Читать книгу Convenient Houses, With Fifty Plans for the Housekeeper - Louis H. Gibson - Страница 15

A good width for a dining-room is thirteen feet. Where one can afford it, it should be from fifteen to twenty feet in length; larger than this is a luxury. Its location, for the most part, is back of the sitting-room or hall. A grate in the dining-room is not altogether desirable; it is always at somebody’s back. Again, a grate does not heat a room uniformly. It is very common to provide sliding-doors to connect the dining-room with other parts of the house, even with the parlor; but they are not the best kind to use. Sound and the odors of the food are more readily communicated through sliding-doors than others. For that reason they should not be used. A large, single door, three and a half feet wide, is preferable, though it does not always give the desired opening. Generally speaking, it is easier to provide wall space when planning a dining-room than in any of the other rooms in the house. A large number of windows is not necessary, and one of them can be placed high, and thus afford space for a sideboard. This sideboard should be placed at the end of the room nearest the entrance to the kitchen and china-closet, where such is used. The sideboard has various uses, according to the plans of the housekeeper. In some cases it is merely a place to display dainty china and other table furniture. Below are places for linen and table cutlery. In other cases, the sideboard is used as a buffet; as a place from which to serve the food. Sometimes this is carried to the extremest degree, and includes the carving, and the serving of that which goes with the meats.

It was very common in times past to use a slide connecting kitchen and dining-room. A passage is much better. The slide is worse than a door in communicating sounds and odors. In some of the plans in this book, doors are shown opening directly into the kitchen. This is done under protest; the owner of the house would have it so. The sideboard may be built as a part of the house. This is well enough when the question of cost is not important.

From the dining-room we will pass to the kitchen.