Our house is so old that, in addition to the windows in the pantries

[conuly]

the kitchens did not come with installed counters. There's one counter in each kitchen that's really a dish shelf with a small cabinet underneath, and it's carefully located on the opposite wall from the stove and also super small and inconvenient if you wanted to use it as a prep station.

Back before the 1930s in the USA, kitchens generally didn't have built-in counters and cabinets. You used furniture for those things, like the ever-popular Hoosier cabinet. On the plus side, this makes it easy to move things around if you don't like the layout, and I feel the same way about wardrobes instead of built-in closets. On the downside, nobody is used to this idea anymore so even if you want your kitchen in this old-fashioned style the next owners of your house or your heirs probably wouldn't. But, just to be clear, I'd absolutely get one if I found one going cheap at a garage sale or thrift store or whatever.

(On a similar "I honestly dislike that American houses are built this way" complaint, who on earth decided to put all the toilets in the same room as the showers and bathtubs? Quite aside from being inconvenient if you have more people than bathrooms, when you think about it it's all a little gross.)

Comments

[kareina]

Having lived in houses without a toilet in the same room as the shower, I can attest that it is really annoying to get undressed for the shower, and realise that you need the toilet and have to leave the room and go into the freezing cold room next door to use it (because those houses tend also to have no heating or insulation). Even worse is the part where when you are done with the toilet there is no sink in which to wash your hands in that room, especially if the bathing room is occupied and the door locked, and even worse when the kitchen sink is not only far away, but full and in use.

Thanks, I will live with the toilet in the same room as the sink and shower, and remember to keep the lid closed all the time, and never, ever flush with it open.

[conuly]

It's even more annoying to need to poop only to find that somebody is in the shower. You can make it a habit to always go to the toilet before you shower, but you can't make other people hurry up quite fast enough.

Even worse is the part where when you are done with the toilet there is no sink in which to wash your hands in that room

Was not suggesting that there shouldn't be a sink in the same room as the toilet.

[sporks5000.livejournal.com]

In the Philippines (and various other countries, but I've only ever experienced it personally in the Philippines) some of the bathrooms are basically just entirely tiled and waterproof, and there is no delineation between the toilet part and the shower part.

So I guess you could do both at once if you wanted to

[kareina]

Yah, one would think there ought to be a sink in the same room as the toilet, but an amazing percentage of houses in Australia and the UK I have been in do not have a sink in the WC, only a toilet.

[cactuswatcher]

I grew up in a house built in the 1930's. The only counter space was on either side of the single sink, and being pre-dishwasher era, half of that counter was taken up by the necessary dish drying rack and some of the other half was taken up by my mother's electric mixer. Prep was often done on the kitchen table. For many years we had a big ice-cream-parlor style freezer taking up most of the rest of the room. It would have been nice to have a pantry instead of just cabinets.

Of course, my house from the 1990's has lots of kitchen counter space and a pantry, but has cabinets over the stove and refrigerator which are massively inconvenient to use.

[maju]

Living in Australia I never lived in a house where the toilet was not in a separate room from the bath/shower facilities. The toilet did not usually have a wash basin, but it was often just off or close to the laundry room so you could use the laundry taps to wash your hands. (Laundries in Australia generally have a large sink/trough as well as space for washing machine and dryer.)

[movingfinger]

I do like the flexibility of the old style of kitchens! I've lived with several in various stages of mutating into modern kitchens, and it's really convenient to get one or two prep-height surfaces and a table with lockable wheels and arrange the space as needed.

On the toilet/shower issue, I think this may have been a hygiene-thinking thing? And then the difficult-to-comprehend economizing by not putting a handwashing sink in there kicks in, but probably people washed their hands in the kitchen sink.

[conuly]

I do actually know how it started, and that's because they crammed the plumbing in where it's most convenient and that means putting it all together in new builds. Which is also why my bathroom is immediately adjacent to the kitchen - the closer it all is to each other, the fewer pipes you have to run.

That does not mean I have to like it.

[conuly]

Well, they do make adapters to turn your toilet into a graywater system with the sink above the tank. Though this isn't legal in all areas.

[foms]

We saw these in Japan and very nearly got one for our house: https://eco-buildingproducts.com/product/caroma-profile-smart-305-with-sink/

[foms]

I've lived in apartments that have separate rooms for toilet and bath. It was still fairly common, in Montreal. Modern sensibilities and renovation (and the changes to the coproperty (condominium) laws may be taking many of them out.

[adafrog]

I didn't know that about the kitchens. I do know they were generally a lot smaller than we have now.

[frandroid]

I've started seeing this trend of hotels where the shower stall has just one half of the bathtub with a glass panel, with the back-half exposed. Or other types of shower water escapery, which baffles me to no end.