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Dollhouses are so small!


stickyfingers

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So I'm sure the mini folk and their micro-bladders could adapt to some quirks too! 

LOL, micro bladders.

Emily I would never make it! We could put bedside commodes in.......yeah! I think chamber pots would be too uncomfortable. lol

When I was growing up out at the farm on the weekends and summers, we stayed with my great grandma. She still used a chamber pot (although it was really just a giant can) even though they had a bathroom. I guess she was so used to having something right there next to her bed, that's what she continued to do. I guess she lived so many years with an outhouse? Or she was just old and that's what she had to do.  I remember where she dumped it out the next morning outside and I knew to never play there. 

So yes, I think I have found my solution. My Victorians are going to need chamber pots for emergencies but they will climb to the top floor in non emergencies. ha, ha, this convo funny.

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Some of the solutions our ancestors came up with for "thunder boxes" included stair steps, bed steps and diningroom furniture that concealed chamber pots (a "privacy" screen could be set up when the latter was in use so the guest using the "necessary" could preserve some sense of privacy whilst still joining in on the dinner conversation).  Before that apparently those bi fireplaces doubled in function...

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This brought back the memory of my grandparents house. Im in my 50s and remember when they added their bathroom, and as yall have already said, yes it was in an odd corner of the house. They were farmers in a very rural part of northwest Alabama. I think they held out a long time before giving in to this luxury. My 'papaw' was a hard man, probably because he was raised that way. What this thread has also brought to mind is the EXTREME quiet of days gone by. Can you imagine only hearing the sound of someone breathing or chewing their food, not to mention bathroom functions...Our brains now are filled with busy noise.

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Ah, that quiet would be heavenly in my noisey corner of the world. 

I've always had indoor plumbing but my DH grew up in areas where there were only outhouses and chamber pots until he was at least 10 yrs old. The first time I visited his Gram's, after we were married, I wasn't prepared for the chamber pot experience. His Gram's early morning routine was to trek to each bedroom and empty them all for everyone. At least they had a covered walkway from the kitchen, thru the woodshed and to the dbl. seater! 

Edit: why does the font randomly change size sometimes? Arghh! 

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Sue, I remember the first time we visited DH's grandparents in Lumpkin, GA.  They had closed off one end of their back porch to make a bathroom, and Granddaddy had installed a huge claw-foot iron bathtub because he was 6' tall and didn't want no itty bitty bathtub.  Not realizing how really big that thing was I nearly drowned the first time I took a bath in it!

In the early 1950s my own grandparent took me to New York City and then we went to visit my cousins, aunt and uncle at my aunt's momma's summer cottage in upstate NY.  There was indoor plumbing in the kitchen, including a big galvanized round tub for bathing.  The necessary was literally "out back" and if one had to go at night it was DARK!

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Back in the 18th & 19th centuries, sometimes they kept chamber pots in the dining room sideboard so your dinner guest needn't go out and break up the party just to tinkle. In the 1700's if you were a lady at court and had to tinkle, a servant would bring you over something that looked like a gravy boat. You'd stick it under your skirts and use it, then hand it back to the servant.  Funny thing, some of those items have been seen in antique shops labeled as gravy boats - eewew.

I've always been glad I grew up in a land and time of bathrooms. 

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There was an interesting British TV show called The Supersizers and the hosts eat (and essentially live) authentically from a number of periods of history for a week. They did one show on Versailles in the 1700s and it is quite an eye opener regarding their toilet habits. 

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There was an interesting British TV show called The Supersizers and the hosts eat (and essentially live) authentically from a number of periods of history for a week. They did one show on Versailles in the 1700s and it is quite an eye opener regarding their toilet habits.

I'd like to watch that. It does sound interesting.

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Really interesting stories! I remember my grandmother lived on a farm in a very old house, and I do remember that the bathroom (one) was very tiny. My other relatives that lived in older houses always had tiny bathrooms, too, and I remember coming home to our '70's ranch and thinking we must be rich because the bathroom was so big! Compare that to the massive spa suites that seem to be popular now...bathrooms bigger than my bedroom.

Maybe I'm weird, but when I think of decorating and furnishing the dollhouse, I try to keep in mind the time period that it's set in, and go with that. Would things have been fairly stark and utilitarian, or more elaborate. And certain rooms would have been more decorative, depending on the function. My Orchid is getting bigger and fancier trims in the living room, and all of the other rooms will be a bit more simple.

Back to my angst about size...well, I'm planning to go vertical with the next build, and I'm shopping for smaller, narrower furniture.

Mike, does the board warp at all when you paint it? I'm getting ideas for cabinets and walls and maybe even a pantry.   

 

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I was just talking to my mom a couple weeks ago and she told me when she was growing up, they never had an indoor bathroom. In fact, she had never used an indoor toilet until she left home and went to the Twin Cities to find a job. After she was married and went back to visit her folks, she told me my dad would pray for constipation.

She said they never had a fridge either, and kept things cool down in the basement. For running water, they used a well and in winter, they used snow. Sponge baths were all they used to keep clean.

And she left home in 1948! Hard to believe it was still that primitive then in southern Minnesota.

Old age is so amazing. I can remember back 40 years like it was yesterday now. But what really gets me is 40 years ago, if I could have remembered back 40 years then, it would have been 1935. Think of all the things that had happened from 1935 to 1975. The Depression, WWII, modern appliances, the start of rock 'n' roll, civil rights, the Pill, hippies, the change in how cars looked, feminism. Wow - what a time to have lived in!

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Kelly, in 1963 DH & I went to Lumpkin GA, to eat Christmas dinner with his paternal grandparents (that's a whole 'nother story!); we were in Athens, GA, at the time.  As we drove south out of Atlanta we began to notice how very, very dark it was.  Finally, as we were approaching Richland, GA, we noticed a shimmer of faint light in a distant farmhouse window and realized that there was no electric lights between West Point, GA, and Richland!

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By the way, I think I've posted this before, but when space is really at a premium and you have two staircases, I liked to use the back to front and front to back approach. Like in the San Franciscan. You can run the first staircase front to back (starting in the middle of the house) and wall off and use the space in front of the stairwell on the second floor as a closet or extra space. That allows you to put in a wall in the bedroom with a door to it right where the first staircase comes out and the bedroom isn't really as small as you would imagine.

Downstairs, you would wall off the area against the bottom of the stairs and leave the top half open in the living room side. On the kitchen side, you'd have that space under the stairs for your kitchen, but the top half of the wall would be walled off.

To keep the little people from walking through the bedroom to gain access to the third floor, you then run your second staircase back to front, starting right next to your first staircase. In other words, the little people would climb up to the second floor, make a turn to the right, and then be climbing the stairs to the third floor. The space under the second stairway is used in the bathroom, and that allows you to put in a wall in front of the bathroom or make a door to enter the bathroom right in front of the stairs.

The second story stairs then come out a little to off center on the third floor, which allows you to put a wall in there to have a landing and a separate room there.

I did use the narrow stairs for this, though, not the ones that came with the kit. But it worked out fine. And if you work it a bit, maybe flip the rooms, you could also have your stairs starting back to front and then front to back, allowing the bedroom to have the space under the stairs and the bathroom to have a walled-off closet (linen closet?) behind the stairwell on the second floor.

Something else I was thinking about but haven't tried yet is the "bathroom between floors" approach. You make a stairway from the first floor to halfway up to the second and put in a toilet and a sink. Then you run the second part of the stairway up to a bedroom. From the bedroom, you run another stairway halfway up to a third floor (above the toilet and sink below it) and put in another sink and a bathtub. Of course, the ceiling here would have to be raised to accommodate that room, but I think it would work well in a cute little cottage or a Tudor with a tower. And the end result would be a toilet accessible (only 6 steps up or down) from both the bedroom and the first floor) and the bedroom would still have access (only six steps up) to the tub and sink.

Another way to make a guest bathroom is to put a hall in front of it. This would work in the RGT Queen Anne. Say you have a guest bathroom across the hall from the guest bedroom and the doors face each other at the open back of the house. You want the bathroom to feel like it belongs to the guest bedroom, but that is also available to be used by anyone else in the house. Simply put a little doorway (without a door or even with an arch) in the hallway, making another, more intimate hallway between the two rooms. That will make it seem to the guest staying in the guest room that he has his own private bathroom, but it is also available to use and privatey feeling to anyone else who wants to just pop in there to use it.

I'm thinking of using this approach in my Hofco house. I was going to put the half bath under the stairway, but as the stairway runs back to front, no one would ever see it. Originally, I was going to wall off a little part of the front hallway for the half bath, but Lisa told me it was like having a bathroom in the entry hall and I see her point. However, if I wall off the whole section of that part of the hall and make it look like a hall leading into a hall, that gives it a whole different look. I could use the right side of the new hall which would lead to the dining room (under that stairs) for a coat closet and I could use the left side of the hall for a half bath, and it would be visible (when the little door was open) from the back of the house. I'm just considering that right now and not really sure if I'm going to do it.

 

And boy, did I run on........and this all makes a lot more sense on paper.....

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Kelly, in 1963 DH & I went to Lumpkin GA, to eat Christmas dinner with his paternal grandparents (that's a whole 'nother story!); we were in Athens, GA, at the time.  As we drove south out of Atlanta we began to notice how very, very dark it was.  Finally, as we were approaching Richland, GA, we noticed a shimmer of faint light in a distant farmhouse window and realized that there was no electric lights between West Point, GA, and Richland!

Wow!

That reminds me of my old boss - for those of you living in the Bay area, she used to come in to Cambrian Park via Blossom Hill Rd in the mornings to work in the mid 60s and she said she sometimes never met another car.

Also for those in the Bay Area, the BofA in Cambrian Park used to have a picture, taken in 1945 at the intersection of Union and Camden facing south, I think. Union is a dirt road and there is nothing but farmland in the picture. They had it hanging on the wall for a long time - they might still have it there.

For people who don't live in the area, in 2012 Union and Camden saw 1100 to 1600 vehicles a day go through the intersection there.

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I personally like the small houses.  I think they are more challenging sometimes than the larger ones.   I often go for the "suggestion" rather than the detail of realism.  I leave out bathrooms, stairs and doors and windows sometimes.  I was worried about a kitchen I made in my Christmas house where I only used an old stove and a hutch.  I thought it wouldn't look right but I think its kind of cute. 

 

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My mother's Philadelphia house was built around 1908 in a time and place where people commonly had a maid or cook. In our house, and most of the others back in the 60's, the 3rd room was a kitchen, with another small back room behind it. In other houses on the street, the 3rd room was a breakfast room, and the kitchen was in the back room. There wasn't much room back there, just enough for a stove, sink and a small counter. I think every house I saw had the fridge in the breakfast room. There was just enough room in the little back kitchen for one person to turn around.

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Go half scale! That's my plan. I can't fit all my ideas into 1:12 houses, I just have too many, so I plan on making them in 1:24. I will never get tham all done, but I can try!

I love your plan, that is what I am doing. You have to remember to, that as you go smaller, you can go into another world, the world of elution( smoke and mirrors)

 

:bear:(sorry Gail can't spell)

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