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House Cleaning: Apply

Or dissolve 3 ounces of glue in 2½ quarts of soft water. Remove from the stove and stir in 2 pounds of yellow ocher. Apply with a paint brush while hot, and follow with a coat of boiled linseed oil. Let stand over night before walking on it.

Or to give the floor a deep black like ebony, boil 1 pound of logwood chips in 2 quarts of water down to 1 quart, and apply one or two coats with a paint brush. When dry, follow with a strong solution of sulphate of iron in water. Afterwards, when dry, apply a thin coat of boiled linseed oil, wax, and polish.

Or to 6 quarts of caustic-potash lye made from wood ashes add 1 pound of copperas more or less, to give a light or dark oak shade as desired, and apply one or more coats with a brush. When dry, varnish the floor, vax, and polish.

Pigment for Stains. -Add any of the following pigments in the form of dry powder at the rate of about 2 heaping tablespoonfuls to the gallon of stain, to obtain the colors mentioned:

To imitate mahogany, use burnt sienna. For black walnut, burnt umber or Vandyke brown. For cherry, burnt sienna mixed with iron oxide.

For yellow, raw sienna, yellow ocher, or raw umber. Or any of the above may be combined freely to form tints or shades as desired. Experiments may be made by adding the pigments a little at a time and testing the color from time to time on a piece of board of the same kind of wood as the floor is made of.

Varnish for Stained Floors.

Place in a 6-quart saucepan about 10 ounces of linseed oil. Bring to a boil over a brisk fire, stirring constantly, and stir in 2 ounces of pure white borate of manganese in very fine powder. Heat separately 8 pounds of linseed oil to the boiling point, and add it to the first solution in a thin stream, stirring constantly.

Continue to heat the mixture as hot as possible without burning.

Stir constantly and boil for half an hour.

Take off the stove and strain through cheese cloth. Apply one or two coats while hot, and follow when dry with shellac or hard white copal varnish.

Or oil stains may be followed by ordinary shellac varnish with the addition of 4 ounces of cold-drawn linseed oil to each quart of varnish. One quart of varnish will be required for a floor 12 by 12 or about 150 square feet of surface.

To Clean Stained Floors. - Obtain a quantity of coarse sawdust of nonresinous wood free from dust or dirt, and store it in a bin where it will be kept dry and clean. Scatter this sawdust freely over the floor and scrub the floor with it by means of a stiff scrubbing brush, as if using water. The sawdust may then be swept up and burned, and the floor wiped up with a soft cloth drawn over the head of a broom. This is suitable treatment for unpainted, waxed, or varnished floors if much dirt has been tracked in upon them.

Or wring a mop out of kerosene oil and wipe up with this. Use about 1 quart for an ordinary floor. Use for this purpose only refined kerosene of the best quality, but do not use it freely on oak, as it tends to darken the wood.

Care of Oil-stained Floors. - An oil-stained floor will not soak up grease or show spots like a bare floor, and will not require scouring.

It may be wiped up by means of a mop wrung out in clear warm water, but do not use soft soap, washing powders, or any alkali on an oiled surface, as the alkali will dissolve the oil. Oil-stained floors may be polished with wax or turpentine if desired. Or the oil stain may be followed by one or more coats of hard white copal or shellac varnish before the wax is added.

To Clean Wood Floors. -Detergents recommended for cleaning kitchen floors and other coarse and unpainted woodwork are caustic potash and soda "Clean a Small Section." lyes, soft soap, sand, lime, chloride of lime, ammonia, kerosene, gasoline, and various mixtures of these.

To scrub a wood floor, first take up grease spots. Then apply hot soapsuds with a scrubbing brush or mop, rinse with clear water, and wipe dry.

Clean and dry a small section of the floor at a time and change the water frequently.

Mops and Pails. A strong pail fitted with a small wringer such as is used by janitors of large buildings will be found a great convenience. To save stooping, place this on a chair.

Use two mops of soft woolen rags, one of small size for washing the floor, and a larger one for wiping dry.

HOUSE CLEANING Unpainted Floors.-An unpainted board floor, "white enough to eat off," as the homely saying goes, is very attractive, but requires a good deal of hard work. Our grandmothers used to cover unpainted floors with sand. Thus the family, in the process of walking to and fro, kept the floor boards scoured to a snowy whiteness. This is still a good way to whiten an unpainted board floor.

Sprinkle the floor freely with clean "A Pail with a Small Wringer." white sand, and if there is no objection, let it remain a few days. Or the floor may be scoured with dry sand by means of a stiff scrubbing brush. The best sand for this purpose is obtained by purchasing marble clippings and heating them to redness in an old iron kettle or otherwise. When cold, they may be readily pulverized. Or prepare a scouring mixture composed of 3 parts of sand, 2 parts of soft soap or soap jelly, and 1 part of lime. Apply with a stiff scrubbing brush, rinse with clear water, and rub dry with a flannel cloth. This has the additional advantage that it kills vermin.

Or mix equal parts of slaked lime and calcinated soda. Let stand about an hour and add eight times their weight of cold water. Place on the fire and bring to a boil. Wet the floor with this by means of a mop.

Let stand over night to dry. Next morning scrub by means of a stiff brush with scouring sand and water.

Or moisten a thin flannel cloth with kerosene, draw it over the head of a broom, and wipe up the floor each day with this. It removes dust and grease, and thus obviates the necessity for scrubbing oftener than once every two or three weeks.

Or scatter sand over the floor and with an old whisk broom sprinkle upon the sand a solution of 1 pound of caustic potash or soda in 1 quart of water. Scrub with hot water and scrubbing brush, or mop, rinse, and dry.

Or apply soapsuds and sal soda.

Or dissolve unslaked lime in potash lye and apply with a mop.

Or add 1 tablespoonful of ammonia to a pail of water.

Or, for musty floors, use chloride of lime, pound to a pailful of water.