Fourteen years ago our home and almost everything we had was destroyed by fire.  When we rebuilt, our finances gave out and we had to quit without any inside finish at all.  The room I am going to describe is 16x20 feet and has served as both living and bedroom.  As there were seven children.  Nine of us to live in it.  We had to occupy the largest room.

Two years after the house was built, we papered all the rooms.  Did the work ourselves with very cheap paper.  So with dormer windows to leak and constant use, the room looked anything else but inviting to live in.  The paper canvas had become so rotten, it was falling off.

I entered the living room contest in real earnest for I really wanted a better living room.  Sometimes I would almost give up as I could not save enough from my cream checks to get the material to fix it.  Some of our cows are not giving milk and that is what I was depending on.  When the time came that I just had to start, I went to Mr. Granberry, president of First National Bank of Celeste and told him what I wanted and he loaned me $25.00.  I took my note for it and I am to pay him out of my cream checks.  The rest of the expense has come out of the cream checks.  I had help from all the family or I could not have done the work.  They all helped so there was no expense for the labor.

We first tore down all the paper, also the canvas over head for it was too rotten to use.  For the over head, we have wall board put on over the ship lap and finished with finishing strips and painted cream.  The wall is papered in darker shade with flowers tinted with silver and rose.  The woodwork is finished in dark oak.  The floor is also finished around the rug in dark oak.  The linoleum rug is of tan and gray small blocks splotched with a little colors of red, green, and blue.  The rug is 12x16 feet so covers all the floor except two feet all around.  The piano and davenport bed were moved from the front or best room.  The day bed is made of the springs of an old davenport bed with ends and legs of iron piping.  The mattress is made of an old mattress and covered with heavy drapery cloth.  The radio cabinet and writing desk combined is made of an old discard wash stand.  The chair of the writing desk is an old high back stool chair that had a cane seat in it and ha! s served for all purposes for years with a tin seat has a new finish of dark oak and rest of brocaded denim.  An other chair, an old rocker, that was wood and very uncomfortable has rollers and a seat and back of brocaded denim and has to match it a foot stool made of legs of an old stove and upholstered in same material as chairs.  The bookcase, also homemade and served fourteen years in a coat of dark varnish, has a nice finish of mandarin red.  Four new pongee color window shades take the place of some dark green ones.  Two of them had been worn out and cut off until they just did reach half of the window.  The window draperies are green and rose linen and are hung with curtain rods and take the place of some very cheap ones worn out and hung with binder twine.  The mirror and table, wall pockets, baskets, pillows, and hand-painted wall banner or tapestry picture, a braided wool rug, fuel box, and waste basket describes my living room.

Expenditures--Rug, $19.85; window shades, $4.80; wall paper, $6.00; wall board $12.00; curtain rods, $.60; window draperies, $7.80; mirror, $.98; end table, $1.70; making a mattress $.75; denim for chairs and footstool, $1.00; Total:  $55.88

Mrs. E. C. Lacy

(See later paper for Mrs. Harris story.)

May 29, 1929, The Greenville Messenger
   

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