May 1950

A small room with big ideas

Is this tomorrow's furniture?

What will the furniture of tomorrow look like? Will it be made by machine instead of by hand? Will the accent be on practicality?

How to get rich in your own basement

The prospect of making a million dollars in your garage or basement workshop has one advantage over discovering a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. It's been done-- not once, but hundreds of times.

GARDEN NEWS

A new elm variety, the Augustine Ascending Elm, may be the answer to phloem necrosis disease (not to be confused with Dutch elm disease) which has killed thousands of elms during the past few years. The tree has proved resistant to phloem necrosis in tests so far. The Augustine Ascending Elm has upright-growing branches which produce a handsome urn-shaped tree. At last report, the tree will be sold only to cities for street planting, but next year will be available to you at nurseries.

Bottle bases for your lamps

Their house isn't finished, but--

The Shimoneks of Boulder, Colorado, are building their own home. But when the picture above was taken, they weren't working. They were eating breakfast in their private glade, beside a mountain stream. And they planned to go fishing later.

Have color right outside your door

Here's an angle

Why do all the walls of a house have to be at right angles to each other? They don't. By avoiding the conventional square and rectangle in the home he designed for Major and Mrs. Bentley Courtenay in Fox Bluff, a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin, Architect William Kaeser gave the Courtenays a five-way dividend:

Plant shrubs for color all season

The shrubs recommended here usually have several woody stems apiece, and the taller ones are sometimes classed as small trees. But --short or tall-- the spring effect of their flowers is light and cloudlike-- welcome as spring itself. Locate the flame-red quinces and azaleas apart from the pinks.

Five Star Home

How to brighten your home

Each year for 25 years now, in the well-clipped little town of Kohler, Wisconsin, 65 miles north of Milwaukee, the Kohler Women's Club has redecorated a house and opened it to all comers from May to November. The purpose: to whoop up the community's interest in better homes.

ABCs of flower arrangement

May is the time when your garden bursts into bloom after gray winter months. Why not capture the brilliant color, the dewy fragrance of spring for your rooms? Bring armfuls of tulips, lilacs, and iris inside and fill your bowls with spring flowers.

Your taste is on display

More than furniture, more than color, accessories reflect you and your taste. Even the smallest ash tray should be an accessory you're proud to put on display.

One room that suite your family to a T

Family room: That room in your home where you and your family and friends can get together informally with no fuss about dress-up or party manners. This is the room for hobbies, for music hours, for dancing, for a quiet evening with a book.

Potted plants are so useful!

Good fences you can build

A good fence has many values-- protection, privacy, beauty. It can do other things for you, too: Your fence can mark a line. Even one too low to bar determined intruders can act as a mental barrier, clearly marking off what is yours from what is not. Here are tips to help you build a fence so lasting you grandchildren may someday carve their initials into it:

Home furnishings answers

What to do about temper tantrums

The immediate cause of a tantrum is your youngster's discovery that he can't do something he wants. Illness, fatigue, hunger, or a parent who sometimes displays uncontrolled temper may be the background cause. Check these possibilities, but be casual about the tantrum; ignore it if you can; and never let your boy or girl get his way by such behavior.

Molds give food a party trim

Planned for company

Some families don't have many out-of-town visitors. Others are deluged with guests from January through December. The big problem is always how to take care of them.

Old-time charm in a modern kitchen

Plastics make your housework easier

Cleaning can be as easy as the swish of a damp cloth if you put plastic protectors to work at your house. Use them in the kitchen, the laundry, the living room-- any room in the house.

Article

Article

What's in a name?

Landscape your own home--IV

Enclosing the yard does more for your home than almost any other single change you can make. Border plantings are needed to give privacy to the yard, just as walls enclose and make the house private. Because borders can make such a difference, owners of older homes can often get most of the benefits of a new home garden merely by giving privacy to the garden area.

We vacation on a horse-and-buggy schedule!

These days when our friends regale us with tales of the 3,000 miles they drove in a week, and the long list of sights they saw, we are polite, and listen. We used to be that way, too.

Daylight for dark corners

Builders today are using a device nearly as old as architecture itself to solve the just-as-old problem of getting light into inside areas.

ABCS of hemming

Get a good night's sleep--On better bedding

You spend one-third of your life in bed-- so mattresses and springs are an important investment. When you shop for a new mattress, take the time to read labels and ask questions. You'll want to clip this article and take it with you.

Dark house? Remodel!

It was a hot September day when I first saw the house my husband had bought in Hidden Valley, an hour's ride north of San Francisco. The 25 acres strewn with oaks and grass were beautiful.

What should you do about children's sex play?

Mrs. Pace suddenly realized she hadn't heard a peep from the playroom in nearly an hour. Every other afternoon the two boys from next door had come to play with Nancy, they'd made enough noise to give her a headache. Mrs. Pace pushed open the door and saw the three youngsters parading silently around the room.

Old rocking chair got you?

New walls for old

Do you want lasting beauty for the walls of your bath room, kitchen, or laundry? If so, there are two factory finished sheet materials which the handy man can apply

How to remodel a porch

If your living room isn't big enough nor light enough, the trouble is probably a heavy front porch. It was for the Gale Walkers of Oak Park, Illinois.

Yarn lamp shade

Give your color scheme a lift with a new lamp shade. Here's an unusual yarn shade you can make for yourself in a few hours. All you need is a steel frame, muslin tape, and worsted yarn. You can use the frame of an old shade or buy a new frame in the needlecraft department of your local store.

Their living room is half the house

When you're building with a budget in mind (and who isn't?) one big question is: "How much living space can we afford?"

Time-tested styles that fit today's needs

Sunshine plus privacy

Movable walls

This furniture is part metal

There's an EASY way to remove old wallpaper

There's extra living space in small alcoves

Lots of storage space, even for guests

It's NEWS to me!

Yon may not need curtains

Jackie wouldn't have gotten to first base...

The three older Robinson boys shared the big bed upstairs but Jackie, aged 3, still slept with his mother, and that worried her so much that she offered him 25 cents a week to join his brothers. To Mallie Robinson, mother, father, and breadwinner for four sons and a daughter, 25 cents was a lot of money. Her husband had deserted her back in Cairo, Georgia, and now she was working as a domestic to pay for the house on Pepper Street in Pasadena, California.

How to use a wood-turing lathe

ELJER CO.

You can slipcover lamp shades, too

Detachable lamp-shade slipcovers give a fresh lift to your color scheme. Slip a cover over the shade-- and you have a new color accent for your living room or bedroom!

Remodel it yourself...

The home of Mr. and Mrs. Richard L. Jarvis in Winfield, Kansas, has been growing ever since it was built in 1936. What originally was a 22x26-foot house now stretches across 70 feet of the Jarvises' corner lot.

QUICK finishes for wood

QUICK finishes for wood

If your youngster LIES CHEATS STEALS...

What should you do if your youngster lies, or steals, or cheats on school examinations? Most parents tackle any kind of dishonesty in one of two ways-- either they pounce accusingly on their boy or girl, perhaps before there's proof of dishonesty, or else they try to ignore the possibility that any offspring of theirs might have lied, cheated, or taken something that didn't belong to him.

Cover your radiator

Are your youngsters glad they came?

Check yourself on the following questions to see how gracious a host or hostess you are to your children.

Your dog and mine

DDT is fairly good at killing adult fleas. But the trick in flea control is to kill the larvae which have hatched off the dog and will turn into adult fleas in a matter of days or weeks to climb back on your "de-fleaed" dog. Stand your dog on newspapers; dust him generously with pyrethrum powder.

Window beauty--low cost

Then try a picture panel

Build this table of many uses

It's no trick to build an easily stored table if you use pipe for legs. That dodges the amateur carpenter's toughest problem: making take-down wooden legs that don't wobble.

MAY GARDEN GUIDE

Feed roses at least once during the month. Spray or dust plants once each week. Prune hardy climbing roses as soon as they finish blooming-- cut out the oldest canes.

Waterlilies need no hoeing

Your lawn this month

May is the month when your lawn is at its best. It's the time of year when a mediocre lawn looks good and a good lawn looks superb. But it's also the time when weeds start to grow and Japanese beetle grubworms begin to work their way upward in the ground to feed on the roots of the grass.

The diary of a plain dirt gardener

Man 1 Why does it always have to rain on me? And such a happy day too-- May Day-- with hybrid lilacs spreading beauty and fragrance about. And our Baldwin apple tree on the back lawn looking as though it is a bridesmaid at a wedding. With the late narcissus posies having a confab with the early tulips.

Is your tree surgeon a quack?

He is a self-styled "tree expert" and he knows exactly what to do about your crooked tree, whether it needs trimming, spraying, feeding, surgery, or all of them. He talks a lot, because he uses words, words, and more words to cover his own ignorance. Besides, as long as he's talking, you are not asking questions that he can't answer.

Longer life for your garden hose

Garden clinic

Smart ways to use a knife box

The MAN NEXT DOOR

"We will never be a two-car family," my wife says philosophically, stepping around an old croquet set, "until we have a three-car garage."