Houses are Ideal only When Built, Part 1 – Past Designs

I love a big house with a sprawling garden because this was the type of place I grew up in. However, after reading my father’s essay entitled Trees are for the Young, coupled with the experience brought about by this pandemic, I have grown to prefer a house that is just the right size.

The Past

We are all shaped by our past. Experiences that are good, bad, or in between dictate our tastes and preferences.

As mentioned earlier, I grew up in a big house with a sprawling garden. At least, that’s what it appeared to the eyes of a child growing up in the twentieth century. Looking back with the eyes of an adult, I wouldn’t say we had a mansion or a yard big enough to land a bi-plane as the total land area was just about two-thousand square meters.

[At the risk of sounding boastful, it is still huge compared to today’s tiny houses and minuscule gardens.]

As a primer for this three-part series, I have provided a description of some of the more notable aspects of our house and garden below.

Size

The house that my parents built was a two-story unit with the dining room, living room, kitchen, staff rooms, recreation room, and patio on the ground floor. Rounding out the first floor were the dirty kitchen and laundry area.

The master bedroom, as well as those for the boys, girls, and one guest were all on the second floor. These were accessible by a flight of stairs at the rear of the house. Also on the second floor was an open terrace that dwarfed all the rooms, save the master bedroom.

Surrounding the house was a large garden ringed by empty lots, as there were few houses built in our area in the early years. As mentioned in my father’s article, we had a lot of foliage.

Roof

Delving more into detail of the house, let’s start at the top with the roof. The initial design of the roof was a simple rectangle but when the terrace was converted into a couple of rooms for my siblings, a new segment was connected to the existing one in such a way that the house still looked like one whole unit, as opposed to something that was cobbled together.

The only available material at the time was a galvanized sheet of metal shaped into a wave-like pattern, making it as plain as it could be. After installation, the new and old sections of the roof were painted a single color of white.

I will go on a limb by saying all houses during this period were built with eaves. Ours were connected to downspouts hidden within the walls. Looking back, I think that the metal of the eaves were not galvanized like the roof and were most likely just panted over to match the roofing.

Exterior Walls

The exterior walls were a combination of the chipped finish and tiles, again popular choices for that time period. The chipped finish was used for the patio as this wall was isolated from the elements. All other exposed walls used tiles as they were better suited for the sun and rain.

Patio

I’m not sure if patio was an accurate term but this was was we have always called it. This section was beside the living room and separated by aluminum sliding doors. The floor was composed of pebble wash, another popular choice for the time, and was open to the garden from two sides.

When I was a child. I remember this area being very hot because it caught the afternoon sun. But as I entered my teen years, the Mango tree beside it grew tall enough to cast a shadow, turning it into the best place to sit out the burning sun of hot summers.

Living and Dining Rooms

Both our living and dining rooms were lined with parquet floors. These two rooms did not have any wall dividing it, even if the sunken living room was down a couple of steps. Wallpaper clung to the dining room section while a chipped wall finish was used for the living room.

The living room had a small carpet under the center table. I don’t remember if it was real but the fuzzy top and smooth bottom did not feel fake.

Kitchen

The kitchen was only separated from the dining room by a waist-high counter. The floor and exposed walls were finished with tiles – dull ones for floor and colorfully shiny ones for the walls.

Instead of a center island, a table occupied the middle portion. All the appliances, sinks, and counters were attached to the walls. Speaking of counters, these were covered in dull tiles of a different shade from the walls.

There was an exhaust fan set in the wall above our two-burner stove and a filter above the separate oven. The exhaust fan had louvers that opened and closed automatically when the fan was turned on or off.

Recreation Room

We had a recreation room, which was sometimes referred to as the den when visitors arrived. And similar to the living room, this was in a sunken area. It was the only room that had dark wall-to-wall carpeting. The bathroom had dark tiles to match the motif of the room.

An entire wall devoted for the shelves holding the huge stereo system that piped music into the living room, dining room, and patio. This was done with cabling embedded in the walls and ceiling. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, yes, we had a belt-driven turntable for those old 45 and 33 vinyl records.

One notable difference of the shelves and cabinets of this room was that they were free standing and not connected to the walls. Coming in three sections, there was space between the sections, as well as the wall. There was also about half a meter of space between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling.

Bedrooms

All the bedroom walls, from the master’s to the youngest child’s, were finished in wallpaper. White for my parents, blue for the boys, and pink for the girls.

Each original room had it’s own bathroom. The tiles, which stretched from floor to ceiling, matched the wallpaper of their respective rooms. Shared bathrooms only came into existence after the terrace was converted into two separate rooms for my siblings.

The only rooms that didn’t have any wallpaper were the two staff rooms as they were finished in dull white paint.

All the floors of rooms were finished in parquet. Only the staff rooms had those tiny tiles, again something popular for the time, for floors.

Staircase

All the bedrooms are on the second floor were accessible through the floating staircase at the back of the house. Underneath the staircase was empty space that was used as a temporary storage area.

For us kids, this was where we would dump our sports equipment as we rushed to the kitchen to eat. After dining, all that equipment needed to be either set aside or thrown in the laundry hamper.

I guess one of the popular designs of staircases when it was constructed was to attach a narrow band of carpeting to the center, where the spine it. This helped to accentuate the stairs and prevent slipping.

Cabinets

All the cabinets, including the ones in the kitchen, were slatted. In all the rooms, they stretched from the floor to the ceiling on the walls without windows. For the sides with windows, the empty spaces all around the windows, including the top and bottom, were covered with cabinets.

As you can probably imagine, all the cabinets were attached the walls, leaving absolutely no access for cockroaches or mice.

Windows

Majority the windows used were the aluminum sliding ones, which were actually smaller version of our patio sliding doors. The only rooms that use the louver-type were the bathrooms.

However, when the terrace was converted into a couple of rooms, the windows used were the typical metal style that swung outwards. These provided a bigger area for wind to cross, making these two rooms the coolest in the house..

Dirty Kitchen and Laundry Area

A covered extension of the kitchen was located outside of the house and was accessible through a door attached to the kitchen. This was not part of the original design of the house and was added right before my eldest sibling became a teenager.

Since we would host parties, this was where the waiters, whose services we sometimes contracted, worked out of. They’d wash the dishes and other dining items in a tiled sink purposely built on the side of our wall.

It was initially an open area with the roof being added a few years later because keeping the area clean from mud, leaves, and feral cats became difficult. The added roof was attached to the wall, complete with eaves and downspouts pointing towards the front of the house.

The adjacent laundry area was another addition as washing clothes was now done through a washing machine. Prior to this, clothes were hand-washed by staff in the dirty kitchen.

Garden

Based on my father’s essay entitled Trees are for the Young, you may have correctly guessed that we had a huge garden. Again at the risk of sounding immodest, the garden was gigantic to me as a child. My opinion, especially after looking at today’s small property sizes, has not changed at all – it really was big.

While we did have a ton of fruit-baring trees and plants, it also had a lot of ornamental plants that were so popular at the time. At the front were several Red Palm trees, chosen because they supposedly brought good luck. Dotted around the fruit-breaking trees were assorted Bromeliads, Ferns, and even Balete trees.

Garage

The parking area was a two design made to hold hold cars side-by-side. The master’s and guest bedrooms sit above them to act as a cover from the elements. However, the ceiling of the rightmost slot on covers about a third of a car, exposing part of it to the elements.

While the parking area was only designed for two, the driveway and part of the garden could accommodate as many as eight additional vehicles. And while they would be exposed to the elements at all times, they were still safely enclosed by our gate.

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned earlier, the house was ideal for when I was a child. It was spacious, expandable, and fit the needs of our growing family. But as we fast forward to the present, what worked back then doesn’t necessarily work now.

In the second part of this series, Houses are Ideal only When Built, Part 2 – Problems and Solutions, I will be discussing the problems that have cropped up over the years. Sadly the only practical solution to these problems is to start over, something I will also discuss next time.