The Lath and Paster is very much part of the house we live in. They can be seen along a wallspace of the basement stairwell. Some is exposed. Last I heard, renovations were done in the 1970's. An extension to side of house was made to add a place for mainfloor laundry and for hot water heater. Also a bathroom to side of kitchen was added. 😬 I've no idea where previous bathroom may've been then. *That one image that shows a hole in some brick, we have something exactly that shape in the living room! It extends up to our upstairs bedroom, floor to ceiling. Last year while getting a new roof, and new beams it looked like, we were asked if the top of the chute should be closed/removed. I'm like, it's been open this whole time? As it was removed, I heard a loud crack and a thud, and stuff came down the chute. On other end of house, same thing extends down some, and goes upstairs, also floor to ceiling, however top of that chute is already gone. The sandstone foundation dates this house to the years of 1900-1903 for when it may've been built, as I found a standstone quarry in the county records, and there's 5 standstone "sheds" within our area. There's a rumor they may've been slave quarters, or a tiny home used until the house was built. No one knows for sure. Still has original wooden shingles underneath the metal sheet roofing.
I have a Victorian home and it broke my heart that the previous owners bragged that they had removed the original pass-through china cabinet between the kitchen and dining room. It allowed clean dishes to be placed in it that could then be accessed directly from the dining room. They left a huge, gaping hole in the wall where it used to be! They also cut up some of the original, solid-wood panel doors to make corner shelves for paint cans in the garage! Philistines. At least there is a lot of original moldings and hardware left that they didn’t get to.
One of the reasons you don't see laundry shoots more often in newer homes is first of all some townships and municipalities don't allow them anymore because of fire issues and also more and more people are putting the laundry room on the second floor. However with the growth in residential fire sprinkler systems I could see laundry shoots making a comeback, put fire-rated doors at each access and put a sprinkler with a protective cover at the top of the shaft.
Something to think about. It used to be that, ages ago, a home feature that vanished was often the wall cabinet the telephone was kept at if your family was lucky enough to have one, and that same cabinet would have the local phone book and sometimes a pencil and notepad. A hundred years later and people would look at you like you have three heads for all that.
A unique US house feature from the 1970's and 1980's is the kitchen wall phone with a "mile long" cord, that could reach into the living room or garage.
@@KoldingDenmark I was just mentioning it. The long cords were not common when my mother had hers. We had a large house and there were many old ladies -- friends of my grandmother's -- who loved to talk and talk and talk. My mother felt sorry for them, so she got a gadget to hold the receiver up to her ear and did most of her housework while on the phone. She had a 40-foot cord on the downstairs and the upstairs extension. The men who installed them were sure she was going to trip, but she never did.
Ah, yes; the colonial Dutch's fondness for using PVC in doors and windows. 😐It's one thing to have AI read these scripts, it's another to let it WRITE them.
Neighbor had a laundry chute and she showed me we could slide down it, and one i did, i didn't want to stop. I just kept going and going. I was about 7 and friend was about 10. Oh the good old days.(1960s).
@@samanthab1923 Good call. It'd definitely be nice to have something like that for packages to help deter porch pirates. In my case I have packages delivered to my work.
problem is getting the delivery drivers to follow instructions and use them. well that and amz's box to item size mis-match. order something the size of a man's fist and it arrives in a box so big a rottwiler can sprawl nap inside of
I could definitely see a version of the milk door making a comeback, unfortunately it would cost more than the old way because you would want a secure door on the inside also, but if you had a airlock style setup with a modern smart lock that you could have the delivery driver unlock the outside portion
Had a funny a few weeks ago! A friend was visiting and had her two teen kids along. I have an old house and have many antiques, including a phone nook in the hall with an old dial phone sitting there. One of the kids was staring at it and asked, "What is that thing?" She had never seen one of the old phones, not living in an old house. They are rare even on TV.
I made a dutch door for our nursery when our first child was born. Could leave the top half of the door open at night, so the baby's cries could be heard, but kept our dog out of the baby's room at night.
My house was built in the early 1960s and has a laundry chute. I love it! The clothes drop into a tall wicker basket which is close to my washing machine.
They went away because of fire investigation and science that shows the chutes didn't fully separate the floors of a house during a fire. Provides an oxygen source and place for flames to reach to the next level before burning through the ceiling/ floor.
@@quincekreb6798 Yes, it was the fire code that killed laundry chutes. In the event of a fire, they acted like a chimney, causing the flames to quickly spread to the upper floors.
If you're 70 today, you must have been born around 1953/1954. Didn't most people by the 1960ies already have fridges? Considering that even the Nazis already mass-produced electric fridges by 1940.
@@mikaelb.2070 I was born in -53 and all city homes had refrigerators, but I remember going to summer cottages that we rented, just a hundred miles north of the city, and ice boxes and ice delivery were still very common.
@@mikaelb.2070 not if you grew up in the rural areas! Hell when we moved to a smaller place in the early 1990s we had to wait about a month to get a landline! And this place wasn't in the back of beyond, it was 1 kilometre from a major highway.
But people preffer other types of material for bathtbus, this if they still want a bathtub. Talking at least of the country where I live. But there is nothing like bathtubs and radiators made from cast iron.
Yes, the claw foot tubs are still around and very trendy, but the tubs and their fixtures are now very expensive compared to modern tubs. I acquired and removed two cast iron claw foot tubs for free from an old Victorian home. I had them professionally refinished for $600 each and sold them for $2,000.00 each. They sold in 2 days after listing them for sale.
The house I moved out of in 2020 had picture rails, knob and tube wiring, claw foot tubs, lath and plaster walls, and a laundry chute. It was so cool living there.
I just had to rewire and entire house with knob and tube wiring. What a pain. The wiring was still functional in most places, but was so deteriorated that it was a serious fire hazard. Because of the way knob and tube was run, we couldn't use the old runs as pathways for the new wiring on the upper floors, either. We had to run entirely new chases using the old laundry chute as a starting point.
@@foxied Older houses were never built with the mindset unlike today to be torn down in a few years which is why houses over a century old are still livable today. New houses today will never last that long. With that said in placing razors inside walls it was done they would remain there forever.
@@foxied Unless and until the house was remodeled or demolished, razors were place there to remain that way. The area behind the walls were never otherwise cleaned out.
It's pretty easy to make one. Add two more hinges then cut the door in half, but it has to be a solid door. Nothing a reasonably handy person can't do,.
Lived in many older homes in my 73 years. In Michigan all older homes had fruit cellars . They could store fruit, preserves, wine, 2nd set of cookware, anything . A lot of fun for kids playing,too.
My grandfather's house (built in the 1930s) had a laundry chute and it was nice, although I would have preferred something that took the laundry back up LOL! I wonder if the people who bought and totally remodeled the house kept it.
My first house in Missouri had lath & plaster walls throughout, a phone nook, and a laundry chute built into the underside of the phone nook. Most of the houses in the neighborhood also had coal chutes left over from decades ago.
A couple of upsides of plaster-and-lathe walls and ceilings: 1. If you're putting in a wall hook or something like that, you're far more likely to get your screw into something more solid than drywall. 2. If you damage the plaster, it's easy to patch up with some spackle.
I grew up in late 1940’s-early 1970’s in a post-WWII home. We had most of these. My dad made a Dutch door with my brother’s bedroom door so I couldn’t get in and play with his toys. Great memories! We built a house in 2005 and put in a laundry chute from the upstairs hall right to the top of the washing machine. So convenient!
My house was built in 1951, and has many of the things here. It also has a tall narrow drawer n the kitchen for hanging towels, and a built in cutting board or hot pot board. Looks like it was used for both.
I had a claw foot tub in my house crowing up in the 2000s. They haven’t gone anywhere. I also use a safety razor, and I have a small tin container that looks like a small piggy bank. It’s called a razor blade bank. It holds 50 used razors. When it’s full, the whole thing goes in the recycling. There’s no reason those couldn’t exist back in the day as well. Or just use a makeshift sharps container. Like a large detergent bottle. Instead, they chose to make an unsanitary and dangerous job for future renovators. That’s idiotic.
Here in Australia when I was a kid before electricity in rural areas where there was no ice factory, we had Coolgardie safes to keep food cool especially in summer with repeated100°F/38°C days and pretty warm nights. It was invented by McCormick in 1890 and named after the outback West Australian mining town which necessitated its invention to keep precious fresh meat, veg and dairy safe from heat as well as freeloaders. It was basically a large shelved box on legs with a shallow metal dish as a top, with canvas strips draped from it over all its canvas sides and door, either sitting in a shallow metal dish or having a gutter around the bottom of the box. The top dish was filled with water which the canvas strips by osmosis wet the canvas sides and door. Evaporation lowered the temperature somewhat inside. Any excess water which reached the bottom of the canvas was either caught in the gutter or in the bottom tray. The only issue if there was no water in the bottom tray or there was just a gutter was invading ants and other creepy crawlies; the usual deterrent adopted by Mum was to stand the safe's legs in old golden syrup (cocky's joy) or other tins full of water. We had a Coolgardie safe for years until we could afford a kerosene refrigerator and a backup ice chest.
A bunch of used razor blades in the walls?? Not very safe for home renovation. Also, what if there was an explosion from a gas line? Instant shrapnel bomb. 🤨
I was thinking of some of the other features my first few apartments had, which were in buildings from the early 1900’s. There were pocket doors, which disappeared into the wall, a great space saver, since no room for swinging doors was needed. There were two stained glass windows set high, flanking the fireplace. There was a large wooden hall tree just inside the front entrance, where one could hang their coat, hat, bag, etc, and perhaps remove their shoes. And there were radiators with these “keys”, with which you needed to occasionally release steam or “bleed” the radiators.
@@Bobrogers99 they are not usually used by people as dual purpose bathroom fixtures like a shower too and people who have the authentic types don't care about maintenance or cleaning up when they likely have a maid. for them it is about the look and style.
@Bobrogers99 I'm taking showers in a classical bathub. But I live in a commie made apartament and they where walled, they wheren't like in the picture.
My 1949 home has a coal chute, but never had a coal furnace, only gas. It also has a clothes chute that conveniently lands BEHIND the furnace! That makes it next to useless. 😁
We had a razor blade slot in the back our medicine cabinet. Many of these things are still used today... Dutch doors, boot scrapers. This Old House show just showed how to make a regular door into a dutch door.
Actually phone nooks became less common when the wall phone (a landline telephone that attached directly to the wall) came out, with long cords. These were often placed in the kitchen, allowing a woman (mostly) to talk while she worked. Not sure when they first became available. I looked it up and according to the various sites, wall phones were available anywhere from 1879-1899. The modern kitchen wall phone was definitely available in the 1950's-1960's, as I remember having them when I was young. I've lived in old houses most of my life and remember many of these features. In one house, not only was there a laundry chute, there was a built-in ironing board in one kitchen wall, with a special outlet inside for the iron. It also had a wonderful walk-in pantry, the two side walls having shallow shelves 18" apart and was big enough to place the washer and dryer at the back, under the window. It also still had the original coal burning cook stove sitting right next to the newer stove and, of course, a baked enamel kitchen sink. I loved it.
My house was built in around 1960, there was a small hatch door between the living room and kitchen you could pass things through. On my street there’s about 5 different styles of house and similar in other streets, they had them too. Once the local council was updating the heating, we got radiators, woo hoo, no more ice in the inside of windows. To my point 😂 they also installed the same gas, coal or electric fires to the homes, you could go to friends homes if relatives and the mum might ask you to tyrn off or adjust the heating or fire 😂 Now we don’t have a fire at all. We had to wear cardigans to bed over nighties because it would be so cold.
The giant floor grille in the main hallway that was the basement gas heater The cut out framed alcove in the hallway that housed the one telephone that later got a 25 foot long extension cord from Radio Shack 😂 Giant glass ashtrays Coffee percolators Central vacuum cleaners
When I was a child, we lived in a tenement in New York City. Each unit had what was called a 'dumbwaiter', a vertical chute in the wall that had a door, and behind it a platform with a pulley rope or chain. You would put your garbage on it and release the pulley. After a while, when the concierge in the basement had removed the garbage, you could pull the rope or chain and the platform would come back for the next load.
Our NYC apartment had a dumbwaiter in the kitchen too. But there hadn't been a concierge to handle the trash in a long time, so they ended up just sealing up and painting over the dumbwaiter door.
@@stevenlitvintchouk3131 I'll bet that's what's happened just about everywhere. A concierge would now be called a maintenance guy, but in our gentrified world so many maintenance guys are on call rather than stationed at the premises.
Remodeled a home once in Waco Texas that had thousands of razor blades in a wall we took down I told this to my father he asked was a bathroom on the other side I said yeah he told me why then made hella sense
Thank you for this wonderful video! Never heard of the California cooler, but love the concept and will be adding it to my “want list” for our forever home. Already have Dutch doors on that list! I only learned of witch windows a few years ago when visiting Vermont. What I was told was that when folks added on more space to their original homes they would reuse any windows and doors and place them where needed. The old windows were strategically placed in areas that needed natural light, mostly near staircases thus having them placed however they could fit which led to the odd angles. 🧙🏻♀️
A cooler is very simple. It is just a kitchen cabinet that has screens instead of shelves and a screened hole into the space beneath the house. And of course a vent at the top! I grew up in two houses that had them, built in 1907 and 1923. The 1923 house had a drawer for eggs!
@@stephenlee5929Interesting. Do they have the shelves made of screen? I have read of "drying closets" in English books. Is that something similar, only connected with the heating system to move warm air instead of cold?
@@dorothywillis1 Hi, A Larder is cold, Not sure how they work (but they do), I think there is a vent at the top to allow air out, they are normally either stone or concrete, with stone or concrete shelving. I would expect this to be on an outside wall. The 'drying closets', I would normally call an 'airing cupboard' (unless I misinterpreting), these have wooden shelving with , a little like a picket fence, so gaps in the shelf. They are normally in a cupboard (closet) that contains the hot water tank, the door would be wood (but most are) and might have a vent. I would expect hot water pipes to line the back of this closet (not extra pipes just pipes that need to go between floors, are likely to go through this cupboard) I might expect any (water) cut off valves to be here too. I would expect this to be in the core of the house not on an outside wall.
In big houses back in the '60s and '70s to go with the phone, a lot of times you had a set of external ringer bells mounted in an area where you wouldn't otherwise be able to hear the phone ring like outside on the back deck or in the basement or in the garage.
Remodeler here: we’ve opened up walls in old bathrooms and a couple of times the bottom 6” was filled with old blades! We also found old gas lines that were capped that went to lights and heaters.
@@woohunter1 Recently had to replace a smoke detector. Took it off the wall and their was a weird little threaded pipe. Was told it was an old gas line.
My parents' house in Huntington, L.I. was an old Craftsman. It had a butler's pantry, the slanted metal lift up door from the outside into the basement and built in cupboards in the bathrooms, as well as a room in the stone basement for storing home canned stuff and root veggies. Also had the huge old hot water radiators until they swapped them out for hot water baseboard heating. That made me sad. 🥺
One I didn't see. That was a sliding window next to the dining room food got placed on the kitchen side. And taken in as dispensed. Akin to dumb waiter. In hotels.
I grew up in a 1926 house that had a little arch in the wall between the stair hall and the dining room. I'm sure it once had a phone there. In the upstairs hallway we had a telephone table that was a mix of table and chair. The phone sat on top of the table and there was a storage area below for the phone book or other items. --- I'd like ot see the Ducth door make a comeback. Sad ot say I've seen videos of police officers pushing their way into people's homes without warrants or permission while speaking to residents. A Dutch door would make that abuse of power more difficult.
There used to be an intercom/radio built into the walls so you could just call someone anywhere in the house. Used to love those things.i personally never had one, but a friend of mine did and it was a lot of fun to play with 😂😂😂
I grew up in houses that had laundry chutes and coolers. I always wondered why the laundry chute was not also set up to be a dumb waiter. It would be handy to move something heavy or awkward from one floor to another.
Well, I never lived in a home with a California cooler. I have lived in homes with all the others. I still have a sleeping porch and a boot scrape. I’ve had at one point or another a coal chute, laundry chute, phone nook, grandmothers had laundry chutes, witch windows, Dutch doors, vegetable cellars, and a room with a big sink and workbench for skinning and rending fish and animals before cooking or storage.
I always liked Dutch doors. My GF and me want to put a Dutch front door on when we ultimately get a house together. Her current house also has a phone nook and even laundry chute. Always makes me jump when one of her daughters hucks a load of laundry down it as I'm walking right by where it empties out 🤣 I have a combination boot scraper and brush that I mounted to the deck just outside my back door. While their existence in architecture may have been pretty much gone away, their usefulness hasn't!
My parent's house (built in the 1950's) had several of these old features. The laundry shoot, telephone nook, razor blade slot in the medicine cabinet, lath and plaster walls, etc.
Last time we saw a phone nook was in Santa Monica in 2011 in a house before it was renovated. We have always nicknamed them Stan & Ollie holes, as we mostly know them from old movies.
