Popular Mechanics/Volume 49/Issue 1/Is This Your Home?

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Is This Your Home?

Copyright, Architects' Small House Service Bureau. Plan No. 5B16

Questions regarding home building addressed to this magazine will be answered by The Architects' Small House Service Bureau of the United States, Inc., controlled by the American Institute of Architects and indorsed by the United States department of commerce. Please inclose 10¢ in stamps or coin. Blueprints, specification forms, and material lists for the house shown here may be obtained from the Architects' Small House Service Bureau for a small fee. If further information is desired, literature describing the plan service and publications of The Architects' Small House Service Bureau will be sent you upon request. A booklet entitled "50 Ways to Lower Home Service Costs," illustrated by ten Bureau homes actually lived in and showing how as much as $1,000 can be saved on a home, may be obtained for 20¢.

This house is a model of compactness and economy of space. Omitting the sun room and rear porch, the over-all area of the plan is only about twenty-five by twenty-six feet. To many people whose means are limited and who must, therefore, reduce their requirements to the absolute minimum, this design will come as a welcome solution. This really is a six-room house, containing the usual living room, kitchen and dining room and three bedrooms with bath. In addition there are two porches, one more properly a sun room, which, opening on the living room, not only adds considerably to the living space, but lends an extra item of interest to the exterior, for the front wall of this room, continuing in unbroken plane with the main wall of the house, gives a feeling of breadth.

The porch at the rear is open. Square wooden posts with lintels and brackets of the same material help to make the rear of the house interesting. Its floor is of cement, marked in forms of tile, and is bordered with brick.

The living room is unusually well lighted, having windows on three sides; there is also the staircase in one corner, a fireplace, and the two porches opening upon it. The dining room and kitchen are small, but light and airy.

In the second story there are three bedrooms, well designed to accommodate the necessary furniture, each with a closet.

The kitchen equipment is complete, and with the working fixtures along the outside wall, there is an insurance of fine light and ventilation.

Suggested color scheme: Red and brown texture brick set in white mortar; woodwork painted white, the roof a combination of blue and gray.

Construction: Solid brick walls, shingle or slate roof. Size of lot: Approximately forty-five feet. Designed to face east or south, but may be built reversed for other facings.