Saturday, April 2, 2011

D4P mailed to Biggleswade

Today I mailed the 3 D4P blocks to Celine In Biggleswade, UK. I had never heard of Biggleswade, so I looked it up on the Internet. Once I got to a site about the town, I looked at real estate for sale or lease (or "let" as they say in the UK!).
It was very interesting and I noticed several main differences in housing from the U.S.
1. The clothes washing machine is in the kitchen. (I never did see a clothes dryer)
2. The bathrooms are very small rather than the luxurious, spacious ones we build here.
3. There was a very limited amount of storage space in the homes. What does a quilter do with his or her stash?

Maybe our UK block lotto friends could educate us (or me; maybe everyone else already knows about these things!)

Gail in Vegas

8 comments:

  1. This brought a smile to my face this morning Gail! Yes, wahing machines are nearly always in the kitchen, dryers often are too - unless you have the luxury of a utility room or a spacious garage. bathrooms, well...small and functional!! and the stash?? as I look around I can see it poking out of places everywhere in the room until I rein it in later and the room returns to its primary use (I take over the sitting/dining room when the coast is clear!!)My hubby is threatening to relocate me to a shed in the garden!

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  2. Salut Celine! I didn't realize you were playing along here till I saw your address on the mailout list! Cathi, here over in Ireland!! Celine has a lovely house there in Biggleswade and cute kids!! Been years since I visited, hope you are doing well!! And congrats on the win this month...I've only been playing three months so far...keeping my fingers crossed!

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  3. Very value comments Gail.unless built or extended in the last 15 years or so, most British houses don't have a utility room, so the washing machine s in the (small) kitchen. If the family has a drier it may be in the garage, many don't : they use a clothes horse in the sitting room if it's wet outside. In Europe they often put both machines in the bathroom, we aren't allowed to under electrical regulations, and anyway our bathrooms are so pokey we wouldn't usually have room!

    Until I managed to claim our box room for myself my stash was all over the place, but now it's squeezed into one room. A UK "box" room is the smallest bedroom, usually in a three bedroomed house ... Ours is 2.2m by 2.5m with a structural cupboard taken from that. We also don't generally have basements, accessible attics or bonus rooms

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  4. ... But until we visit our American cousins we don't know any better LOL

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  5. In Michigan, I lived in a very small house, built around 1900--which I realize is still newer than a lot of houses in Europe. It was one of the houses that Sears Roebuck once sold through their catalog--the house "kit" arrived via rail and was built on-site. I actually had a washer and dryer in the basement (an icky "Michigan basement" which was little more than a hole in the ground with a cement floor), but had almost NO closet space. It always made me think about how we (Americans especially) seem to acquire so many clothes and so much of everything else, too. Surprisingly, my tiny house actually had a formal dining room and two bedrooms--the smaller of which held my sewing machines and fabric, etc.

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  6. Gail, many of us hide our stash in the most inventive places, I had to move from box room to childs bedroom to box room to wardrobe over the years. Now I'm lucky enough to have a garden office as a dedicated sewing space and small partial garage conversion as a fabric storage. The washer is in the kitchen and the dryer in the extra small garage. In fact I only just got a diswasher after a kitchen remodel ( a mini one!) The small house makes for a creative, inventive quilter!

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  7. Thanks for your post Gail and so sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Yes houses here are tiny as land is at a premium. My washing machine is in the kitchen and I am hoping to one day move it in the garage which is now our storage area (it is so small it wouldn't fit our family size car anyway). The tumble dryer is in the garage. Our bathroom is tiny so when you have kids and need a changing mat in there (and you don't want to use the floor) well you have to play contorsionist to reach the bath... Always interesting. Also taps are usually cold or hot but mixer taps are not common. My stash is (mostly) in the office/craft room (our 4th bedroom, more like a box room is used as an office) and also in my daugther's cupboards and also in a few other places! I come from France and grew up in a larger house on a farm and was finding the lack of space a bit difficult initially but you get used to it! Although we refurbished the bathroom in the houses we lived in because we wanted mixer taps and power showers! Thanks for the interesting dicussion.

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  8. Hi Cathi, I didn't realised you were there either! Did Kate tempt you to join? Welcome! I have been playing on and off for the last 18 months and this is my first win.
    I haven't seen you for a while either, it was about 2 years ago that you stopped on your way to Barbara as Charlotte was only a few weeks old and she just turned 2! Hope you are keeping well.

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