Whatever wood is used should be in boards seven-eighths of an inch thick. At certain times it has been common to lay "wood carpets," consisting of slips of various woods, one-quarter of an inch thick, glued on cotton cloth, over spruce floors: but unless the strips are nailed through from the face, which covers the floor with nail-holes, they soon became loose. Parquetry floors are made, in many cases, with pieces three-eighths of an inch thick, glued and fastened to a backing of half-inch pine; and, when well made, they are durable.

For giving to a floor of any hard wood the polish which forms one of its chief attractions, wax only should be used. Nearly all painters have a mania for varnishing hard-wood floors, some from habit, and some from the facility with which a polish can be obtained; and will argue by the hour in favor of the practice; but the householder who looks beyond immediate effect, and desires to see his floors clean and shining when his neighbor's varnished floors are hopelessly black in the corners, and diversified in the middle with worn spots of white, which no patching or staining can conceal, should firmly refuse to allow varnish of any kind to touch a hard-wood floor; and he may take satisfaction in knowing that the very best painters will support him in this refusal. The oak floors in the French palaces have never had anything but wax on them, and although the feet of visitors have, in two hundred years, worn the boards nearly through, they are as bright as when they were first laid; while a varnished floor is rarely presentable after ten years' service, and can be brought back to tolerable condition only by costly scraping and refinishing.

Birch.

Oak.

French floors are polished with simple beeswax; but the mixture of beeswax, paraffine, and turpentine sold in cans under the name of "Globe Wax," "Butcher's Polish," and various other appellations is more easily applied, and is less sticky than pure beeswax, so that it needs less frequent rubbing to keep it bright. Before the wax is applied on a new floor, the floor should receive two coats of a mixture of equal parts of linseed oil and turpentine, with enough japan to make it harden over night.

Waxing floors.

Both the oil and turpentine should be pure, as the fish-oil and benzine often sold for them will leave the floor sticky. The purpose of applying the oil is to bring out the grain of the wood, and prevent subsequent grease spots from showing on the floor, as they would if the wax were applied without previous oiling. The mixture of turpentine causes the oil to soak much more deeply into the wood, and, by two coats, the grain, with the aid of the japan drier, is to a certain extent filled and hardened, so as to take a better polish with the wax. After the wax has been applied, no oil should ever be used on a floor. The wax will prevent it from being absorbed, and it will simply form a sticky film over the surface, Which will soon collect dust and turn black.

After the oil and turpentine treatment, and before waxing, it is common to fill the pores of oak and ash floors with a paste "filler," well rubbed in. As this fills up the pores to the line of the surrounding tissues, a more uniform polish can be obtained subsequently; but, unless a very high finish is desired, the filler may be dispensed with, and the floor will be less slippery if it is left out. Most painters, after filling an oak floor, insist that it is necessary to go over it with "a thin coat of shellac," to "prevent the filler from coming out "; but the application of shellac, like that of any other varnish, will cause the floor to wear into spots, and it is much better to let the filler come out, if it chooses, than to keep it in by such means. As a matter of fact, the filler rarely shows any disposition to leave its place in the floor after a coating of wax has been put over it.

After the floor has been filled, if a filler is used, and when the filler and the preceding coats of oil are perfectly dry and hard, the waxing is begun by covering the whole floor with the wax and turpentine paste, put on, not too thickly, with a rag, and leaving it over night to harden. The next morning the rag is again applied with some fresh paste, the turpentine in which dissolves the surplus wax left on the floor the day before, and renders the coating uniform. After drying for an hour or so, the whole is polished with a weighted brush, rubbing with the grain of the wood, and finished with a woollen rag, applied either by hand, or by tying the rag under the weighted brush. If the japan is omitted from the oil and turpentine, or inferior filler is used, so that the wood is greasy, it is useless to apply the wax, as the latter will unite with the oil, and cannot be polished; while it will prevent further drying of the oil, by excluding the air, so that the wax finishing must be left until the previous applications are well hardened.

After once waxing, the floor will need no further attention for a year, except an occasional rubbing with the weighted brush to keep up the polish. At the end of that time a thin coat of wax may be applied, particularly over the places where the most wear comes, in the same way in which the first application was made, by leaving it over night to harden, and rubbing it down the next morning with a rag dipped in a little fresh paste, and annually thereafter the operation may be repeated; but, in the intervals, no fresh wax should be put on, the weighted brush or a warm woollen rag, if the wax has been whitened by water, being depended upon to keep up the polish. The footmen in French houses polish the oak floors every morning by skating over them with a brush tied to one foot; but, with the paraffine mixture commonly used in this country, so much labor is unnecessary, a weekly, or even monthly, brushing being sufficient.

Oak stairs, and ash floors and stairs, should be treated in the same way as oak floors, first oiling with linseed oil, turpentine and japan, then filling, if a high polish is desired, and finishing with wax. So treated, they will retain their beauty indefinitely. Floors of maple, birch, Georgia and North Carolina pine, and the fancy woods are similarly finished, but most of them are so close grained that no filler can be used on them, as there are no pores to fill, and for the same reason they take much less wax than an oak or ash floor, but require, as a rule, more rubbing to produce a good effect.