Every Domiologist (the author’s coinage for home scientist) likes a light, clean, glistening kitchen. Oils, paints and varnishes and their relatives, enamels, shellacs and lacquers, do the trick. This article is not going to teach you to be a painter, but ought to give you the salient facts of kitchen “make up,” which every Domiologist should have in her mental, if not actual, filing case. Furthermore, in the maidless or maided house the basic supply of to-be-cleaned-things must be as nearly self-supporting as possible. Hence a smoothly varnished wood-work and un-peeling painted wall or ceiling will go a long way to simplifying the care of the kitchen, yea the whole house. Briefly, paint, according to Wood, is any liquid or semi-liquid substance applied to any metallic, wooden or other surface, to protect it from corrosion or decay or to give color or gloss or all of these qualities to it. Note the stress on the protective quality. According to Heckel: Paint is a mixture of opaque or semi-opaque substances (pigments) with liquids, capable of application to surface by means of a brush or a painting machine, or by dipping and forming an adherent coating thereon. House paints are made of pigments, drying oils (volatile or thinners), driers or “Japans” and varnishes. Pigments are divided into white bases (like oxide of zinc, the most important), inert reinforcing pigments, natural earth colors, chemical colors, pigment lakes, etc. Varnish enhances the beauty of surfaces, protects them from injury, increases the luster or hardness of other coatings, excludes moisture and gases, vapors and other atmospheric agencies of decomposition or decay. PREVENTIVES OF DISEASE Paint and varnishes in the main have been thought to be beautifiers only, but in reality they are much more than this, for they are very complete means for the maintenance of sanitary conditions in the kitchen and are made for application on metals, cement, concrete, plaster, wood, etc. Therefore, there is nothing in the kitchen that cannot be re-surfaced if necessary. Cracks and holes spell vermin and germ traps, which make efficient distribution centers for disease. Here is where paints and varnishes and the adjuncts not only fill the cracks, but fill the bill before the physician has time to send his. The best blanket dictum to remember is that: Cleanliness is next to hole-iness. Fill up the holes, cracks, splits, roughnesses and unevennesses. Render all surfaces non-porous by application of liquid paint fillers. But before all else, scrape and pumice and wash surfaces with good old soap and water. Benzine is very often not sufficiently efficient in preparing for paint applications. Evenness, cleanliness, non-porousness, these three, and, to be Irish, the greatest of these is elbow grease--the best of all kitchen cosmetics applied in preparation and in brushwork. CHOOSE THE MANUFACTURER FIRST “What criterion have we,” asks the Domiologist, “in the choice of paints?”