Bathrooms in older houses - 1920s, 1930s

[Anonymous]

So I am trying to work out why the bathrooms in the older houses from the late 1920s through the 1930s are so frigging small?

Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

How big do you need a bathroom to be? I'm guessing that space as at a premium (before families started thinking they need 750 square feet at a minimum per occupant) and the bathrooms are as big as they needed to be for someone to use the facilities and shower.

[Anonymous]

Because bathrooms like kitchens weren't supposed to be luxurious havens back then. They were for getting your business done and getting out of there. You didn't linger.

[Anonymous]

Because those houses suck, do the world a favor and tear down that piece of crap

[Anonymous]

Asses were smaller then.

[Anonymous]

Also until the 1900s it was rare for an 'middle class' house to have indoor toilets - let alone rooms for just bathing.

This is a master bathroom for a house built in 1905 by a Princeton grad and practicing attorney with 5 servants. i.e. the upper class



You buy that house or the one comes a decade or so later and you'll be lucky if the intervening owners renovated or expanded the bathrooms or house itself.



Here is a 'middle class' 1920s bathroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because those houses suck, do the world a favor and tear down that piece of crap

You suck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also until the 1900s it was rare for an 'middle class' house to have indoor toilets - let alone rooms for just bathing.

This is a master bathroom for a house built in 1905 by a Princeton grad and practicing attorney with 5 servants. i.e. the upper class



You buy that house or the one comes a decade or so later and you'll be lucky if the intervening owners renovated or expanded the bathrooms or house itself.



Here is a 'middle class' 1920s bathroom.

Those are actually spacious compared to our one bathroom. We have a small house, every foot counts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Asses were smaller then.

Yup.

[Anonymous]

I hate "renovated" bathrooms more than most things. Even more than open floor plan kitchens, which is saying a lot.

You take some irreplaceable vintage tile, a gorgoeus matching tub, sink... And you Rio it all out, punch out the space with horrible cheap dryall, add a dumb looking vessel sink from home depot, a cheap and smaller tub, (or no tub at all, because nothing says luxe like a brown and beige tile shower.) It's just all awful. There was a Tudor flip in brightwood... The original bathrooms and kitchen layout being gobebdestroys value.

If you can't afford to replace nice things with nice things, don't replace them.

[Anonymous]

Because bathrooms like kitchens weren't supposed to be luxurious havens back then. They were for getting your business done and getting out of there. You didn't linger.

+1 Their diets had more fiber. They didn't need to linger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because those houses suck, do the world a favor and tear down that piece of crap

If it were a well built home of that time, I couldn't disagree with you more. They're beautiful--especially the wooden floors, tile sunporches, high ceilings, fireplaces, windows, and yards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also until the 1900s it was rare for an 'middle class' house to have indoor toilets - let alone rooms for just bathing.

This is a master bathroom for a house built in 1905 by a Princeton grad and practicing attorney with 5 servants. i.e. the upper class



You buy that house or the one comes a decade or so later and you'll be lucky if the intervening owners renovated or expanded the bathrooms or house itself.




My original 1916 bathroom looks like this (minus the table, plus a modern toilet).

[Anonymous]

Ours are redone to period. Nice tile, pedestal sinks, cast iron tubs. I don't need them to be huge. I think they're perfect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate "renovated" bathrooms more than most things. Even more than open floor plan kitchens, which is saying a lot.

You take some irreplaceable vintage tile, a gorgoeus matching tub, sink... And you Rio it all out, punch out the space with horrible cheap dryall, add a dumb looking vessel sink from home depot, a cheap and smaller tub, (or no tub at all, because nothing says luxe like a brown and beige tile shower.) It's just all awful. There was a Tudor flip in brightwood... The original bathrooms and kitchen layout being gobebdestroys value.

If you can't afford to replace nice things with nice things, don't replace them.

I like you.

I don't understand why everyone these days needs a huge soaker tub in the master bath? How many adults really take many baths? I hear that most people cannot even produce apenough hot water to fill those up. Seems like a waste. I'd rather have an outdoor jacuzzi.