British Shoeboxes Aren't Big Enough for a Jolly Good Xmas

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

lostinrates wrote: »

True, I'll happily have fires going though and a stove. They were also not designed to be run at huge temperatures old houses. I'm saddened by lots of the problems peole have with their old houses here when they expect them to run like new houses...wrong paints on old plaster, damp proof courses poorly thought out....double glazing leading to condensation and damp.

I love old houses.

Me too.
I love the nooks and crannies and the little original features that give them character.
I've got used to the fact it's colder in the winter,you just have to adapt.
We expected heating costs to be higher when we bought,it's something you have to take into consideration.
On the upside when decorating, I can clear a room and fit all the furniture in the hallway and still have plenty room to get round it all.

NEH

PasturesNew wrote: »

To me, the big deal of an en suite is "it's mine, all mine". No matter how many other people are in the house I'd know I could just walk 6 paces and my en suite is there. Mine. No queueing, no waiting. All mine. Mine, mine, mine.

Mine.



Oh - and you don't have to get dressed or turn lights on in the middle of the night either. Things you might have to do if there were others about or the bathroom was elsewhere.

You see I am one of these people that has to get up in teh night for the loo and if there is only one bathroom I would then wake up the whole household....

and the mine part I can sympathise with, when we grew up it was 5 to one bathroom and we each had to have our own allocated time slot.....Wouldn't want to go through that again...

izzybusy23

PasturesNew wrote: »

When I grew up, in a council house, our rooms were quite large - and we had two with adjoining double doors. Which was great. Kitchen was large too. The living room was probably 14'x14', dining room was probably 12'x12', kitchen was probably 12'x10'. Guessing the sizes, but that feels about right.

Now, do you find that houses are too small for Xmas?

No room to spread out at all...

You are so correct PN. To fit in my 'slimmish' christmas tree, the TV unit needs to move out of the corner under the window to make room, then everything looks all squished up. This year I am going for the minamilistic christmas as I can't stand the upheavel rearranging everything does. We rent a house with a kitchen/diner, but a few years ago the house I lived in with a loung/diner which meant christmas tree and eating lunch all in the same room. Very squashed!

RobertoMoir

My brother's new house, they've just built an en-suite for my teenage niece. She's delighted with it, but the best part of it is that its also a gift to the rest of the family who still have to get dressed and out of the house despite the teenage girl habit of spending 800 hours in the bathroom getting ready to go out every morning.

izzybusy23

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

I
Some new-builds I've seen have reception rooms which wouldn't be big enough for a three-seat sofa. Family home? Only for midgets maybe

You are correct. We are having new sofas delivered tomorrow, one large one regular. In order to fit the large into our rented house my bookcase had to go as it was over 3ft wide. I'd rather have the extra room on a sofa than a book case. So that will mean one 3 seater sofa and a DVD tower and end table along one wall.. thats it, can't fit anything else without blocking the doorway.

lostinrates

Ideal for me is ensuite wet rooms (for functional but stylish daily ablutions and non queing loo visits) and a family bath room, for scent laden luxuroius soaks.) Personally, with dogs and mud featuring highly down stairs double shower/wet room is good too..save tramping yuck through the house.

I've often thought that for young families the down stairs bathroom is not such disadvantage, for young mum's bathing kids in the evening, but wanting to cook etc too...

Lotus-eater

lostinrates wrote: »

I've often thought that for young families the down stairs bathroom is not such disadvantage, for young mum's bathing kids in the evening, but wanting to cook etc too...

Ahem, young Dads too, I can bath the kids and keep an eye on the Mrs to make sure she doesn't burn the dinner.

lostinrates

[TE=Lotus-eater;27267631]Ahem, young Dads too, I can bath the kids and keep an eye on the Mrs to make sure she doesn't burn the dinner. [/QUOTE]

Humble apologies, no sexism intended,:o:o just thinking how it would happen in our house...for me, especilly when the child was big enough to bath itself, but not unsupervised, and later, when old enough to perhaps be left alone, but not always want to be, it would be a layout that could work well for us.

Really2

lostinrates wrote: »

Humble apologies, no sexism intended,:o:o just thinking how it would happen in our house...for me, especilly when the child was big enough to bath itself, but not unsupervised, and later, when old enough to perhaps be left alone, but not always want to be, it would be a layout that could work well for us.

Only problem I see is kids wanting the toilet in the night, when I was a kid you had to trundle down stairs then back up again. That ends up waking you up a bit.

At least with an upstairs one you can pee like a zombie

BitterAndTwisted

"BLOG ALERT"

We have become so much richer now and our expectations have soared to the statosphere. Thinking back to my childhood (mid/late 50s) the earliest home I can remember had a bath in the kitchen with some kind of tabletop affair over it. Loo was just inside the back-door, so fortunately not a WC out in the back garden like many had. This was armed forces married quarters so possibly not the average standard for working-class folk but I can't say for certain because I was too young to tell.

When my Scottish grandparents retired in the late 70s/early 80s they bought a property outright in a village outside Edinburgh. This was an end-of-terrace ground-floor property with two rooms: a bedroom for Nana & Grandad and a sitting-room/kitchen which doubled up as a bedroom for my great-granny. Lav was an addition built on the end and the coldest place on God's earth in the winter. They must have washed/bathed somehow.

My German family lived in part of a lovely thatched house: this comprised of a kitchen with only cold running-water and two other rooms. One was a bedroom which my aunt and uncle shared with their three children and the other was used as a sitting-room and doubled up as my Oma's bedroom in the winter. In the summer she moved out to the "summer house" which was really only a semi-detached shed, so aunt and uncle could have the other room to themselves. There was an outside lav across the way next to the summer-house which was not plumbed to the mains so Oma had to empty the bucket into the cesspit every day. I'm certain they must have made full use of potties under the beds at night in winter.

I have no idea how everyone bathed but clothes were laundered, people never smelled and they were well-turned-out when they left the house.

I don't believe that anyone in my family believed themselves to be "dirt-poor"; everybody worked full-time but it certainly sounds like it now!