The curtains were the coarsest square mesh cream-colored scrim and a small deep sea-blue rug was used on the linoleum floor. Coarse Italian linen served for napkins, sometimes combined with Armenian lace. The tableware was inexpensive Italian pottery, costing twenty-five cents a plate.

Six or seven people could be seated comfortably along the one side and at the end of the seven-foot table and served with ease across its two-foot width, and there was plenty of room left to pass in front of it and on its sides. Thus, through a little thought and ingenuity, the seemingly impossible was not only rendered possible, but made delightful.

Ascending the tiny staircase at the end of the dining-room, one entered the upper hall, whose walls were covered with bright yellow and white striped paper. On the right hand side was a gray, blue, and rose bedroom. The walls were papered in warm gray, the dressing table, bookcase, bed, and writing-table were of gray painted wood. All the furniture for the upper floor had been bought unfinished and painted at home. The rugs were a deep rose and the cretonne hangings and upholstery were of a blue and rose all-over floral pattern. Rose silk shades covered the lighting fixtures above the dressing-table and bed. This room opened upon a veranda which was fitted for a sleeping porch with a gray couch hammock and gray wicker chairs upholstered in rose, thus carrying out the color scheme of the room.

On the left side of the hall one entered a gray, rose, and violet bedroom. The walls were gray, the woodwork and furniture violet, the shades and hangings of a charming violet rose, and the rug violet.

The third bedroom had yellow walls, yellow furniture, and green and yellow chintz upholstery and hangings.

One carried away from the little house the impression of a richly colored jewel lying in the midst of the green Westchester hills.

The conditions encountered in this dwelling are typical of those met with in many other old houses. Hideously ornate or straggling piazzas were frequently added long after the house was built and the interiors divided into numerous small rooms instead of the few large ones which had been the original conception. Sometimes pillars supporting overhanging eaves or attic roofs can be substituted for the piazza. Often the addition of a wing and a pergola will supply the architectural deficiencies caused by its removal. The addition of two wings flanking either side of the original building has transformed many a prim New England farmhouse into a low, rambling and exceedingly picturesque modern home.

The cutting of casement windows in some of the large windowless expanses of old houses has an excellent effect both upon the interior and exterior appearance of the house. Inside, their square or diamond shaped panes have a real decorative value and when framed with bright colored hangings and a comfortable window seat, make fascinating nooks for reading or lounging. Outside, they make the best possible setting for window-boxes and lend themselves well to bright painted framework. A white painted house with green-framed doors and windows is always a refreshing spot in a landscape. Green houses with white trimmings are also interesting, or brown with bright orange.

Old frame houses are often shingled over, or plastered to give the effect of concrete. Canvas has been found an excellent and inexpensive method of transforming the exterior. If this is used, wood boarding in vertical panels is a good means of tying the upper and lower stories together. Lattice work and vines can always be resorted to and, if consistent with the character of the house and its surroundings, are perhaps the most effective of all.

Modern landscape gardening has proved a great boon in the making over of the exteriors of old houses. Trim lawns and shrubbery and symmetrical and well groomed approaches are magical transformers. On the grounds of Ramenessin Farm in New Jersey there was a wonderful old box hedge, planted diagonally across the front lawn, which made an orderly approach impossible. Old and experienced gardeners shook their heads when the mistress undertook its transplantation, but it was moved, with the help of a day laborer, to either side of the central path without the loss of a single bush.

Inside the house which is to be made over, the first concern will be the judicious removal of partitions, so that rooms of good location and proportions for comfort and decoration will be obtained. The entrance of many old houses is into a small box-like hall, leading on one side into a front parlor and from there into a back parlor; and on the other side into a small front room and then into the dining-room and kitchen. Such an arrangement can usually be replaced by three house-deep rooms - a drawing-room or library, a living-hall, and dining-room - by taking down the partitions and dividing the frontage into three equal portions and allowing these divisions to extend all the way to the rear. Instead of the front and back parlor there will be a single room, narrower because some of its width must go to the making of the living-hall, but long and with windows looking out of doors at both ends. In the same way the two or three rooms which extended on the other side of the hall will be converted into a single narrower but longer expanse which can be divided between dining-room and kitchen, or be employed solely for the dining-room, having an addition built on for the kitchen in the rear. The stairway will come down the center of the living-hall, and all three rooms can be thrown open affording the impression of spaciousness, with interesting possibilities for vistas and the exercise of hospitality. Where the grounds or gardens are equally pleasant in the front and rear of the house, this arrangement of house-deep rooms will be found exceedingly pleasant.

A fine old manor-house on Long Island, which has recently been reclaimed, received the name of "Topsey-Turvey House" because of the peculiar arrangement occasioned by a narrow and obstinate entrance-hall which seemed to oppose an insurmountable barrier to a well-proportioned living-room. The problem was finally solved by turning the staircase around so that it was reached from the back of the house instead of the front. This allowed the entire front of the ground-floor to be given over to the living-room which was forty feet long and twenty feet wide.