Sink Room in an Old House

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Lola. I’m calling from Columbus, Wisconsin.

Hiya, Lola. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Lola. What’s up?

Well, I’m hoping you can help us name a room in our house.

So we just purchased this house in Columbus, and it was built in 1921.

And it doesn’t really have a kitchen, or at least it didn’t when we bought it.

It has rooms that are kitchen-like and have things in it that are in kitchens, but they’re not in the same rooms.

So the room that we’re calling a kitchen, when you walk into it from the back door, it has a stove, refrigerator, and then seven doorways that lead to other rooms.

Behind one of those doors is a small room that has the original built-in cabinets and bins and a small counter and the kitchen sink.

And that’s the room that no one knows what to call because it doesn’t really feel like a kitchen.

It’s not really part of the other room, but it’s where we’re putting all of our dishes and food.

And it’s a beautiful little space, and everyone walks into it, and they go, I love this sink room.

And we’ve tried washroom, but that sounds like you do laundry in it.

And we’ve tried butler’s pantry, but we definitely do not have a butler.

So that also feels strange.

Wow.

Why not call it the sink room?

That’s got a long history of calling the rooms like that a sink room.

Really?

That seems so obvious and strange.

Old architectural term for it.

And what’s so charming about this little room?

Well, it has these two little windows that look out over the backyard,

And the built-in cabinets go from the floor to the ceiling,

And they’re just gorgeous.

And it has a counter that’s walnut.

Like this tree must have been gigantic.

And the sink is enamel cast iron with the wash basins.

It’s just, I don’t know, it’s very romantic.

Maybe cottagecore is the word now to use.

But it’s too small for there to be a lot of people in there.

So it feels really intimate and perfect for like winding down and doing dishes at the end of the day.

You really hit on a couple of real important notes there.

One old dictionary describes a sink room as a room having a sink, especially a room near a kitchen in which utensils are kept and the coarser operations involved in cooking are performed.

And that sounds pretty much like the room, but you’re getting at a real core part of how houses used to be built.

For centuries, houses in the United States were built with the idea that the stove, think of a Franklin stove,

Was a source of heat for other rooms in the house and not just the place where you made meals.

So you didn’t necessarily put all the food preparation surfaces around it.

You might cook there, but the preparation, the cutting and the dicing would happen elsewhere,

And the cleaning would happen elsewhere as well.

As a matter of fact, the stove was so often a part of heating that you might even have a little alcove off to the side of the place where the stove was.

And this place was called the bed sink, where you might sleep on cold nights to be near the heat of the kitchen.

And there definitely used to be a different type of stove in the room we’re calling the kitchen now.

I’m not surprised.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you would find a place where the icebox used to be,

Because a lot of times in these old houses, the icebox also wasn’t near the stove.

And so think about before refrigerators, you would want your icebox,

You know, it had a big chunk of ice in it, far from the heat of the kitchen,

Usually on the north side of the house, you know, out of the sun,

And at least in the northern hemisphere.

And this way your ice is going to last for longer,

And your food has less chance of spoiling.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if your icebox was also maybe perhaps in that room with the sink or in one of these other seven doorways.

That’s really interesting because there is another doorway that leads to the only room that has a floor that’s concrete.

And it looked like it had some point been maybe part of the sink room, but they’d put in a wall and put in a bathroom there.

And there used to be old holes through there like drains that lead to the cistern below.

There we go.

I would not be surprised if that was originally the room for the icebox.

I want to call the downstairs bathroom the icebox now.

Excuse me, I have to see a man about an icebox.

I love that.

And think also the time when families were very large and hired help was commonplace.

And you would want the dishwashing out of the way and the food preparation because both were pretty much never-ending tasks where you might have family gathered around the stove.

And so all this other stuff had to happen out of the way of the stove, if that makes sense.

You know, you might have the eating next to the stove as much as, you know, the few pots that were on it.

But everything else needed to be moved because you could not have all these people in the way of the cleaning and the cutting and so forth.

Well, Lola, you’re making this place sound so romantic.

Is this like a dream house for you?

Well, I think it’s a dream.

Some people walk in and think it’s a nightmare.

It needs a lot of work.

When we first tried buying it, it was deemed uninhabitable, which couldn’t possibly have been true because there were rexms.

Living in it at the time.

I was going to say that.

It’s a joke.

But it’s already,

We’ve gotten some rooms

That feel very done

And other rooms are still

Really good for a Halloween party

That we plan on having.

They’re pretty creepy

And in rough shape,

But when we’re done with it,

It’s going to be magical.

It sounds like it.

Well, thank you so much for calling.

This has been really fascinating.

Yeah, Lola, thank you so much.

And think about Synch Room.

That might be good.

Yeah.

And a reality show.

I really like it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much.

Now we have a name for the bathroom and a name for the Synch Room.

All right.

Take care now.

Good luck with the house.

You too.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.