My question (since there aren't any others in the queue--hint! hint!): What are some of the standard features of homes where you are that might not be common in other parts of the world? Or--more generally--what is a average home like where you live? I recently posted photos of the new home that we'll be moving to soon, and some of the comments were really fun. Plus, I loved the series that Ashley did a while back, where we could "visit" each other's homes. Let's have a mini version of that in the comments here!
(If you have a “Tuesday Topic” question, please email it to me at fylliska@gmail.com. Provide your blog address if you would like to be linked to, or specify if you would like to remain anonymous. Thanks!)
We have a wet-room shower here. There is no shower enclosure, just a shower head, and the entire floor gets wet when you shower. The drain is in the middle of the floor. Very common here, and it takes a little getting used to. We hung a curtain in our bathroom, because, well, we have children that like to barge in. :)
ReplyDeleteThat's what we had at a camp we went to recently. I liked it, but I wondered how practical it is long-term. The room we had was recently built and didn't get the kind of use like it would in a family home. Does everything get damp and stay wet?
DeleteThe common Russian/Ukrainian apartment layout puts the bath tub (with or without a sink) and the toilet (definitely no sink!) in separate little rooms. In some ways it's practical, but mostly it just drives me crazy. Our new home has all in the same room, and I'm really looking forward to that!
I did a little video tour of our current apartment before we moved into it, if anyone is curious. I'd say that it's a pretty typical home for this part of the world, except maybe a little bigger than usual.
Here most showers have something called a widow maker...nice, right? It's an electric water heater that is attached right to the shower head, usually with the electrical wires exposed somehow. It's a way to have a hot shower without the need for a large water heater. This also means that you don't have hot water anywhere else in the house but your shower. God blessed us with a house that actually does have hot water!!! In my kitchen sink, in my laundry room and in the bathroom sinks!!! Such a big wonderful deal!!!!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds scary! We don't have hot water in the kitchen here, and that has really bothered me more than I would have thought. I'm always thankful that I can have hot showers, though!
DeleteHot water is another one of those differences you don't notice... until you do. Across the former Soviet Union hot water was a city utility, heated at a central location and pumped out to the houses next to the cold water. In Russia I just got used to having it available in unlimited amounts, except for the summer month when they turned it off. In Ukraine, that system has mostly gone down. People are buying and installing their own hot water heaters, but it's still kind of strange.
Yep, we only have widow-makers in our showers; they can give a good shock if you accidentally touch them while they are running! We got used to not having hot water anywhere else - we just boiled water on the stove to use for dishwashing, and I would dump big pots of hot water from the stove into the washing machine. Last year, though, my parents have us a water heater for the kitchen sink and the washing machine. Still just cold water at the other sinks and widow-makers in the shower!
DeletePhyllis, when I lived in Ukraine, we had a gas hot water heater for the shower in our bathroom, but you had to light a match and throw it in to get it going... and then watched the flames at eyelevel as you showered! Somehow that experience made the electric widow-makers here seem less scary!
We're going to have a gas heater like that in our new home, but I hope it will be self-lighting. :-)
DeleteSomething I love about homes here in Costa Rica is that there is almost always some sort of outside living space. Even if you have no yard and live in an apartment, the laundry area at least is on some sort of patio. Many houses have big front porches, which I love. Having a "pila" (a large concrete utility sink) on the back porch is pretty much a guaranteed everywhere in our area as well. It is very hot here so traditional homes are built to stay as cool as possible (so big overhanging roofs that make it darker, but cooler, in the house).
ReplyDeleteWe have a lot of flat roofs in Ecuador and I love them for hanging laundry! My kitchen faucet is an outdoor faucet and handle. I love it! (just wish it had hot water) Another feature that is common here is indoor windows.
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