Is this a particular quirk of Victorians? Or were you looking at my old house? There was a pantry you had to walk through on the lower floor in order to get to the bathroom (half bath, really) beyond it. There was a door to the bathroom, however. Dad said it was the “servents loo” back in the day, where the cooks and butler could do their business without bothering the family by going upstairs. As it was a little, dark, spooky bathroom, much different from the two large, airy nice bathrooms upstairs (one off the master bedroom and one off the main hall), I’m inclined to believe him.
There was also an attic with four rooms, not dormered out, which we always referred to as “the servants’ quarters.” No bathroom up there at all, and the rooms, while large, were not terribly comfortable, mainly because you’d whack your head on the ceiling if you backed up without looking. One of those was my room, and it was perfect for “damsel in distress languishing in the tower” type imaginative play. Then I read Flowers in the Attic, and it was all incest and poisoned cookies.
Most Victorian and earlier houses will have no built in closets in the bedrooms. People used chests and armoires in those days.
Nah, not that I know of. The exterior was Victorian era. The interior was purely post-war mish-mosh. I think they just thought it would be convenient if the lady of the house could yell,
“Henry! When you are done pinching a loaf, bring in the Christmas puddin’”
Shagnasty, I covet your house. I live in the oldest house in my town and you’ve still got over a century on me.
The previous owners of my house listened to their real estate agent when told to paint everything neutral. Walls, doors, moulding, everything all the same shade of off-white (similar to “rental white”). The only color in the house was two of the bedrooms, which were taupe and pale green. They laid down new, cheap beige carpet. I didn’t think it was possible to make the inside of a gothic revival (full of original trim) look bland and boring, but they did.
(They also hired the crappiest painters ever, the kind who paint windows shut, paint right over the screws and latches to the attic trapdoor, hinges & hardware on doors, switchplates, etc.)
Can’t complain, they rendered a charming house unappealing, and it saved us a bidding war and probably $50K, in exchange for fifteen galons of paint (and paint stripper), pizza and beer for our friends, and two weekends of hard work.
On preview:
I have a victorian, and my downstairs bathroom was once a pantry, and you do have to walk through a pantry-like area to get to it.
I think this was just a convenient place for many modern renovators to place a bathroom. Grocery stores (and refrigerators) have killed the need for a 6x8 food storage room. 100 years ago, there was nothing odd about 6 or 8 people sharing one bathroom. Nowadays asking 2 people not sleeping together to share is a huge thing. So you put a bathroom where you can, and running toilet lines behind lathe and plaster is no easy thing. The pantry is the most obvious wasted space.
(Also, actual victorian era toilets could be placed anywhere if added to a house later. People used to shit in a pot in their bedroom, or out in the backyard. Many would bathe in the kitchen to be nearer the stove. I figure, inside & flushable was such an improvement you just stuck it where you had space)
Our bedroom closets are later add-ons that jut into the room in wierd ways, because the house was build without closets, save the pantry and the one under the stairs.
Yes, for some homes built for the upper middle class and wealthy.
Look at some Victorian-era houses (I don’t say “Victorian” to define a single architecture style, since there were several distinct popular styles from the era), and you’ll see some features intended to keep servants away from living areas.
A second stairwell, usually located off the kitchen. This allows your servant to clean and arrange the upstairs bedrooms without defiling the grander main stairwell.
A second upstairs hall hidden behing a door. The hall usually led to the servant’s quarters, and back stairwell down to the kitchen. The door kept the servant’s hall out of sight from the sensitive eyes of the homeowner and his family.
A bedroom off a first floor kitchen pantry. Again, that bedroom was for a servant, placed to be buffered away from the genteel folk who occupy the rest of the house.
Check out floorplans of new houses in areas where live-in maids are still nothing that out of the ordinary (El Paso, Texas; South Africa; Philippines), and you’ll find the same separation of space to this day.
I’ll see your freak-o-houses and raise you, THE MONKEY HOUSE, There was a large Dog run thingie in the back yard with a roof on it and it was connected to the house with a large diameter water-pipe kinda deal (think Habitrail, but Monkey size), there were several Monkeys living in this thingie. The lady who lived there was a proffesional Photographer who specialised in pet pictures (Poodles in Sailor suits etc.). In an attempt to “bring the outside in” she had installed Grass colored carpet and had painted Sky and Clouds on the ceiling (which had Mondo-texture on it, it hung several inches down).
Well, there might be room for 3 bedrooms house. The listing said “3 bedrooms and a loft”. We saw two bedrooms, and a loft. When we asked where the third bedroom was, we were told “well, you could convert the loft, or … " then were led to the 2nd bedroom where the homeowner moved something aside to reveal a 4’x4’ hole cut in the wall – " we noticed it looks like there’s plenty of space in there for another bedroom, I guess the builder just forgot to put it in.”
That same day we also saw a house where the homeowner told our realtor “I won’t be there but please don’t go into the back bedroom … my [young] child is sleeping in there.”
We had a good laugh with the realtor after those two houses, then a few days later decided to buy new construction.
I live near Boston. Tell me about it. This is the only area I’ve ever lived where people will pay upwards of $400K for a house and then instantly slap a building permit on the window and haul up a dumpster so they can start renovating their fixer-upper.
Periplaneta Americana
This house was wholly unremarkable at first glance, but I have to say it left me deeply disturbed, and with an acute psychological need to scrub myself raw in the shower. As will become apparent, the house was teaming with life. At first, this meant no more than that the homeowners seemed to have somewhere between 5 and 8 teenage daughters. Perhaps some were mere hangers on, or the homeowners ran some type of boarding house, but I had the impression that they were all family. Though they were indeed home, the owners sat in front of a television and allowed one of the girls to lead our little expedition, while a few others followed us around like Sherpa pack bearers. The kitchen was covered in the type of grime that can never, ever be clean again; and the unclean grime was crawling with roaches. That this girl could smile and point out the features of the kitchen while insects furiously scurried about her makes her one of the most single-minded, resolute salespeople I have ever met.
Pansy. Come to San Carlos, a town so overpriced it drove out it’s own mayor.
$750,000. It’s on a busy road in an industrial area down the street from my office. It directly faces the railroad tracks, where you’re treated to both daily, regular caltrain and Union Pacific freight trains at off peak hours. These things rattle the windows of my office and make it hard to hear the phone.
Nascararama
This home was full of residents, resolutely watching Nascar on the bigscreen. Each and every room had memorabilia for the rabid fan - including jackets under glass, trophies, signed pictures, and general 3-ness everwhere. Cigarette smoke lingered through the house, drifting behind the residents.
Two people could not stand together in the entryway platform of this split level.
The basement had been remodeled by someone who did not understand or did not care that corners are usually 90 degrees. The walls consisted of several types of paneling and drywall, some painted, but none painted well. Some areas were not paneled at all, showing the bare studs.
I was looking at houses that needed work, but this house needed to be gutted and re-done from the top down to repair serious problems in the floorplan.
How not to sell your house: When you allow a realtor to bring prospective buyers over, make sure your grown children (early 20s) who still live with you are there. Have your daughter cry and wail about how you’re selling her childhood memories, the family homestead, and about you’re selling her poor dead mother’s house and she isn’t even cold in her grave yet (even thought she died a year ago). The shrieking segue into how she has no place to live and will end up on the streets when you sell the house was especially nice.
Have your surly stoned son alternately threaten you, your wailing daughter, the realtor, and the prospective buyers. That bit about coming back and burning the house down with the new buyers in it (in the middle of the night when they’re sleeping) was a really nice touch.
Ha! In our experience some real estate agents will try to sell you anything in order to make their commission. When my husband and I were house-hunting, we thought we had made it perfectly clear that we were not in a cash position to buy a fixer-upper. We had just enough for a down payment on a house in our price range, and that was IT. Period. Any house we would consider had to be, basically, in move-in condition. So what does the moron send us a listing for?.. a house that had been GUTTED by a fire! Every single solitary window and door was completely boarded up. Oh, and for the bargain basement price of something like $450,000.00, no less! Get Real!
Watchyourstep Heights Right off the back door to the kitchen is a 2x2’ landing. You must navigate an immediate hard left turn to find the four steps down, otherwise you will fall onto the concrete floor of the “rumpus room” that was probably intended to be a garage, even though it has no street access. (Was this a kit house, bought from a catalog and nobody noticed that the garage was on the opposite side of the lot from the street?)
Same house had a double cylinder deadbolt lock on one of the bedroom doors and a commercial building-style fire alarm pullbox. A rather odd feature for a single-family, two bedroom house.