WORK COLUMN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue I, 4 July 1896, Page 30

WORK COLUMN.

The fact that there are corners in every house just as there are corners in every life cannot be denied. Corners that we love to revert to in memory which become so hallowed in our thoughts as almost to materialise into niches filled up with the various figures of friendship, which, alas ! we can only conjure up by the imagination. Awkward corners that we have turned in our lives and recollect with a somewhat smug feeling of s*lf-congratulation ; how our diplomacy grows with years, what clever things we did to get round them, and how our self-importance grows with each recital of our adroitness in managing under such difficult circumstances. Corners there were too, which in getting round, we have somehow managed to get badly scraped, and have left bits of the best parts of ourselves behind ; but that we now acknowledge, with a kind of philosophical regret, could not be helped after all, so we may as well make up our minds to a kind of deformity which thus becomes essential to our nature until the end of life. Of course, this is all sentiment, and we know that as such it has no possible place in a column given over to practicalities, for even if we admit the existence of sentiment it is, as a rule, the kind of thing that hovers round and does not interfere with any immediate action of ours ; nevertheless, we know these corners, and I make no apology for stirring up my readers’ memories of them. And all this amount of retrospection was brought about by a friend who dilated to me on the merits of cupboards and the utilisation of corners until I verily believe I began to nod my head and dream o r all sorts of earners which of course had practically no existence at all. She, dear soul, had no such wandering ideas, but managed to keep her mind swept and garnished just in the same orderly manner as she did her household, and it was one of her ideas for a corner cupboard that I thought would fit nicely in here.

In the first place yon require to know a nice cheap carpenter, that is to say if none of your men-kind are handy in this respect. He must get a half-inch board in the triangle, 25'4 inches across two sides and 36 on the third side, also two pieces of one inch board, 4 inches wide and 24 inches long—these are to be used as supports for the triangular piece which is the top of the cupboard. Then get another board which will project from the corner just an inch less than at the top, and place it about a foot and a half below ; this will make a most valuable shelf for cardboard boxes, which seem to accumulate in everybody’s rooms with a positively alarming quickness. Below this will be found room for something like a dozen hooks, which must be screwed into a wooden support and these will take quite a number of skirts, coats, and wraps or any article of clothing you may wish to hang away in this corner. Some sort of ornamentation at the top is needed, and one of the cheapest is to get a dozen empty cotton reels, all of course matching in size, and glue these to the larger board at the extreme end, when they will be ready to receive the charitable coat of enamel or paint that

covers such a multitude of sins. A brass rod is then required 35S inches long, which must be fixed up with brass screw rings, into the top shelf and curtains hung from it ; these should just escape the ground, and then they will not gather dust.