1930s house - original features?

yumyums

Hi everyone

We live in a 1930s detached house which has, over the years, lost most if not all of it's original features.

Where possible, when any work needs doing I'm trying to do it in keeping with the character of the house but I'm finding it very difficult to find information on what 1930s period features were like. It's easier I suppose if you have an Art Deco house but ours is not!

I'm hoping to replace the hallway flooring as it is currently badly fitted, cheap laminate. What would a 1930s hallway have been like? I'm assuming tiled. Would a black and white pattern look out of place?

I'm interested in learning about other 1930s features too so if anyone knows of any good websites or other sources of information I'd be very grateful to hear about them.

ormus

tiled hallways were a victorian feature. by the 1930s i reckon parquet flooring would be installed in a posher house.
most normal houses had simple wooden floorboards. with carpet/rugs.

Antispam

How about this

http://www.locationpartnership.com/library/authentic-1930s-semidetached-house-with-original-features-thirties-fifties-furniture-giving-plenty-period-charm-have-some-additional-pictures-this-house-please-p-5682.html

Auntie-Dolly

We have a 1930s house. I second the floorboards/rugs idea with a narrow runner up the stairs. We have deep skirting boards and picture rails in our reception rooms. The window hardware has 'monkey tails'. There are some very helpful books on 1930s building & interiors available on Amazon.

floyd

I can tell you what was in our house as it hadn't been touched when we moved into it 8 years ago so much of the original styling was still there. Ours was ex-council so it obviously wouldn't be as intricate as some but the style is obvious.

Hallway would be herringbone parquet, dark oak colour
Where the walls meet at external right angles in the hallway, they aren't square corners they are wide sweeping curves
Staircase is plain white with square spindles (no turning or if there is, it would be quite minimal) and a carpet runner. Bottom step is angled, as if someone has chopped the corner off it. The overall design of our staircase is like this one except the bottom step is not curved



Internal doors were still panelled in the 30's but tended to be 5 horizontal panels, evenly spaced or a large top panel with 3 smaller lower vertical panels like this below. Ours are pitch pine with linseed oil but we had to get them dipped



Doorknobs tended to be less decorative than the victorian styles, usually brown bakelite or painted tin and they were rounded knobs, handles were more unusual

Rooms generally had a plain picture rail rather than the heavily sculpted victorian ones and curtains had a solid pelmet at the top, usually with some sort of deco moulding at the edges very much like the pics in Antispams link

By the 1930s, people were also starting to get into linoleum as a decorative flooring but if thats not your taste then plain wooden floors with rugs wouldn't draw too far out of character.

Front door would have had some type of leading and stained glass in the top 1/3 usually quite Clarice Cliff in design i.e. simple and not too detailed

I spent alot of time researching the 1930's style and decided that not everything of that era was to my taste so we have a mixture of old and new. We removed the fireplace as it was an enormous tiled affair in pink and grey. This company have original fireplaces but will custom make a repro to your design http://www.c20fires.co.uk/fireplaces/repro/index.htm

Auntie-Dolly

OOh fab fireplaces! Our house had been lived in by the same couple since it was built in 1930. A builder had updated it and left most of the original features except the tiled fireplace that he replaced with a delightful red brick one. I love the 'feel' of that era and try to keep the vibe without being a slave to it.

inamegajam

Our house is 1930s and in the hallway it is tiled terracota and black tiles that were covered over with floorboards & carpet until we ripped then up and they look great. We also uncovered the small I think cast iron fireplaces in the bedrooms, they look a treat when cleaned up. We keep going around reclamation yards to get more ideas. And possibly drop on some bargains.:D

Doozergirl

inamegajam wrote: »

Our house is 1930s and in the hallway it is tiled terracota and black tiles that were covered over with floorboards & carpet until we ripped then up and they look great. We also uncovered the small I think cast iron fireplaces in the bedrooms, they look a treat when cleaned up. We keep going around reclamation yards to get more ideas. And possibly drop on some bargains.:D

With tiled terracotta floors and cast iron fireplaces it sounds quite Victorian/Edwardian more than 30s.

ormus

ts quite possible to get some overlap with any period style. some builders would have carried on with an older style.
maybe to customer demand in a certain area?

also the price range of the new houses would be a factor. ie simple/cheap houses (1920/30s) had very few art deco features.
if any.

Doozergirl

ormus wrote: »

ts quite possible to get some overlap with any period style. some builders would have carried on with an older style.
maybe to customer demand in a certain area?

also the price range of the new houses would be a factor. ie simple/cheap houses (1920/30s) had very few art deco features.
if any.

Some overlap perhaps but there's 20 years between the end of the Edwardian Period and the very beginning of the 30s decade. Even if it was Edwardian style built in the 1930s, it's Edwardian style we'd be trying to recreate, isn't it?

Maybe a picture of the OPs house or something very similar would be helpful if we're worrying about houses from certain decades looking like others. Minton or terracotta floor tiles with cast iron fireplaces described further down the thread certainly doesn't sound like a typical 1930s house. floyd's description and accompanying pictures look much more usual.

ItchyFeet

Parquet flooring