What I Don’t Like About American Houses

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Clarissa

February 16, 2014

There are tons of good things about American houses, but two common features bug me to no end. Do tell me if this is regional and things are different in other areas.

1. Carpeting. I don’t know which enemy of humanity invented the unhygienic, ugly, and frankly gross practice of nailing carpets to the floor so that every subsequent inhabitant could try to guess the amount of human and animal bodily fluids pumped into the carpets s/he is treading. I have found several houses that have a few rooms with clean and healthy hard-wood floors but there is always a room or two that is carpeted.

In case you are non-American and don’t know what I mean, I posted a picture for you. I’ve been living with this kind of thing for 4,5 years, and I’m sick of it. I’m a person who spills, drops, and messes up, and keeping this clean is an impossibility.

2. No antesala. I really hate it that one enters the house and immediately finds oneself inside the living-room. This is just wrong on every level of human interaction. When one comes in from the rain, the snow, the wind, the sun, the fresh air, etc., one needs an “antesala”, a smallish space with a mirror and a closet for coats and a stand for umbrellas. This is where one makes oneself presentable before entering the space shared by others. And for those of us who are not super exuberant and gregarious every second of the day, this is a chance to prepare for sociability.

On the right, you can see a picture of what I mean by “antesala”.

I don’t even know the word in English that would have this meaning, so I use either the Spanish “antesala” or the Russian “прихожая.” Two weeks ago, I taught my students how to identify the suffixes and the prefixes in Spanish and then asked them to analyze Spanish words that contained the most common suffixes and prefixes. The students did great with all words except “antesala.” They knew that “sala” was a room and “ante” meant “before.” But the concept was eluding them.

This was when I realized that we were experiencing a cultural difference and drew a little floor plan on the blackboard. The students agreed that it was a great idea to have something like that in the house.

Just imagine how impossible it is to clean a house with white or light-beige carpeting where people irrupt into the living-room straight from the street.

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28 responses to “What I Don’t Like About American Houses”

Sandra Heine Merchant

February 16, 2014

I’m pleased to say that my house has your little antesala–foyer, entryway–with a mirror and a closet. I even have a little bench where you can sit and take your shoes off. The floors in my house are tile, except in the bedrooms. There, I have carpet. it feels so good on bare feet.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 16, 2014
  
  I definitely want a little bench.
  
  When I start decorating, I will be posting photos and everybody will be able to participate and give advice. This will be fun!
  
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David Bellamy

February 16, 2014

Anteroom is another synonym. I am always tempted to say “airlock” because of reading a lot of space opera sf as a child.

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1. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
  
  February 17, 2014
  
  Heh, I thought “airlock” too. Only I was quite the Dune fan growing up, so this + the absence of foyers in newer houses tempted me to dissapointedly tsk tsk at the decadence of post-Jihad Fremen. Tsk tsk.
  
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Evelina Anville

February 16, 2014

I am with you on the carpet thing. I really hate it. Fortunately–if the floors are healthy underneath, carpet is relatively easy to pull up. I agree with Sandra: sometimes the word “foyer” is used to describe the sort of room you are describing. Sometimes the word “mud room” is used. Your students may have heard of “mud room.”. Sometimes word “antechamber” is used. I tend to say “entryway.” I have found that older homes have those types of rooms a lot but newer homes don’t have them as often
.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 16, 2014
  
  Oh, so this is what the “mud room” is! I was sure it was the laundry room. 🙂 🙂
  
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  1. anon
    
    February 17, 2014
    
    In many new houses the mud room doubles as the laundry room and is usually accessed via a second door to the outdoors – either a side door or a door through to the garage. It’s usually not as nice as a proper foyer at the front entrance, but is a good place to take of dirty boots and such from gardening or other such activities.
    
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  2. anon
    
    February 17, 2014
    
    Oops, just saw someone else explained this downstream… Bad reading habits.
    
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2. Clarissa
  
  February 16, 2014
  
  “Fortunately–if the floors are healthy underneath, carpet is relatively easy to pull up.”
  
  – Yes, this is what we will have to do. And then over the years, I will buy real carpets and area rugs. I love area rugs. We had one just like this when we were growing up.
  
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Anonymous

February 16, 2014

I take off my shoes at the door, so that’s not a problem even with carpets in the bedroom. Shoes are in the closet closest to the door. I have lived in no place where there’s carpet immediately upon entering the house — even if there’s no foyer, there’s a small strip of floor. Apartments might be a different story.
I lived in the northeast and now in the southeast for your reference.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 16, 2014
  
  ” I have lived in no place where there’s carpet immediately upon entering the house — even if there’s no foyer, there’s a small strip of floor.”
  
  – Yes, we have a small non-carpeted space right at the entrance. But it only holds one person at a time. So while this one person is removing her shoes, the second person has to stand outside in the street. That is a little annoying.
  
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Z

February 16, 2014

Look at older houses. I have hardwood floors throughout and an anteroom. I know there are houses like this in the Midwest.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 16, 2014
  
  There is a couple of really beautiful older houses. One is even declared a historic landmark. Impossibly beautiful: winding staircase, irregularly shaped rooms, uneven ceilings, transom windows. An amazing place. BUT I’m terrified on the necessity of any DIY. N is good at this kind of thing but still we are scared.
  
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  1. Z
    
    February 16, 2014
    
    He makes enough money to hire things done. Like my parents. Do it. Remember that new houses are not as well built and will get problems soon, too.
    
    I wouldn’t necessarily get a *complicated* old house, though. The easier it is to work on, the more feasible it is. A simple old house built with good materials and not trashed is what you want.
    
    Repeat, though, anything that needs repair will cost money, so do not overbuy — have money in reserve for repairs. Then hire them out.
    
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  2. maitreyi1978
    
    February 17, 2014
    
    Ooh, is it the blue Italianate one? I looked up real estate in your area because I love to look at house listings. Houses are really affordable there.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      February 18, 2014
      
      The posts about houses are proving intensely popular. Buying a house will be great for blogging, if for nothing else. 🙂
      
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contingentcassandra

February 16, 2014

Second the recommendation of older houses. It sounds like you’re in an area with a reasonable number of older houses, so there will be craftspeople who know how to deal with them around, and you’re far more likely to find hardwood floors (which, even if they’ve been buried under carpet, are relatively easy for a skilled craftsperson to resurrect with sanding and a new finish. Also, the time to do that is when a house is empty, since it’s messy and requires moving furniture around if furniture is present). Don’t go too old, or you’ll find yourself without any built-in closets at all, but houses from the first half of the 20th century are likely to have what you want. Especially in modest houses built after WWII, you’re likely to find that the antesala has been sacrificed to create a larger, more open living room. But if you find a house you otherwise like, and the living room is of good size, think about whether freestanding wardrobes and/or bookshelves might allow you to carve out an entry area.

In my experience (mostly mid-Atlantic/northeast US), an antesala is called an entryway (or simply “entry”), or a front hall (which may also contain the staircase, but not an actual room). “Foyer” makes me think of the McMansions of the 1980s on (where they are often two stories high, and equipped with monster chandeliers, but not always anything useful like coat closets), but the term may have been used elsewhere and/or for more modest houses earlier, and no doubt real estate agents apply it backward in their copy.

A mudroom is more likely to lead from/to a garage or other back entrance, I think, and may, indeed, house laundry facilities as well. In recent houses, it denotes the antesala that is actually used by the family (as opposed to the one in the front, which is only rarely used, usually by guests). A back hall or back porch might serve the same function in older, perhaps more countrified, houses (which were also more likely, until a decade or so ago, to have something called a mudroom; a mudroom in a house with no, or virtually no, yard strikes me as something of a non sequitur — why a mudroom if there are no garden or fields in which to get muddy?). That may be one of the other oddities of American houses you need to consider: the most obvious entry (and the one you come through with the real estate agent) may or may not be the one you use most often. It probably depends in part whether you’ll most often be driving or walking, and, if driving, where you will park.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 17, 2014
  
  Thank you, dear CC. This is very informative and even eye-opening. I’m from a different culture and this is a new world to me.
  
  I’m also noticing that people sometimes have 2 dining rooms. One they use and the other one is for important occasions. It is always quite uncomfortable to be one of the guests who are made to understand they are not the kind of guests the special dining room is supposed to serve. 🙂
  
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  1. good enough professor
    
    February 17, 2014
    
    For a lot of people the special occasion that warrants the special dining room NEVER happens. Maybe if the President came for dinner or something. Some people do that weird thing where they set the special dining room table as if they were having a fancy dinner party and just leave it that way week after week–I guess it’s a way to display the good china and glassware that they never use either.
    
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good enough professor

February 16, 2014

Evelina Anville and Contingent Cassandra made exactly the same points I was going to make!

All I’ll add is that it’s difficult to overstate how little a traditional front door gets used. I live in an older midwestern neighborhood, highly walkable, but even here there are several houses where the old walkway leading to the front door from the sidewalk has been covered with grass or other landscaping, so that it’s a door to nowhere. We have a perfectly functional front walkway and door (with an oldfashioned entryway!), but a surprising number of people who visit will automatically park in the driveway and come to the side door (where, as it happens, there’s a mudroom).

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 17, 2014
  
  I had no idea there are side doors. 🙂 I have never lived in a house and visited houses maybe a dozen times, if that.
  
  So these comments open a new world for me.
  
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cliff arroyo

February 17, 2014

I completely agree that carpeting sucks. I _hate_ wall to wall carpeting, it never, ever, ever feels really clean. My dream abode would have wood floors (maybe terrazzo in the kitchen and bath areas, marble would make me self conscious).

After living in Europe a number of years I think that an entrance ways (what I call antesala) is a great idea as well.

Also electric kettles, from what I gather they haven’t made it across the atlantic yet and I can’t imagine life without them.

If there’s anything I like in US homes (from the south at least) are veranda style porches. If I had a porch (or Florida room) I’d spend all day there.

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Ol.

February 17, 2014

Last summer I visited a house that was 100% carpeted, even the bathrooms, even the kitchen. You would have freaked out. I freaked out.

Next summer I am planning to get rid of the only carpet I have in my new little house, in the stairs. Fun project.

Is your area expensive?

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1. Brittany-Ann
  
  February 17, 2014
  
  The bathrooms?! Oh gross. And the kitchen? I can’t even.
  
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Ol.

February 17, 2014

Also, you know that in traditional québécois home the living room is only used once or twice a year, for special occasions? Somebody dies, somebody gets married, the priest visits. Everything happens in the kichen. This is why I am not surprised when we entertain friends at home and we stay in the kitchen until the end of the evening.

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xykademiqz

February 17, 2014

We are slowly getting rid of all the carpeting and replacing it with hardwood floors, we 2-3 rooms every couple of years. It is not cheap.

About the dining room, what good enough professor said — many people never use it. We have a formal dining room that we never even bought a table for (we’ve been in the house since 2006), we use it as a play area for the kids. We have a dining area in the kitchen and everyone just eats there. One of these days we may get around to buying that table… maybe.

I second what everyone says about the mudroom — it’s by the garage door, which is the most heavily used entry way in most houses. We do also have a entryway with tiles and a coat closet. Even when I go for a walk with my kids, we go in and out through the garage — all our coats and shoes are there anyway. I can’t remember the last time I went in through the front door. We do have an entryway/foyer/antesala too, with tiles and a coat closet, but only guests use it.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 17, 2014
  
  This seems so logical: if people mostly arrive at home by car, then it stands to reason that they enter the house through a garage. yet I never even considered that possibility. 🙂
  
  I wonder what else I’m missing.
  
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Brittany-Ann

February 17, 2014

My apartment is all hardwood, save for the bathrooms and kitchen, which are tile. I love it, even though though the floors are cold in the winter. Like now. But I refuse to put down rugs. It’s too pretty to cover up.

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