Evening star., 1947-10-08
How to Save $4,000, in One Easy Lesson
By Morqot Phillips

We had been married three years,
lived in hotel rooms and small
apartments, and never owned a
house. Then the bug" bit us.
In three days We looked at A
houses, and finally fell in love with
a small place In Georgetown, built a
hundred years ago and restored in
1926. We bought 1t, and IN March
moved in with our clothes, a few
wedding presents and bed.
We had three big problems:
/. Hardly any furniture, rugs, cur
tains or lamps.
2. A house needing repairs, paint,
wallpaper, scrubbing, scraping and
a little remodeling.
3. Very little money to spend.
Following Lewis CAROLS advice
to begin at the beginning :" we
made a list of all the work we'd like
to have done.
Bids Collected.
Two weeks later-when we had
collected bids from contractors-we
had one of the biggest shocks of our
lives. We simply could not afford to
have the entire job done by others.
So we decided to do the bulk of it
ourselves.
Today-six months later-we are
lot wiser, but not sad at all. We've
become expert upholsterers, painters,
paperhangers and authorities on ter
mite control. We have callouses on
our hands and new philosophy
about the importance of the working
man. We also have what we think
is a lovely house, and figure we've
saved about $4,000 by doing our own
work.
And we have some advice we can
pass on. Summed up it is:
l. Go slowly, be patient, take one
thing at time.
2. Get all the advice you can from
people who know, such as dealers.
8. Don't be afraid to have your
house look, for few months, as if
cyclone struck it.
After our first shock over what
contractors would charge, we pruned
our list of things we'd like to have
done down to the essentials. Then
we let contracts to have the exterior
painted, the roof repaired and paint
ed, our broken garden terrace rebuilt
and some bookcases and closet
constructed.
Termites Become Problem.
Finding that a host of lively ter
mites had reduced the kitchen floor
to shredded wheat was a bad mo-
ment. To repair the damage and
discourage further attacks, we had
an unedible concrete floor laid.
That was the first chapter. 1t
took about a month to finish and
cost about $500.
The next began in May and lasted
a little over a month. The title of
this second chapter could read
Painting and Papering in One Easy
Lesson"
Excepting two rooms, which we
hung with paper, we painted the
entire interior of our seven-room
house, using a casein paint over the
old paper and a dull oil for the
woodwork.
1t was a total of 1000 square feet
of painting. Our paint cost us 500,
and the wall paper came to $50 We
saved ourselves approximately $1,40O
on that job alone.
1t was fun-tiring, at first, with
stiff backs each morning for few
days. But we kept an easy sched-
ule, working on week ends and occa-
sional evenings.
With completion of the painting,
we had the floors sanded and
stained. This is a back-breaking
and tedious job and, thanks to good
advice, we didn't try to do it our
selves.
With work on the house itself
finished, we began on furniture. 1t
would have been wonderful to go
shopping and buy all the things we
needed. But, again, We had to call
on ourselves to make do
BY the middle of June the house
was partly furnished with things
begged, borrowed and bought at auc-
ton.
And so a third chapter started
furniture. We kept
company with the japanese beetles
in the garden during July and Au-
gust. scraping and sanding. Then
the wonders of lacquer became
known to us. We are still little
lacquer happy" With very little
practice, it is easy to handle, and ,