WITH the spread of Anglo-mania, smooth, bare floors, in early English style, have grown more and more popular, and wealthy men pay more dollars per square foot than I care to specify, for rosewood, mahogany, West India cherry, and antique oak floors, solid, not veneered. And yet, with all thisContinue Reading
The appearance of walnut may be given to white woods, by painting or sponging them with a concentrated warm solution of permanganate of potassa. The effect is different on different kinds of timber, some becoming stained very rapidly, others requiring more time for this result. The permanganate is decomposed byContinue Reading
This is a very important matter in a country like the United States, where there is so much change of domicile, and that particularly in a city like New York on the first of May. Floors dirty enough to make housekeepers desperate when they think of the bare possibility ofContinue Reading
WHEN Mr. Ruskin chronicled the “Ethics of Dust,” he should have devoted a large portion of his space to the modern floor. The popular theory of a floor, reduced to practice, amounts to this: it is the principal dust-trap of the room. Being of soft and porous wood, its cracksContinue Reading