color; one of yellow, with yellow cushions and ribbons, is exceedingly pretty.
If the chair to be remodelled is bottomless, reseat it in this way: Cut some strips of strong cotton cloth about one inch wide and sew them together, lapping one piece over another, as in Fig. 367; fasten an end on to the edge of the chair with a tack, and then pass the cloth back and forth across, each time putting it under and bringing it over the edge of the chair.
When the seat is filled up with the strips going one way, cut the cloth and tack the end to the chair; then, commencing at the side, cross these strips, passing the cloth in and out as if darning. Fig. 368 shows just how it is done. Be sure to draw the strip as tightly as you can every time it crosses the chair, for if too loose it will sag as soon as the chair is used. The edge of the chair may be covered with the cretonne, or a ruffle which is sewed around the cushion.
Fig. 369 is an old settee fitted up with cushions, and a sociable, comfortable seat it is. It offers plenty of room for two, and ensconced thereon the girls may rock and talk to their hearts’ content.
These settees are not often seen in the city, but are to be found in many a farm-house and country town. The one from which our sketch is taken is painted black, but, like the chair, it would look well any color.
Fresh, dainty prettiness should be the principal feature of a young girl’s room, and this can be obtained at very little expense, much less than most persons suppose.
Fig. 370 shows what can be done with the commonest kind of furniture. This can be bought at the manufacturer’s unpainted, and may be left its natural color and simply varnished, or, following the present fashion, it can be painted white, and decorated with slender bands or circles of gold.
As in the illustration,
The Bedstead
should have drapery suspended over it. This gives a soft, pretty effect, and takes away its stiffness. Dotted swiss or thin cottage drapery answers the purpose nicely.
Ten yards of material cut in two breadths of five yards each are required for these curtains. The breadths must be sewed together lengthwise and then passed through a small wooden hoop which has been gilded or painted white.
When the hoop is directly in the middle of the breadths, the material must be brought together close to the hoop and two of the edges sewed or basted together. This seam is to go at the back and keep the curtain from parting and hanging in two strips.
A ruffle of the same material, or lace, sewed on the edge and across the ends of the drapery gives it a soft, lacy effect. The ribbons which loop the curtains at either side should be of the prevailing colors of the room. If the furniture is white and gold, they should be yellow.
The hoop can hang from a brass chain fastened to a hook in the ceiling.
The bureau belonging to this style of furniture is too clumsy for our use, although without the mirror it will be convenient as a chest of drawers. Brass handles in place of knobs will improve it.
A Dressing-table
to take its place, like the one shown in Fig. 370, can be made of a small kitchen-table. The mirror suspended over it should have a broad flat frame of white pine, varnished or painted to match the furniture. Almost any cabinet-maker can frame a mirror in this way. Bracket candlesticks made of brass, which are very inexpensive, should be fastened to the frame on either side of the glass with brass nails or brass-headed tacks.
With a brass handle on the drawer, a pretty scarf of linen crash, ornamented with drawn work or outline, thrown over the table and hanging down at each end, and the addition of pin-cushion and toilet articles, this toilet-table looks very attractive and readily challenges admiration.
Washstand.
A piece of white matting bound at top and bottom, with yellow cotton cloth for a splasher, as in Fig. 371, and a pretty scarf and toilet-set, presents this most ordinary washstand in a new light.
Three common kitchen-chairs and one rocker, when painted white or varnished, as the case may be, and cushioned in pretty light-colored cretonne, completes this novel, pretty, and remarkably inexpensive set of furniture.
The curtains next to the windows should be of the same material as that used for the bed-drapery, with the inner one of cretonne like the chair-cushions.
White matting is suitable for the floor in summer, and during the cold weather it can be mostly covered with a pretty ingrain rug or art square, as it is called.
Instead of using gilt, the rings and bands on the furniture may be blue or red, in which case the trimmings of the room should correspond.
A Hall Seat.
As another illustration of what can be done with the most ordinary piece of furniture, we have chosen a common wooden bench, and by painting it black and giving it a dark-red cushion with tassels at each corner, have transformed it into quite an elegant hall-seat. Fig. 372 gives the effect.
Fig. 373 shows a
Window Seat and Book-shelves Combined,
made of boxes. Eight soap-boxes of the same size are required for the shelves, and a packing-box about two feet high, two feet in width, and as long as the window is wide, for the seat.
Remove the tops and two sides of the soap-boxes, and bore holes with a red-hot poker in one corner of the bottoms of six of the boxes, and in two of the tops which have been removed, making the holes one inch from either edge (Fig. 374). In the other two boxes bore in the same place, but not entirely through, making the holes about half an inch deep.
Place these last two on the floor and pile the others on top of them, three on each, nailing the bottom of each box to the top edge of the one beneath it. On the two upper boxes nail the tops in which the holes have been made.
Have ready two slender bamboo rods about four feet long. Insert a rod in the hole in the top of an upper box and let it pass down, slipping it through the holes in the bottoms of the other boxes and fitting it in the cavity in the lower box.
In like manner put the other rod in place through the other pile of boxes.
If the packing-box has a cover, it should be fastened on with hinges, so that it may be used for a shoe-box as well as a seat; if it has not, turn it upside down, place the soap-boxes at each end and nail them to it.
Paint the shelves black or the color of the wood-work in the room, and upholster the seat and the boxes on either side of it with cushions made of strong muslin stuffed with excelsior and covered with cretonne.
Fasten the edges of the side cushions to the boxes with gimp braid and tacks. Make a deep plaiting of the cretonne and tack it across the front of the large box. When there is a lid a narrow plaiting must be tacked across its front edge, which will, when the box is closed, lap over the top of the deeper plaiting.
That this combination of window-seat and shelves is both comfortable and convenient, one may easily imagine, and that it adds not a little to the furnishing of a room, we leave to our illustration to show.