To those who live in an old house, all the foregoing advice should prove a source of helpfulness in making the best of the old home, rather than of dissatisfaction with its seeming shortcomings. There are many simple, inexpensive ways of making it conform to the model house. Expense need only be incurred in sanitary improvement, such as the better drainage of the cellar, enabling it to be utilized for purposes which now crowd the "work-rooms" of the home, and the alterations of the windows to permit better lighting and ventilation. Very often a room can be made to exchange purposes by a simple transference of furniture, thus saving the housekeeper steps. A woodhouse can be converted into a summer kitchen, and the old one, during this season, used as a dining-room, though it may be found even pleasanter to eat out of doors under an arbor or on a wide piazza. A porch may be partitioned off into a laundry, and the attic ceiled and partitioned for use as a bedroom. Very often an old boxed-off stairway, built in the days when it was thought unseemly to show a connection with the upper bedrooms, can be relieved of its door and walls, to the increase of space in the lower room, and of the beauty of its appearance. Indeed, as a rule, there are too many doors in an old house. Some of these can be altered into open arched entrances, making one large commodious room out of two little inconvenient ones. Unused out-buildings can be turned into playrooms for the children, and even sleeping quarters. All these are changes that make for the beauty no less than the utility of home, as proved by the fact that many artists, especially those who have studied abroad where old country houses are more or less of this unconventional character, go into the country and alter in this fashion old and even abandoned houses into houses admired for their charming individuality. Illustrations of such "hermitages" frequently appear in the magazines, and may be studied for suggestions. Sometimes the alteration is of the exterior only. The repainting in a proper color, or the simple creosote staining of a weather-beaten house, with the addition of a rustic porch or the breaking of a corner bedroom into a balcony, will sometimes so transform an old house that it looks as if it were a new creation. CHAPTER VI FURNITURE AND DECORATION The Qualities to Be Sought in Furniture--Home-made Furniture--Semi-made Furniture--Good Furniture as an Investment--Furnishing and Decorating the Hall--The Staircase--The Parlor--Rugs and Carpets--Oriental Rugs--Floors--Treatment of Hardwood--Of Other Wood--How to Stain a Floor--Filling as a Floor Covering. Necessity invented stools, Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, And Luxury the accomplished sofa last. WILLIAM COWPER--_The Task._