MODERNISE YOUR PRESENT HOME!

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 445, 29 August 1928, Page 7

MODERNISE YOUR PRESENT HOME!

| Electrical Appliances

Up-to-date

Heating & Cooking

Home Refrigerating '

Bathroom Comfort

Bring your house up-to-date ! Domestic science has made great strides in recent years —enjoy the advantages —in- CJ crease the value of your property and make yours the

B HOME BEAUTIFUL Landscape Gardening Wallpapers & Painting —JUj .

(By

"PENATES")

Trapping the Sun

To Catch Every Strong Beam

The Garden Room

rIE good behaviour of King Sol lately has made most of us appreciate the wonderful benefits he confers in the matter of good spirits and a feeling of well-being. To live, and often sleep in the open air is the happy lot of many folks in warmer climes than this, but we certainly could make more of our opportunities, and spend a greater number of our waking hours in the sun than we do.

What is needed is a garden room; an intermediate place between in and out doors —a place where, though we have a roof and three walls to keep off chill winds, we are barely conscious of them, and only know we are getting a full measure of air and sunlight.

At first sight thjs conjures up visions of expensive sun parlours, as portrayed by American magazines, but there are other and less costly ways, and now is the time to think them out. The new house, unless it be of terrace type, is invariably provided with a spacious porch or veranda of kinds, which, is more than half way toward solving the problem, for a simple glass screen at each side will turn it into a loggia. In the case of the datwalled terrace house, a glass erection, not unlike the old-fashioned conservatory, can be built on from French windows. The one side should, of course, be left open, or if it can be afforded, fitted with glass doors that fold back. In one respect this is an ideal arrangement, since it probably leads from the most used room in the house. This addition need not darken the sitting-room, as the roof can be of glass, shielded with roll-up coloured sun blinds when necessary. The really old-fashioned house, with its characteristic back addition with flat roof, falls into the scheme with the same simplicity. This flat area, raised just above the garden level, is an ideal spot for an outdoor room, and the cost of enclosing it should be no more than the price of an average greenhouse. An adidtional charm is ensured by the erection of an outside wooden stairway to the garden.

If none of these schemes commend themselves, or are otherwise impossible, as a last resort there is always the garden room which stands completely away from tl|s house, in the form of one of the many excellent shelters now sold ready for erection. The best of them are pivoted so that they may be turned to follow the sun. What of the furnishing? It should be of the utmost simplicity, though the acme of comfort. Apart from sun blinds and cushions, colours should be neutral rather than brilliant, for except for a few months 'the garden Itself will supply all that Is required. It is here that loom woven and wicker furniture comes into its own. People will expect to lounge in the garden room, and for this purpose one of the new couch hammocks will fill the bill. This hammock is suspended so that it gives smooth swinging action that is the last word in luxurious laziness. Then, when the weather becomes so attractive that one would lie out ou the grass or under the trees, a rigid canopy is added, and the couch pushed out into the open air. The ideal garden room is warmed when required, but this, too, is a simple problem when the many .excellent portable stoves are considered. The varying merits of gas, electricity and oil need not be entered into here. Rush mats are the cheapest way of covering the floor, but to ensure the certainty of warm feet, each chair should be provided with a mat of wooden slats, such as are in use before sinks. And so we have the garden room which would be an asset to every home and which would provide that comfort and cheeriness that makes for the better home life of everyone.