Things break down in a house. Especially in my house. We live in a very old house that was actually advertised as a "fixer upper" when we bought it. It is old. So old that it has the original copper plumbing and a boiler in the basement.
It also has gorgeous oak floors and woodwork, big heavy doors with porcelain knobs, a scary crawlspace in the basement, and windows with heavy lead glass that is a little distorted when you look through it. Everything has a wavy quality to it, sort of like being a little high and looking out a window. I'm always a little surprised when I go outside and see all the sharp edges. I rather like my blurry view.
We have four toilets. One in the attic, one attached to the master bedroom, a main bathroom and the last one off the laundry room in the basement. By the time we moved in, all of the toilets except the main bathroom had been replaced with energy efficient ones. Yet, at one time or another all of those toilets have had problems. One ran continuously unless you jiggled the handle just perfectly. Another leaked. The bathroom off the master bedroom is particularly persnickety. It does not like more than four squares of toilet paper to be flushed at the time or it gurgles and makes choking noises that scare women and dogs.
The oldest toilet in the house is in the main bathroom and is used the most. It is the only one that has not been replaced with a newer, more efficient model. I looked it up recently and discovered it is called a Victorian crapper. It looks like this. It actually has a little rope that you pull to flush it.
It works perfectly and uses several gallons of water each time it is flushed. I swear that you could flush a cat down there and it would not complain. It has never given us a minute of trouble while the newer models, the "efficient" ones have been troublesome right from the start.
"What do you expect?" Bing grouses. "The new ones use about a cup of water and there is just no decent flush action. The old one...now THAT one has sooooommmmme water power and pressure."
I like having something that works, that I can depend on. We have cranky appliances in general. We have a dishwasher who balks at working at any selection except light wash. This means that we have to manually wash our dishes before sending them through the cycle. I find this irritating. I mean, jaysus...all I ask is that the dishwasher do it's job. I'm not asking for any extras, mind you. I just want to not have to sanitize my plates before I load them.
Our washer only works on gentle cycle. If it is not set on gentle, soapy water comes slushing up the drain in the floor in a scary whirlpool that looks like some sort of bad genie could pop out of it. We can wash in all degrees of water, just not the normal or heavy cycle.
The dryer takes two tries. It automatically shuts off when it is done and for some reason, it thinks I like my clothes slightly damp, not dry. This means that I have to trudge down to the basement TWICE to get my clothes dried. I can hear it snickering at me.
Our boiler is a workhorse or so the heating people tell me. They swear that the house will fall down before the boiler kicks the bucket. This is fine, except that the boiler likes to make noises in the radiators to let us know that heating our home is just plain fucking hard work. It ticks and clanks as if we have little Borrowers running up and down the pipes with pails of hot water. I admit that I don't really mind the noise, though. I find it kind of cozy to wake up in the middle of the night and hear the radiators clanking a bit in a friendly workmanlike fashion. It took the dog a long time to get used to it, though. He still gets up and looks with a cocked head at the radiator as if he isn't sure whether to bark or whimper. Sometimes Socks quickly sends a paw inside the radiator, making me wonder if some little man is in there teasing him.
Living in an old home means that the floors groan at night as the house settles. It means that the wallpaper is quite old and quite lovely and can never be duplicated because they just don't make that pattern anymore of tiny rosebuds.
Once when our shower was leaking, Bing went into the crawlspace to check out the pipes and discovered a brown paper sack holding a man's underpants and an old fashioned butter knife.
This prompted some discussion. None of it too good. We finally decided it was best to just not know everything.....
Our cabinets stick and our windows rattle, but our Victorian crapper just keeps on keeping on and for that, I dedicate this blog post to him. (Toilets are always boys, it is just a rule.)
Thank you, crapper, for so many years of good service and lots of whirling twirling water. You have a thankless job and I know it, so this one is for you, buddy.
Keep up the good work.
What sort of house do you live in?
Old, new, what? I am curious. Care to share? And does anyone else have a crapper like ours?
26 comments:
I laughed again, of course but quashed the image of flushing a cat down your favourite loo. Poor cat - but I get the pressure/volume of water thing. Did you know that the water swirls in the opposite direction in the Southern hemisphere? It's true, I swear - magnetic forces at play.
Your house must be huge Maria - 4 loos!! Our house is quite tiny, only one bedroom (if you don't count the mezzanine floor which can be converted into a bedroom) and only one bathroom with a loo in it. It's big enough for us though, particularly when we spend so much time outside in the summer. Indoors we have two "living areas" too - one semi formal in front of the fireplace and another multifunctional room - dining/living/workspace for ironing, sewing, computer. We are hoping to add an ensuite bathroom and loo of course, next summer. Your Victorian Crapper is just what I remember of the loos at my primary school when I was 6 and had to really yank that chain! Haven't seen too many like that since then though (ie for about 40 years).
Our house is about 40 years old and like an old English cottage. We have timber cathedral ceilings in the main part of the house and the timber creaks and groans a bit each night when the roof contracts with the cold air - I don't mind the sound either. Our bedroom ceiling is also lined with timber and that creaks too occasionally. I have become used to it but when we first moved in, the noise scared the life out of me. I thought the roof was going to cave in.
Most of our appliances work reasonably well although I confess that I rinse my dinner plates before adding them to the dishwasher just because I'd rather do that than clean out the bottom of the dishwasher. We don't have a basement or basement heater because we don't need one in this climate - we use firewood and our fireplace for heating in the main wing. The bedroom or east wing is heated by a reverse cycle airconditioner when required together with a good old electric blanket with a small burmese cat for extra warmth.
I just love the sound of your house and all that wavy lead glass and the porcelain doorknobs and beautiful timber floors. Sounds cosy, especially the way you describe it.
I refuse to live in a home that isn't at least 100 years old. I don't care if things creak, grunt, groan, etc.. The aesthetic qualities are absolutely necessary for me -- both god and the devil are in the details, so I'm told, and you just don't get the sense of reverence and space in newer homes.
I walk into new construction (and to me, new is the intra-war period, i.e. between WWI and WWII) and the scale and the ceiling heights alone freak me out.
I hate drywall -- what a sound sucking boring surface.
I'd go on but it would be like beating a dead horse. I do not have a crapper (although my previous home did ... a tireless workhorse, as you note). But my toilets all work fine, my appliances (knock on wood) work fine. I do have a couple of leaking windows, which will be my spring project.
My house is about 100 years old, and it's an inner one in a row of 8 houses. They were built by a local landowner for manual labourers, as far as we know.
There's a cellar, which has a 'coal hole' (in a broad Yorkshire accent, that's said 'coil oil'), which was where they delivered coal to when everyone still had coal fires. (Basically before Thatcher fucked over all the miners) (I'm from Yorkshire and I was born in the middle of strikes, fuck yes I'm still bitter). There's a kitchen and a living room, some lethal stairs, a bedroom, a box room and a bathroom (those last two used to be one room when the loo was outside and people bathed in front of the fire), some more lethal stairs and an attic room. I love the attic so much, but the rest... My bathroom is 4' by 7' so don't even talk to me about small bathrooms. My bedroom is 10' by 13'. It is a SMALL house.
And yet, it's ours. It's our first home. We fought for it, we paid for it, we struggled for it and somehow it's symbolic of all that.
It's a wreck though. Needs a lot of money spending on it, and it's just not worth it. The neighbours leave a lot to be desired, and since they're only two feet away it's hard not to overhear. I hope to mve before Himself turns 30 in 4.5 years :)
we live in a flat that is all fine - unless you want to put a nail/screw/pin in the walls. they just don't like that. we tried to put up a spice rack once. the holder for one side of it went in easily, at the other side however there wasn't any way of getting the nail in, it wouldn't do more than graze the paint. and we used a lot of force, trust me! we ended up hanging the spice rack a bit higher and covering the hole with a poster. and one night when we came home we noticed a weird combination of smells - the wall had spewn (?) out our spice rack. apparently it doesn't like attachments.
oh and also our pipes don't decline enough which makes everything that goes down the drain come up again into the bathtub - including washing machine stuff. gross, I know... but expensive to change. we have it cleaned out every half year to tackle the worst.
but other than that we love our place :) we just keep our spices in a cupboard now.
I wish I had an interesting house to tell you about, but we're living in a 1980's split level. Yawn.
I'm still trying to find my money pit, though.
I had a 1917 Craftsman on 32 St. and a 1904 farmhouse on 37th St near the old Gold Coast mansions (I lived in the basement of one of those mansions too at one point--over what was the pool).
None of 'em had any water pressure and the crappers were crappy. Good thing we didn't have a cat. I might have been tempted to get a Victorian crapper just to test your theory.
I love old houses, they have so much more character than newer ones. Ours is only about 14 years old and reasonably big. We had a blocked toilet not all that long ago as you know and 3.5 hours later it was fixed. The toilet was removed and refitted 3 times before the plumber declared it fit to use again and now it constantly leaks. I haven't called him back again because they seem to have forgotten to bill us. I can live with a leaking toilet better than I can an astronomical plumbing bill.
The house I am renting is quite old, I'm not sure of its age exactly, probably close to 100. It leans to the left slightly. I'm pretty sure it is not level anywhere. I don't have a victorian crapper but I do have a bathtub with feet. My heating system also makes pings and groans. Since the heat is all powered by gravity, and there are no fans to distribute the heat, my downstairs is freezing and my upstairs is blazing. I have to keep my thermostat at 52 to keep the upstairs bareable. It has been a good house to me so far and it has a great yard for the pup, so I have very few complaints.
I love old houses with charming alcoves, beautiful glowing wood floors and crown moldings, and I also love antique furniture that was made by someone for his or her family a long time ago.
I prefer toilets that work. God is in the details.
And I can't stop thinking about the underpants and knife, but a BUTTER knife? Why not just do it with an envelope flap, death by paper cut?
Um. I've probably said too much.
I love my noisy heating and my cranky old boiler and my proper flushing loo, Maria.
Modern appliances truly suck.
My only problem is that I love trees but the house is surrounded by them and they keep creeping underneath the foundations. I was out half of yesterday with a chainsaw fighting a losing battle.
Hey ho.
I love old houses. I convince my ex to move in a 100 year old farm house when our son was little. It was heated with a wood stove and had 3 fuses for electricity 2 of which went to the barn. I am convince the house is what drove him to drink. He was a builder who wanted everything straight and level. I now live in a brand new 3 story townhouse. I miss the worn floors, the sound of rain on the slate roof.
I can so relate to all that you say here. My house is 105 this year. I love it, but I really am tired of all the upkeep, and well actually, more like falldown...
Yes, the wood floors are awesome along with the curved and carved staircase. But the utility bills are out of sight - it's brick and no matter how much we insulate...ugh.
I love old wavy windows, too.
Mine is an old house, the people before liked reclaimed wood and so when they built the extension, which turned a former outside basement into a lounge/sitting room, they used a lot of it, so the house has weird combinations of new and old everywhere, I love it but it doesnt give itself to looking clean and tidy even when it is, lots of roughly plastered walls and unfinished bits. 2 toilets, the downstairs one used to be by the back door, back door steps now lead down to my kitchen, but its still as cold as if it were outside! It doesnt like to have to much paper down it, many times it has burbled up with most of the streets yuck and then just has it reaches the top it goes away with force, good job too has if it floods the tiny room its in it will only go down and thats my kitchen, yuuuuurrrck!
No, we don't have a crapper like that, but there are plenty of them still around in old houses in the UK! Our house is a mid-terrace, about 20 years old, very dull indeed. I love period properties, but sadly, their locations are often not so family friendly (back-to-back gardens, too near main roads etc.) so it looks like when we move this year, it will be to another dull house in a less dull town.
Things will be spiced up a bit by the fact that, in order to afford the space we need, we will probably have to go for a fixer-upper ourselves. In the UK, that generally means buying from an elderly couple about to downsize to a bungalow, leaving us all their flock or woodchip wallpaper, frantic artexing and carpets that look like someone has managed to weave vomit.
OMG Maria. You've read some of my house horror stories. 104 years old this year, radiator hoses substituted for plumbing, a wasp nest that looks petrified in the basement and now a leak in the wall of the bathroom.
Our toliet works best if you hold it down and listen for two gurgles. The furnace sounds like it's about to take flight and there is an absolutely ancient hot water heater sitting outside. I think that's what it is anyway.
I laughed reading this. Your leaded glass reminds me that glass is a very slow liquid and the older it gets the bigger on the bottom it will be. :) Just like me.
Here I go sounding like an old person, but.....they just don't make things like they used to. Tim and I often talking about building (since that is what he does) and one of our major laments is that even if a new home costs millions of dollars it does not have the quality and craftmanship of older homes. You are lucky to have yours.
And I don't think I'd want to know the details of the brown paper sack, either.
I inherited an old house that makes those same pings and bangs in the raditors that you describe. when I lived there as a child, I hardly noticed them, but when i came back as adult, each one of those noises was cause for alarm and trying to predict if I would ahve to spend money to fix something.
When I was retelling the story of my latest radiator seranade, an engineer told me that the loudest bagns were known as "the water hammer", a result of steam pressure displacing cold air in a cast iron space. Ever since then, I look forward to every sound. The Water Hammer.
Suzette
Condo dweller here. Condo that needs lots & lots of work, but it's home. It's an older building with high ceilings, crown molding and arched passageways. The wood trip will be lovely once I get all the paint the dingbat previous owner sloshed all over them. The floors too, will be lovely, once restored. The kitchen is, well, let's just say again, needs work. The water closet is indeed just that, a closet. But the crapper works GRRRRREEEAAAT. It's a tankless model (not the new-fangled models selling for thousands of dollars these days) but the old work-horse from by-gone days.
Each of the 5 rooms (plus 1 tight wc)is lobbying hard to be first in the make-over pool. Bribes would be welcomed.
"a brown paper sack holding a man's underpants and an old fashioned butter knife."
wait....what?
veddy innnnteresting
I've seen crappers like that in England. Cool.
We live in an outwardly unremarkable, late 80s Cape Cod house. However, the builder had this passion for interior woodwork, so that part is all lovely, and my husband went to insane lengths to reproduce the same style in the basement when we finished it. Overall, I'm pretty happy. Our house doesn't have unique exterior charm, but it's attractive, and we're spared many unique charm-related expenses.
Gosh, see...I want to live in a house like yours. My husband thinks we should have all sorts of modern things...but I want victorian things!
I swear. When we retire, I don't give two shit what else happens, but I am moving to the South of France or Sicily and living in a ramshackle villa. I want to drink wine all day long and paint.
I want to die in my vineyard.
Hell with this.
I've never seen a toilet like that, except in pictures.
Our current home is a 1956 colonial that had an extension put on and a complete remodel of the kitchen in 2000. I ADORE out house, but it has it faults. Wood floors and stairs creek, but that's character to me. The house has a story to tell. The previous owners put nearly white carpet down in the living room and the stairs. There are stains on there we can't get out, but we don't want to have to replace carpet yet. The furnace is VERY old, but the house inspector said it was still in good shape (please God may he be right). We replaced the toilet in the downstairs half bath last year. The one in the guest bath is the original from 1956, and still limping along, but should be replaced before too long. The one in our bathroom is fairly new (our bathroom was part of the remodel/extension), so it's good. There's some leak from our shower, we think it's just that something needs re-caulking. Fran hasn't gotten around to it, so there's an ugly water stain in the mudroom ceiling. Windows are original in most of the house, and need to be replaced, but it's just wayyyy too expensive to do that when the roof will need to be replaced in the next few years. Sometimes I think we should have bought a condo, but then I look around and realize how much I love it here.
We have moved from a brand new house (we were the first occupants) and my husband and I agreed we would never go near a house less than 80 years old again. It was void of character, poorly built and dull. We will soon be moving into our dream home - a double fronted brick house that is nearly 150 years old. It needs everything done to it, and the extra effort it is taking to preserve the original features can be wildly demanding. I like to think it will all be worth it, though, and I feel a great sense of pride to think that our house is one of the last ones on the street with the original roof tiles and sash windows. And best of all - yes, we have a victorian crapper.
I'm in a generic 2-year-old apartment complex. No character at all, but conveniently located. No beige walls here - I painted before moving in. Most of the place is a warm, buttery yellow. My bedroom's a soothing blue. The 2nd bedroom/TV room is brick red. Hate the wall-to-wall carpet, would much prefer hardwoods. All in all, it's got what I need, so I'll stay put.
My grandpa's a plumber, and he went to great lengths to get my parents a non-efficient, could flush a small child toilet.
He was very clear, though, "You can't tell people who installed this for you. And I can't tell you where I got it."
I only mention it now because I'm pretty confident the statute of limitations on plumbing crimes is 20 years, and that has passed.
I dont' want to talk about what kind of house I live in because I don't want to live here anymore. Hmph! I WANT to live in a house with a big yard for my boys and dog to play in and lots of neighborhood kids running around. With a garage big enough so that passengers don't have to get out of the car before we back the car in.
Your house, though, sounds just lovely. The kind of house I always pictured myself living in before I met Hubbz the social climber :-)
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