Our crazy house

I’ve just been changing the bathroom towels which involved a couple of trips to the airing cupboard. ‘So what?’ you are probably thinking. Well, the airing cupboard is in the corner of my son’s bedroom which is really inconvenient, in fact this whole house is inconvenient.

We live in a row of terrraced cottages. They were originally very small, one living room downstairs with a range for cooking and a small scullery at the back, a staircase in the corner of the living room leading to the smaller bedroom with a door to the larger one. That’s how they built houses for working families in the nineteenth century. I often wonder how on earth they coped. On the 1881 census there were 7 people living in one half of this house, where on earth did they sleep!

Most of the houses have been extended backwards, a new kitchen where the scullery was and a third bedroom and small bathroom above. Our house, though, is two knocked into one. This would have made a lovely house with a bit of planning, but whoever designed it, if design is the right word, didn’t think it out properly.

One of the living rooms was divided to make a hall and dining room. I suppose they put the hall at the end because that’s where the staircase was but it means there is a door from the hall into the dining room and then a door from the dining room to the lounge on the other side, a door from the dining room to the kitchen at the back and an understairs cupboard in the corner, which makes four doors in the dining room! It’s a puzzle to know where to put the table.

The stairs lead up to a small landing with a door to the bathroom and another to the first bedroom, then there is a door from the first bedroom to the second and from the second bedroom to the third. This didn’t matter when we bought the house as it was just Hubby and me. It still didn’t matter when the children were small. We had planned either to alter the house or move on when they got older but, life happened!

My health started to get bad after the birth of our third child. I had planned to return to work but wasn’t able. Hubby’s wages alone were not enough to pay people to do work in the house and Hubby is useless at DIY, so we were stuck. At first we hung curtains across the bedrooms when the children got older, but they kept falling down (Hubby’s DIY again!)

I will never understand why whoever altered the house didn’t put the hall where the dining room is, the bathroom where my son’s bedroom is (with the airing cupboard left alone). Then the stairs would be in the middle with two bedrooms with separate access. They would have had to move the stairs but not the front door so it wouldn’t have been much more work.

I used to dream of altering the house, moving the stairs and building a bedroom over the kitchen and knocking the other two connecting bedrooms into one but I know it is just a dream. Hubby is semi retired now, we are in our mid sixties and money is tight. I still love the house. It has an amazing view over the Golden Valley and the Black Mountains which is why we bought it in the first place. It soon won’t matter anyway about the layout. My daughter has left home and our sons are planning to leave in the not too distant future. Perhaps after we have gone, the next people will do what I dream of. I hope so. The house deserves it.