We once owned a house that had a “mother-in-law apartment” attached to the garage.
It reminded me of the Charles Addams cartoon showing Morticia leading a guest upstairs and commenting “We’ve had this part of the house finished off for Uncle Einar” (as they approach a door with a small window with metal bars which are being gripped by a hand*).
*not Thing.
The first school I attended as a child had cloakrooms in each room. It was in the back of the class with one door in and one door out. In there is where we hung our coats and cloaks.
I have an Antechamber, but I call it, “The Guard Shack”.
Got one of those, too. And a “Laundry Room”, but that’s probably pretty common.
Our Atlanta condo has a “sun room”, which is essentially what used to be a balcony turned into an interior room with giant picture windows.
We have a “mud room”, a “laundry room”, and a “rec room” in our current Washington state home. We still call the mud room by that name, although the exterior door is never opened and its essentially a glorified pantry, along with the chest freezer. We also used it as an emergency bedroom (with a pack and play) for our infant daughter when we had guests and ran out of regular bedrooms.
The “rec room” is essentially a free for all. It is a well used room that I suspect once was a double garage. So a pretty big space for most of the kid’s toys and some office space. It typically is the messiest and most “lived in” looking area of the house.
Aren’t all dens now man caves (:rolleyes: at the knuckle-dragging troglodytes who can’t stand the idea of wimmen folk in their “man space”), anyway?
My grandma’s house was built in the late 1700’s and had a drawing room. I don’t recall seeing anyone ever use it. Looked just like a living room to me.
The drawing room at Collinwood must have been the most used room in the house.
My mother actually did refer to the small space between the outer and inner doors as the vestibule. We kept the shopping cart and umbrellas there.
My mother did, too. I think the term went out of style when vestibules themselves did.
They’re still around in new houses, whether or not they’re called that. I think of them as the room with a side door to the outside and a door to the garage, where you leave miscellaneous junk and, of course, wet dirty boots and such in the winter.
Interesting to see “front room” mentioned. My parents always called it that, and it was indeed a formal room at the front of the house, and typically only used for guests. With the popularity of family rooms, usually located adjacent to and often open to the kitchen, that’s the natural place for everyone to spend their time. The purpose of the “living room” or “front room” seems to be in the event that the Queen comes by. To the best of my recollection, I don’t think she ever did.
I went with my parents when they were shopping for a cabin in northern Michigan. The standard rural house plan there had a mud room, with a moppable floor and the washer and dryer right by the front door. Usually lots of hooks for waders, fishing poles, etc. too.
I remember asking once what the difference was between a “study” and a home-office. Answer: the later you can declare on your taxes. :rolleyes:
Take that back before I club on you the head and feed you to the raptors.
When I finally get around to building a house, one item on the must-have list is an oubliette.
Dungeons in general have fallen out of favor. (At least few of those who have one admit to it.)
No need to be so subborn and obstinate about going to the refectory (at least I assume that’s what you meant).
it sounds like I’m being weirdly argumentative but… do you think your budgies like you?
Me? I think I was the only one in this thread to mention birds.
Yeah, I do. I handfed three of them and the other five are all hand tame. They are kind of spoiled.
Have I mentioned that I really don’t like door-to-door sales people and god-botherers? Not quite barbarians at the gate, but close enough.
Well, for that, you need murder holes rather than a dungeon. or maybe an oubliette, but that’s been mentioned already.
This is apparently some sort of secret dungeon. But my rusty and rusting-evermore knowledge of French suggests the concept of oublier, to forget. So if I built an oubliette I would build it in conformance with this interpretation. It would be a very well-stocked bar.
Iowa: we have a mudroom but it is actually the size of an attached garage because that was what it was before the previous owners decided to turn it into a 3rd bedroom.
The Moluccan Cockatoo spends his summers out there (quieter during the night when kids stay up to all hours, nice and warm during the day, cools off enough during the evening w/o opening windows because no one wants to hear him when he screams). Winter time he is right behind me in the kitchen because there is little to no insulation out in the mudroom.
But it also houses: one of the deep freezers, tons of my husband’s auction toy finds, tons of his not used very often tools (the often used are at The Shop) and miscellaneous other stuff.
It does have a nice loft that someday I might turn into “my bedroom” if it ever gets insulated. Of course by then I will be too old and decrepit to climb up the fold-able “leave me alone” boat ladder it just screams to have 
Parlor trick: so that is where that comes from. Being entertained in that room. Hopefully not by dead people popping up screaming “Fooled ya!”
The house I grew up in, where my father still lives, has a verandah and a courtyard with a real secret passage through the cellar to the kitchen. We didn’t know it was there until a kitchen renovation in the '90s. Not sure what it could be for, you can only crawl through - well, you can’t even crawl through because the kitchen cabinets are built in front of the passage and the other side, in the cellar, is mostly bricked up.
The house is full of crazy spaces, lots of hiding places you’d never know are there. There’s an attic space behind a panel in the upstairs bathroom and you’d never find it. There’s a staircase to nowhere and a part of a staircase behind a little door high in the wall of the kitchen. The main corridor, off the hall, has windows in it because it used to be an alley.