Dutch Doors, Laundry Troughs and Other Old-Fashioned Home Fixtures Worth Using Today
I grew up in a densely populated city in the northeast, as far away from rural life as can be. As a child, I saw some of the old houses have these strange little posts on the sidewalk, usually with a tiny horse’s head on top. For a long time I was puzzled until someone finally explained that these were old hitching posts from before the advent of automobiles, where people would drive up to your house and tie up their horse before going inside. Now they were purely decorative.
Old houses are filled with features that were once necessary and useful, but have been forgotten by the course of progress. Ice doors, coal chutes, razor slits in walls – most of these old school features aren’t very useful, and keeping them in an old house is more of an aesthetic choice or an attempt to preserve some tiny piece of history. But some of those old features are still useful today, either for their original purpose or in creative new ways. You may not know what to do with a horse harness in front of your house, but you can definitely put some of these old-fashioned architectural and design ideas to good use.
butler’s pantry
If you have a small room next to the kitchen or dining room (often located between those two rooms), you have a butler’s pantry. There are probably kitchen cabinets in there as well as some work space. In the modern era, a butler’s pantry can even be something like a small kitchen with appliances and plumbing. Once upon a time, the butler ‘s pantries were actually a place where valuable cutlery and china were stored , sometimes behind a locked door. Over time, it has developed into a springboard for dinner parties and other events; dishes could be brought into the butler’s pantry and then transferred to the dining room as needed or desired.
Today, butler pantries can be used for just about anything, including their original purpose if you imagine thieves ransacking your home for your prized collection of decorative spoons. People use them to organize their entertainment, as extra storage space in the kitchen, or as dedicated coffee tables, bars, or wine racks.
Dutch doors
Dutch style doors are those that are split in two , so you can open the top half and bottom half independently of each other (often the two halves can be bolted together to turn them into a regular door). These doors were originally designed so that you could open the top half to let in fresh air and sunlight while keeping the bottom half closed to keep animals out of your home. Although not as important in today’s urban areas, this type of door can be useful for anyone with small children or excitable pets who may run away from home in search of adventure. These doors can also keep debris and dirt from entering your home when you want to ventilate the area a bit.
Laundry pipes
This is one of the more obvious old school features that you can still use. The history of the laundry trough dates back to the 1800s , long before the invention of washing machines. But even after the advent of washing machines and dryers in old homes, the laundry room was often located in the basement, because they were originally built before the advent of washing machines, and the basement was the only place where they could be installed without major repairs. repair. The laundry bin was an ingenious way to use gravity and make your life a little easier by letting you tuck your dirty panties into a hole in the wall and forget about them until you remember to do laundry.
If your washing machine is still in the basement, you are probably still using your laundry chute if you have one. But even if your laundry room has been moved to a sunny room on the ground floor, your laundry chute can still be useful for transferring things to the basement without having to lug it up steep stairs. Some people even install new laundry troughs in their homes to enjoy the convenience.
shoe scrapers
In a time before modern sewer systems and sidewalks, walking through any town or city was a messy business. Coming to a nice, clean home or to work with mud-stained boots (and other things) was a common problem, so cast-iron shoe scrapers were often installed near front doors. They are used exactly the way you might imagine: you scrub the soles and sides of your boots with them to remove all that dirt.
While the world around us may be (marginally) cleaner today, bringing dirt and grime into the house is still quite a nuisance, which is why the shoe scraper lives on (especially loved by gardeners , who are forever dragging their gardens into the house with them). ). While modern shoe scrapers often have brushes to make them more efficient, or rods for storing wet shoes that can be left completely outside, the old boot scraper that was there when you bought the house is still great. for its purpose.
picture rails
Does your charming old house have some sort of thin stucco about a foot or so from the ceiling? What looks like a fancy design decision is actually a picture guide. Even before the advent of drywall, most homes had walls made from plaster set on a wood lathe. Plaster is brittle, and punching holes in it to hang pictures all but guaranteed huge cracks and possible destruction of sections of the wall, so picture rails were often installed to allow pictures to be hung on the walls without damaging them .
And they still carry out this task. While modern drywall is a bit easier to drill and repair than stucco, it’s still tricky to do so. The picture rail allows you to hang pictures without worrying about this tedious work. In fact people are still installing it today .
telephone corner
There was a time when the old-fashioned landline was cutting edge technology. When phones became popular, houses weren’t connected to them (obviously) and people didn’t know what to do with them, so they were often placed in special rooms – or in little alcoves in hallways or on the street. road spots. They usually included a small shelf for notes and messages, and often had a second shelf where the old school phone book was kept.
They can still be quite useful. Some people decorate them with potted plants or sculpture, adding color and quirkiness to an entryway or hallway. But if you have an outlet installed nearby (or, ideally, in the niche itself), they become absolutely perfect charging stations for your smartphones and tablets. If the phone nook is located near the front door, this can be the perfect place to put your keys, wallet, and phone when you walk in.
kitchen waiter
Finally, the venerable kitchen lift is a legacy from the old days when kitchens were separated from the living areas of the house. Food was prepared in the kitchen and sent up in a tiny freight elevator, while dirty dishes were sent back the same way.
If your home has a kitchen lift, it may no longer lead to the kitchen, but that doesn’t mean it’s still useless. Anything that allows you to carry heavy or awkward items from one floor to another without using a ladder is still a pretty amazing device.