ence. The personality of the owner has been interwoven
into every detail, and shows nowhere more strongly than in the
preservation of all the delightful vagaries and unevenness of hand work
played upon and mellowed by time.

CHAPTER IX

THE ROBERT SPENCER HOUSE

The prospective house owner generally has little or no idea of how to go
about designing his own home. If he chances to see some other house that
strikes his fancy, he realizes that it approaches, at least in part,
what he has in mind. How to accomplish his desire, however, he has no
definite knowledge. He hesitates to call in an architect who is a
stranger to him and knows nothing of his needs and habits and
preferences; he fears that an attempt to combine his own ideas with
those of the architect will result unsatisfactorily to both of them. To
such a man as this, the remodeled farmhouse comes as a boon. From the
old house he is able to determine what type his home will be; no matter
how battered and worn it is to start with, he can get some impression of
the possible room space and arrangement by studying other old interiors
and their relation to each other. That is one of the reasons why the
movement sweeping through the country to-day has become so extensive.
It gives a substantial foundation upon which to develop an artistic home
under one's own supervision.

When a man purchases a weather-beaten farmhouse, it is evident that he
is up against a real problem in remodeling, and the task demands plenty
of time and a wide-awake, ingenious brain. If he consults his friends
and neighbors across the way, doubtless their opinions differ so
materially from his own that the result is worse than if he had solved
the questions in his own way. We all have ideals, but it is not always
easy to express them; they need to be developed in order to be made
practical and require thought and diligent research if they are to be
concretely embodied in the altered home. Paper and pencil are good
friends at this stage of the game, and even a rough sketch drawn
carelessly on the back of an old envelope, as an idea occurs, gives
subject matter for larger schemes and more realistic results.

Few people who are planning to spend the summer months in a new house
realize how much their comfort depends upon light and space. It would be
foolish for you to buy an old farmhouse and make the rooms small and
cramped in size. You would lose a great part of the advantage of coming