We stayed at a tourist rental that had, once, been the home or summer home of someone fairly wealthy. So it was old, and large, and old: large entertaining / cooks kitchen, no particular place for a refrigerator. Massive double size double door fridge let into the wall where once there was probably a staff door. The body of the refrigerator actually outside (covered), so it was well placed and didn’t mess up the working space.
A replacement / modification. I’ve lived in a house with an outside toiled, and a house with an outside bathhouse, and house with an outside kitchen, and a house with an attached kitchen and attached shower and attached toilet (but there I was living in a detached cabin, so I would have had to walk outside even if the facilities had been inside)
And in addition to all those places, I’ve lived in places that used to have outside facilities, and they’d been moved inside somehow., more-or-less weirdly, depending on how much they spent and what the house looked like originally.
By the way, when I was a kid in Arizona, both inherited porch swings were in the ‘family room’. Climate and cars: My grandparents didn’t have “family rooms”, and Pheonix didn’t have porches.
I don’t know about the 1940s, but my mom’s house was built in the 19-aughts, and the primary (and until a few years ago, only) bathroom is the size of a bedroom. Apparently indoor plumbing was still a novelty at the time it was designed, and so architects hadn’t yet gotten used to the fact that they could make that room much smaller than other rooms: You design a room (and you know what a room is), and then you put the fixtures in it.
I visited a friend in a Philadelphia suburb recently. His daughter’s room is huge, and has a jungle gym covering a third of the floor space.
That house also has a bathroom at the top of a staircase, with an enormous claw foot bathtub, surrounded by fabulous tile work, with a big stained glass window. It’s quite the showpiece, and the first thing you notice when you go upstairs.
This is a major plot element in the novel (and movie) The Help. The white women absolutely forbid their Black maids to use the family bathroom.
It’s still a thing. When i had some work done on my house, the general contractor asked if I minded if the workmen used my bathroom. Apparently, lots of people do, and the general contractor will rent a portapotty so you don’t need to share your toilet with his workers.
(I have 4 bathrooms, one in the basement. I didn’t even care if the mason, who was sometimes covered in dust, used my bathroom. I sure as hell didn’t mind the carpenters, electricians, and plumbers using the facilities.)
I’ve had the same situation. I know now to tell them that they can use it when they first show up to avoid awkwardness
.This is called a “shit, shower, and shave” bathroom..
Common in small RV"s and campers. Kind of irritating though.
Yeah, this house was not like that at all! The fridge was jammed into the walk-in pantry like an afterthought.
A couple of years back I wound up renting a room in a friend-of-a-friend’s mum’s place while looking for something longer term, so I actually lived in this one for a few months. The place was a conversion of part of an old house, just a few streets from the city centre. The original house had been somewhat oddly divided. Her part of the house consisted of a section of the first floor (second floor in US definition), shared access to the staircase, a tiny courtyard for drying laundry and laundry facilities… and sole possession of the old stables.
There was direct access to the stables from inside the flat, via a door at the end of the main corridor, but it was just a door opening into mid air, no stairs.
Last time I saw her she was threating to put in a climbing wall and a slide…
Reminds me of the house a cousin owned. Nice house, likely built in the early part of the 20th century, lots of wood paneling, floors that creaked as they likely had for decades.
The kitchen had not been upgraded much over the years, but it worked, and it had a modern stove and dishwasher. Great, but where’s the fridge?
There was a fridge. It was built into the kitchen when the house was built. It was definitely not one you could buy at Sears and have delivered and installed. On one wall were about four nicely carved and finished wooden doors, with big chrome lever-like handles (they reminded me of the drawers that coroners put bodies into on TV shows). That was the fridge.
My cousin explained that she liked it so much, that she was keeping it that way. Over the years, everything had been upgraded to modern standards, and kept in good repair (there was an access panel that repair people could use), so the “four wooden doors” facade was maintained. One door was the freezer; the others were the fridge.
My cousin passed some years ago. I wonder what the next buyer of her house thought about that fridge?
My paternal grandparents lived in a row house in Baltimore built in 1880. When I was a kid, there was a flush toilet in the back yard in a little outhouse, and a toilet and tub in the basement. Not in a bathroom, just in the basement. When my parents were first married, they lived on the 3rd floor of that house - I wonder if they used a chamber pot for middle-of-the-night needs.
After my grandmother fell down the steps heading to the toilet, my dad had one added to a corner of the kitchen, but it was in a small room, not sitting out in the open. I kinda wonder what that place looks like now.
Just remembered - a house where I lived in college was an old one that had been divided into 2 apartments. I was on the ground floor. My bathroom was literally at the foot of a flight of stairs (blocked off above), with the toilet to one side and the tub wedged between the steps and the wall. No shower - but I added a hose that attached to the faucet and had a hand-held sprayer. And from the living room, I could literally see into the basement thru an inch or so opening between the floor and the wall. The rent was cheap enough for me to live alone, so I dealt with it.
And in boats - both of the heads in our trawler are like that, tho they do have curtains that can be pulled around the shower.
The last place where we lived in Florida was like this. Most Florida houses don’t have basements, but ours was on a slope, so the basement was only half underground and well above the water table.
My current house has a combined half-bath/laundry setup on the 1st floor. Seem perfectly normal, it’s always cheapest to keep plumbing runs as short as possible.
Precisely!
In older Viewliner cars (one-level) there’s actually a potty right there in the room with you, which is kind of odd. Convenient, if you’re traveling solo, though awkward if you’re sharing the roomette. I don’t recall whether there are showers on those cars.
In newer Viewliners and in all Superliners (2 level), the toilets are down the hall.
I haven’t traveled in a bedroom in decades and back then, it was just the toilet cubicle, there was no shower.
Lots of beach houses have an outdoor shower. Many are just a cold water spray, but friends owned one where it was a cubicle with actual hot water available. That was pretty nice.
Something that’s not necessarily weird, but definitely a design decision I would not vote for: when we bought our first place, in NC, there was an attached shed off the back deck. The washer/dryer could be either inside, or in that shed - meaning you’d have to run outside to deal with your laundry. Not so bad on a spring day, bad in the rain or snow.
Ours had it inside. A neighbor chose to put hers in the shed because she had 2 kids and needed all three bedrooms, and needed the inside closet space.
There was one time where we’d done some really grimy outside work, and came inside, and dumped our things directly into the washer and went upstairs in our birthday suits. I would not have wanted to do that if the machines were off the back deck!!
I prefer no cubical for beach showers. I’m going to shower in my bathing suit, and rinse the salt out of that, as well as rinsing the sand off my feet. And I’m happy to do that in fresh air and with a view. I do enjoy the ability to use warm water, though.
I loved having the cubicle because it meant we could rinse the sand out of the suit as well - plus not having to wear a dripping suit into the house. We actually just took our shampoo etc. into the shower and took care of all our bathing needs - I don’t think we used the indoor shower once.
Still, any shower is better than none.
We stayed at a motel a couple years back that had an outdoor shower with no cubicle. On our departure day, we had checked out, but we didn’t want to wear our swimsuits for the drive home. We took turns holding up a large towel for each other to block views from passersby.
There are shared showers in all first class Amtrak roomette cars. Towels and soap are provided. Viewliner cars are primarily east of the Mississippi and double level Superliner cars are the long distance trains in the west. In Superliners the showers are on the lower level of each car while the majority of the rooms are on the upper level.
Also, first class sleeping car passengers have access to metropolitan lounges in the major big cities, which have snacks, beverages, attendants and private showers during connection layovers and waiting periods.
Most likely, it was a home office, or maybe a she-shed.