The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Theory Of Decoration
In first attempting this work, the best practice is to draw up a room in your own home, comparing the drawing with the actual place to check it for possible errors.
Then try out several treatments, working out each one on tracing paper and later rendering one or two in any convenient medium. By this method one requires a reasonable amount of facility and can avoid many errors when first attempting work at a distance. It is astonishing how even an experienced draughtsman can make errors in measurements that may often make it necessary to visit the building a second time in order to find where the mistake occurred.
Where a very accurate drawing is not required, squared paper is a great help. If you are to make your drawing to the scale of 1/4 inch to the foot, and your paper is ruled in quarter inch squares, each one will represent a foot. The drawing can often be made free hand on such paper without the use of instruments, and with a great saving of time. If this paper is not to be had, use paper ruled in eight inch squares, each representing six inches. Your details can be drawn on the same kind of paper. Thus, with quarter inch squares, each square will represent 6 inches at half inch scale, 3 inches at one inch scale, 4 inches at 3/4 inch scale, 2 inches at 11/2 inch scale, or 1 inch at 3 inch scale.
One of the greatest values in having a drawing of the room, with all dimensions given, is its use in estimating various sorts of work.
A decorator, even though he may not. execute actual portions of a decorating job, should be able to give an intelligent answer us to their cost. Preliminary estimates are never given or held to as contract prices, but the ability to estimate approximately in various classes of work is often the secret of obtaining an order.
An approximate estimate for furniture, either of stock patterns or special designs, is always very difficult to give. The reason of course is that, the variations are unlimited and the costs vary accordingly. There are, however, certain portions of almost every job which are more or less similar in cost for each unit of measure.
Wall Paper
Wall paper comes from the manufacturer in what is known as bolts. The meaning of the term bolt varies in different places. In England it is often one roll. In America it usually signifies more than one roll.
The width of rolls of wall paper is also variable, although the standard roll is generally considered to be 18 inches wide. A few manufacturers make paper that is 22 and 30 inches wide. The usual length of a roll is 8 yards for domestic papers and 12 yards for English papers. French papers are 8 meters in length, which equals about 9 yards, and 1/2 meter in width, about 19 inches. Japanese grass-cloths come one yard wide and 8 yards long.
