MODERN LIVING: The Shoulder Trade

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Other companies are hurrying into the market with build-it-yourself tractors ($99 v. up to $250 readymade), knockdown easy chairs, prefabricated doghouses, six-power binoculars, porch gliders, greenhouses, even install-it-yourself oil burners and bathtubs. Chicago's Spiegel Inc.. the No. 3 U.S. mail-order house, has 4,000 do-it-yourself products.

Rolling Revolution. For homeowners who once had to muddle along with tools and materials designed for professionals, industry has developed a vast new array of simpler, better products to make hard jobs easy. The paint roller was invented —some even with a hollow center to hold the paint—and revolutionized the paint industry. This year alone, U.S. hardware stores will sell a total of 8,000,000 paint rollers, and professional painters, who once hooted at the gadget, are now using it themselves.

To replace the old, smelly, slow-drying, oil-base paints, manufacturers brought out new lines. Such firms as Sherwin-Williams Co. and Glidden Co. developed latex-base paints that spread on handily, dry in one hour, are practically odorless. For outside jobs, compressed-air spray guns were designed for home use. For small inside jobs, paint was put in pressure cans; it can be applied by merely pressing a button.

The old, expensive ceramic tile for bathrooms and kitchens rapidly gave way to new tiles of rubber, asphalt, cork and a dozen different plastics, most of which can be easily laid. Tough, easy-to-install plastic laminates were perfected for kitchen counters; cheap, rustproof plastic screening, unbreakable transparent plastic slabs for shower baths, new lines of Fiberglas panels for sliding-wall partitions were developed. Such firms as United Wallpaper, R. B. Birge Co., and a dozen others, brought out pre-trimmed and packaged wallpaper, plastic-coated paper that washes easily, paper with adhesive already on the back so that all the homeowner has to do is wet it and slide it into place.

"One Medium-Sized Board." Lumber companies started putting out new sizes and shapes of wood ideal for the do-it-yourself market. They no longer laugh at the request for "one medium-sized board." U.S. Plywood, biggest in the U.S., introduced panels 16 in. wide instead of the usual bulky 48 in., developed easily handled clamps to join them together. Today, U.S. Plywood estimates that 15% of its sales (1953 total: $124 million) and 10% of the industry's total 5 billion sq. ft. yearly business is do-it-yourself, a 160% jump since 1946.

Big rubber companies, e.g., Firestone, U.S. Rubber, Goodrich, have all boosted do-it-yourself with new foam-rubber products to help amateur furniture makers upholster their own chairs, make their own pillows, back rests and car seats. The U.S. chemical industry has provided canned plaster to repair cracks and holes, easily-nailed-up plasterboard for bigger jobs. U.S. Gypsum has a new form of its Sheetrock wall panels that look like plywood. There is a whole new family of do-it-yourself aluminum products that can be cut with kitchen shears, used to make car grilles, wheelbarrows, aquariums, wastebaskets, porch screens. Reynolds Metals last year brought out a few types of rods, sheets, tubes, bars and strips, and had them selling in 10,000 stores in the first six months.