My daughter's new house is an ex-council, 1950s three bedroom semi on two floors.
On the ground floor, the hall, bathroom and kitchen have solid floors, the adjacent lounge/dining room has a suspended floor.
These parts have never been altered as far as I can see. Why would it have been built like this?
Tim
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It's traditional: solid floor at the back with flags for the kitchen with a big range, and scullery / bog; floorboards at the front where your might want a rug.
Our first house was a 1930s house. On one of the many estates around London built by Laing. Same thing. Solid kitchen floor. Suspended elsewhere.
A really well built house, but the layout was not brilliant. Tiny kitchen. Tiny bathroom. Large dining room, which was separate from the kitchen.
Dunno, but my parents (1949) 3 bed semi council house had the same arrangement.
My small two-bed bungalow, built in 1959 has suspended floors in the kitchen and sitting room, but solid floors in the hall and two bedrooms. So it's not just prewar properties that have a bit of both. I don't see the point of some of each.
I suspect the reasoning behind this due to water use. The kitchen is likely to have water spilled on the floor, both from cooking and clothes washing, This would not be good for wooden floors. Actually, this house, 1911 vintage was built with suspended floors throughout. - but a 1960s extension has a concrete floor. Enfuriating, when the radiators were placed in the middle to the only 2 walls that could have furniture located. However, I managed.
A living room wants to be warm and cosy - fire in the grate, floorboards, rug.
A kitchen wants to be cool - lots of stone with a larder to keep the food fresh.
Not sure why you'd have solid floors in ground floor bedrooms though. Cheaper? Close to the kitchen?
Theo
in 1951 my family moved into a newly built house. I don't know about floor construction, but it had a hatch in the wall between kitchen and dining room.
As did another house we later moved to, built in the 30s. This house also had a real curiosity - a lavatory in a very small kitchen cupboard. has anyone else come across this?
It's quite expensive to pour a full slab and if the size is large, it's also quite cold. And quite ugly.
Back in the day we didn't have fitted carpets so it would likely be linoleum - no vinyl then - or tiles, with rugs on top.
Stained floorboards were an acceptable finish .
Our 1953 house was all slab.
The neighbours could afford parquet...
I think it was he 1960s when fitted carpets first appeared. Our stair carpet was part width only and held in place with rods...
Our mid-60s bungalow has a hatch. I've often though of getting rid of it, but it would take too much time, effort, and particularly expense. Anyway, it's almost entirely hidden behind the TV.
I guess that, as a "functional feature", they disappeared in the late
60s or perhaps early 70s.
WE had a door. My mother asked me to fill it in and make a hatch. That was in the 60s
Bullshit
Bullshit
Bullshit
my parent's 1900ish house i Edinburgh had a substantial sized hatch. Good enough for children to hide in
My parents' 1968 house had a serving hatch, I remember the doors were inconvenient so it got bricked-up. Eventually the door between kitchen and dining room was also bricked-up to allow a longer run of cabinets.
The last house my parents owned was a 1962 three bedroom semi with a through lounge it too had a Serving hatch to the dining end of the lounge. This was quite convenient as otherwise it meant walking the full length of the corridor to access the lounge and then walking through the living room part to the dining area.
Our last house was a 1957 three bedroom semi originally, it had a solid floor in what was originally the kitchen and suspended elsewhere. I do not know if it had a serving hatch as the wall between the original kitchen and dining room had already been removed before we moved in.
Yes, the 1960s bungalow that we rebuilt was solid concrete for the kitchen and bathroom, floorboards for the rest of the house.
We knocked all the internal walls down, and rearranged the layout, as well as extending, so three mixtures of floor now, solid concrete, suspended, and block and beam. The bathroom is where the kitchen was, and the 'TV Room' is where the bathroom was, so a nice solid floor for that !
My grandparents' 1930s home in Edinburgh had a hatch with a single sliding door.
We once had a hatch which was the right size for a cat to sit in it and warm himself in the heat of the radiator which was immediately below it. The cat would then be sick over the radiator fins which were almost impossible to clean, while the heat spread the aroma everywhere. John
Our bungalow is an "L" shape (sits on a corner plot) built in 1962/3
Part of one side of the "L" is a solid floor (which is a PITA for running pipes from the boiler which have to go over the ceiling and down trunking on the wall).
The rest is suspended (quite well - c. 24-30")
It was clearly built like this, not retrofitted.
Always intrigued me too.
so how did the food get from the kitchen to the dining room and how did the dirty crockery and cutlery get from the dining room to the kitchen?
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