Pity these aren't around today! Makes life easier

My childhood home didn't just have a phone nook, it was almost a phone booth inset into the hallway with its own built in seat. All it lacked was a door. I absolutely loved it and used it for hours on end after school.

Now aren’t you glad you didn’t rip out the quality hardwood and replace it with the pressed sawdust s**t they call doors nowadays?

My parents still have one full of porcelain, glass and crystal items. I had to dust them every week, and I hated it. :))

I will take a sunken living room any time. No carpet however.

Trash compactors always seemed like a waste to me. you had to buy special bags to go in them and once the trash gets to the garbage truck it gets compressed anyway.

When I was a kid in the 50s we had a box on the front porch. One for milk and one for bread. Yes, the baker also delivered fresh bread every day.

The attic fans should still be a thing, especially in really hot, humid areas. Depending on the particular shade of pink or green, as well as the contrasting color(s) of the tiles and porcelain, it might look kinda preppy, but it’s it really an eyesore. Some of it might be a b***h to find replacements for, though.

Awesome!

Our family farm house had one of these as well. PROS: A lot less noise because the actual vacuum was in the basement. Better for allergy people because the outlet air is also going to the basement plus there is room down there to install some sort of HEPA filter if you want. CON: More expensive, need to be installed during house build (much easier anyway). The hose you plug into the wall is rather long since you typically had about one suction point per room. This meant the hose was kind of a PITA to roll back up and store.

Sunken living rooms were considered chic back in the day.

Pre-A/C and central heating, they had to be clever to stay cool. They’d design houses with great airflow, like the front and back doors lined up so upending them would allow air flow through, and make sure to plant shade trees near them, so they’d be cooler in the summer, but let a lot of sunlight—-aka solar heat—-in autumn when the leaves fell off and the colder weather rolled in. Upstairs they had screened-in sleeping porches to catch some of the cooler outside air on hot nights. If you move into an older house with these features, make use of them. It just might keep your heating and cooling bills low until the weather gets too unbearable.

TBH, there are other ways to use them—-and I don’t mean riding in them like we did when we were dumb kids (I’m amazed I have lived to tell about all the dumb s**t we did when we were kids back in the day). If there’s no actual laundry chute, you could send your hamper down in it. If someone in the family is sick in bed on the upper floor of the house, you can send their dinner up—-and back down—-without having to balance it to avoid spilling anything while going up and down the stairs. Lots of things can be moved between floors in old dumb waiters without anyone having to negotiate the stairs. Think outside the box, folks!

As well as whole house intercom systems.

Those finished basements WERE the rec rooms! Absolutely perfect for kids’ sleepovers too. They have some privacy, but you’re still in the house to intervene if something happens. Just get your a*s up and go check on them to be sure they’re OK, ffs.

Eh, if you have the room, I don’t see a problem with this still being a thing.

Thought that was making a comeback.

You mean for dough rising?

And may they STAY gone too.

My dad bought wireless intercoms when I was a kid so he wouldn’t have to yell or figure out what room everyone was in when dinner was ready.

I would much rather have one of these than the freestanding one I have now.

Agreed. So this one really depends on the room.

Apartment buildings used to have these too, for burnable trash, along with a garbage chute for the other trash. Thing is, a lot of what we throw out, like plastic, ended up in the incinerators, and created toxic smoke. So we don’t incinerate trash anymore.

We had one and my mom did use it

Omg, my mom even had dishware sets that matched the wallpaper

Cedar closets are supposed to be moth-proof. They also smell nice. So please don’t rip the cedar linings out.

Pro tip, if you have a decent amount of piercings water beds are NOT your friend

Good place for cookbooks or knick-knacks, or your nicer mixing bowls.

Or the awful flock wall paper. Generally seen in Indian restaurants here in England.

I always liked the look of these. Very 60s.

Your dad lived in a house that was in what used to be a very wealthy neighborhood.

That typo really brought me to the brink.

Not a bad thing, and as long as there are people who are well-read, and have any sense of romance, canopy beds should never completely go away.

Still very much a thing. We have a 4 poster bed that's made out of metal, those can be found for as little as $50.....and that price is VERY evident. The wooden ones....are just stupidly expensive. When my uncle was having his house built after getting the VP job at compaq in the early 90's, he put wood four poster beds in every bedroom. The ornate, hand carved posts and canopy, thick pillow like curtains that could isolate all light out, two layers of drawers underneath. Without a mattress those things were like four or five grand for the queen sized ones, and over 10 grand for the oversized one that he and his wife used. In 1993 dollars. Those things had steps, because the mattress height was like 3.5 feet from the ground. Today, a very simple 4 post wooden mass produced bed goes for like $3000, while the nicer ones like my uncle had are $20,000 or more. For most people, it's a choice between cheap and gaudy or "well i like this bed.....but i could buy a very nice car....hmm"

The main purpose for four-posted beds is long gone. Believe it or not, they offered privacy for sex, back before chimneys allowed for "apartments" within a castle. Yeah, everyone lived in one big common area, sharing the heat from one fire. Later, colonists to buggier climates used them to hang silkscreens from. It's sorta like beds on legs are getting less common among single young people who don't need to worry about rats or roaches crawling over them.

Had one as a child in the 70s…

Sixties to seventies. Considered really cool and sexy, but a b-i-t-c-h to make and to even find sheets for. Ditto for the water bed, which followed it. Water beds were actually rather comfortable, plus they were normal bed-shaped and you could get sheets for them, but they were highly impractical, especially if you had pets with claws. Not to mention children. As people found out the hard way.

I hated them back in the day,. I thought they were tacky and looked like the walls of a bordello. I would not have them in my house now, even if they become the height of chic. I will take my regular non-reflective walls any day, and choose to put up A mirror in one spot on one wall, not the entire circumference of the damned room, thank you very much.

Some of them were light wood, so not dark and depressing. Have yours sanded and stained lighter, if you can, and maybe they won’t be so bad.

If you have the space and don't need it for anything else, why not.

I had no idea what a 'double-hung window' was. It appears to be a sash window where both the top and bottom sashes move. This is the only type of sash windows I have encouncountered. They are incredibly common in Scottish houses built before 1930.

It's just that in the past, appliances really lasted a lifetime and it was possible to repair them without spending more than the purchase price (as happens today), so the practicality of replacing or dismantling them was put on the back burner.

My home from 1935 has a detached garage and we can JUST fit our 2023 tacoma in it. They aren't meant for modern sized cars at all.

How are they an easy way in? they are supposed to be in the middle of buildings. Maybe a US atrium is different to what I think of as an atrium.

Nowadays, attic ventilation is typically covered by proper venting.

There’s a joke there, but it’s been a long time since I was 9 years old, so I’m not saying a word.

To the extent that tube TVs in general are obsolete. But having a small flat display in the kitchen isn't height of luxury and some folks even have one built into their fridge (which I think is dumb).