Put up all the full-length strips first, beginning beside a door or a window frame where you will have a straight edge for a guide. Put the trimmed edge of the first strip next the woodwork, lap the trimmed edge of the next strip over the margin of the first, and so on. If the distance between the last strip put up and the corner of the room is not sufficient for the width of the strip, either leave that space and put the next strip on the next wall with the trimmed edge close in the corner, or else cut the strip lengthwise and put it up with the cut edges meeting in the corner. When all the full-length strips are up, cover spaces which are too short or too narrow for a whole strip with pieces cut for the purpose from the strips left.
A border is put up last and must be done by two or three people, or else cut into lengths short enough for one to handle.
Good paste is made as follows:--Into an enamelled or new tin saucepan put four quarts of water and bring it to the boiling point. Mix a cup of flour with cold water as if for thickening gravy; beat it smooth. Pour it into the boiling water, stirring all the time until the mixture is thick as cream and has boiled a little. Remove from the stove, and if there is any likelihood that the paste will be kept over night, put into it a piece of alum as big as a walnut. This keeps it from becoming sour.
_Packing._--Renovations accomplished by amateur effort are more apt to be associated with house cleaning of the first class, than with that of the second. Packing, on the contrary, though it has a small necessary part in the cleaning of a house continuously occupied, is a chief and important performance in closing a house. In fact, this latter process is little more than packing up a whole house.
The suggestions concerning packing which follow are intended to be of use in closing a house but they amply cover the packing away which is done spring and fall in a house which remains open.
Woollen articles and furs should be packed in receptacles which close tightly and should have some substance unpleasant to moths packed with them. It is a wise precaution to line packing boxes or trunks with brown paper which has been wet with turpentine, or with newspaper, for both are disliked by moths.