I spend hours and I mean HOURS on the computer looking at the pretend houses I will someday buy when I move to Scotland. I know I shouldn't hope, wish, and dream, but hey, it's just the thing(s) I do to both entertain my brain, and to keep me motivated for if and when the time does come. I need to be so ready. First, and you should know this, houses in Scotland are NOT, not, not like they are in Oklahoma. You can find houses like they have in Scotland in other parts of the UK, but you're not going to find them over on this side of the pond for so many very (spoiled) interesting reasons. Let's go over a few, shall we?
Houses in Scotland (for a great part of the equation) were built between the years 1929 and 1959. So many of these "two up - two down" houses are exactly what it sounds like, smaller homes built with two main rooms (usually bedrooms) upstairs and two main rooms, such as a living and kitchen, downstairs. Yes, there is a bathroom and it could be on either floor. I shouldn't have said "bathroom", I should have said "shower room" or "wet room" because unless there is an actual bathtub in it, they don't call them bathrooms! These houses were built KNOWING that an entire family of 4-6 could be living in them, and they only have one bathroom. These houses were built KNOWING that there would or could be a family of six living in them and they don't have what I call a normal-sized refrigerator. You can't make this stuff up.
The kitchens do have a front-load washing machine in the kitchen itself, but not a dryer, as most Scottish homes don't have a use for one. They hang their laundry out on the green line or if it's raining (and it's usually raining) they hang their clothes up on a rack that suspends from the ceiling. This rack could be found in the hallway, in the kitchen, in a bathroom -- heck, it could be in a bedroom! I've seen dryers in bedrooms, refrigerators in bedrooms, freezers, and/or three beds in a bedroom. I've seen carpet that looks as if they lost the bet on hideous hotel carpet gambling, and I've seen rooms without closets as well. You heard me, bedrooms without closets (or wardrobes as they are called). The really big huge Oh-My-Gosh-Are-You-Freaking-Kidding-Me thing is that Scottish homes don't have screens on their windows. Nope! They don't.
Some of the homes have an under-the-stairs storage area where you could possibly stash an extra toilet, but there isn't enough room for a little sink. That's OK, I will do that! The person can walk to the kitchen to wash their hands. There will be two toilets in my house. There will be a bathtub in my house. There will be real live screens on the windows, and YES, there will be an air conditioning unit installed and all the rooms will be ducted to that central unit. Most of the houses have radiators in each room, sometimes two per room for heat. They have NO air conditioning whatsoever, and I've not seen a window unit anywhere either - - that means it either doesn't get hot enough, or it doesn't stay hot very long. I get that. I do. I read up on the temperatures, but I'm not living in a house hotter than 72 degrees. It's not happening. YES, I am that spoiled.
I'm told the terrace houses are rather insulated, and that's good to know, but I've seen some really tacky looking wall paper (I am not sure we Americans have seen wallpaper other than what's on our phones, since the 1980s) and I've seen the most interesting fireplaces without actual fireplaces because fires in and around the main cities have been outlawed due to too many older homes going up in flames and taking neighbors with them. Google it. I'm not kidding. I don't have to have a fireplace. I'm good with just the fake thing that looks like one. Some people use it for decor. I think I'll take mine out and have the area transformed into a little shelf or something useful. I'll Pinterest that.
Let's talk hedges. EVERY house on nearly EVERY block has some sort of hedge around it. I don't like hornets and hornets love hedges. Sorry neighbors, yes, I'm going to annoy you further by taking out my hedges. Don't worry, I'll put up a nice tall privacy fence so you don't have to see what I'm doing on the other side. What will I be doing on the other side? I will likely be hanging upside down on my aerial hammock, or sitting in my hot tub with a fizzy water! (LaCroix, Bubly, Perrier) The back yards (gardens) in most cases are about 22 feet by 60 feet and they either have a gate at the back or they don't and you can't access them any other way other than through the house. My fence will have a gate! I say that. I can't very well put in a gate opening up into the neighbor's garden. We'll put a pin in that one for now.
Refrigerators. I talked about them before. The "big" ones in the UK (Scotland for sure) are the size of a rather small apartment fridge, not the dormitory-size, or the mini fridge, but the size of say, a tiny apartment that you can't turn around in the kitchen size, that's about the size of their average basic "big" refrigerator. Most of the houses either have that one or two smaller dormatory-sized units. I assume one is a freezer, I could be wrong. There are really tall and skinny units, they are more modern and I wouldn't mind one of those, which could actually work out. I just have to have a good freezer. I do buy things in bulk such as meat and frozen fruits. I did ask about that once. I was told that you cook frozen food when you buy it, there is no need to store it. If you didn't intend to cook it, you don't buy it. That's an interesting concept.
The attic! Oh yes, the attic. This is so very interesting and very very different from what we have here in the States, particularly in Oklahoma. Our attic access here is in the garage. We open the hatch by pulling down the rope, and we unhinge the ladder to climb up, and usually, the thing isn't finished out, but we can scoot boxes around on boards we've laid over on top of the beams. Makes so much sense, right? Not the same as it is in Scotland, and they have it right. They do it better, I think. The access is in the hall or a bedroom. You do still pull down the hatch, and you do still unhinge the ladder. HOWEVER, from what I have seen in nearly every single unit I've looked over, the entire attic is finished out top to bottom, and you can stand up and walk around in it as if (as if) it was another bedroom! That would be because IT IS ANOTHER BEDROOM for the kids when they are in their younger years and have no issue running up and down the shaky ladders! Apparently, they leave the ladders down at night, and they put them back up when the kids come down to go to school. Gotcha! NOPE.
The attic in my house may very well be a bedroom or a guest room, but I will have the engineers come out and put in a little spiral staircase in a closet, extra area, bedroom, something so that the folks who come to visit me won't fear that I'll trap them inside my attic. At least the attic will also be ducted and hooked up to the central A/C. I may even add a skylight because I'm cool like that. My attic will be a place of beauty! Something to be admired. If anything it will at least be functional and part of the house. If I do only use it for storage, I will not have the extra staircase added, but I will have it connected so my things are temperature controlled and not getting all hot and moldy. YUCK.
I'll show a floor plan and an exterior photo for you to look at and admire. If you're from the States you'll just (as I did) shake your head and think to yourself "OK, well that makes sense, there are more people so they have to build upward". That was my thought process anyway. You can fit two Scotlands in Oklahoma, and yet there are twice as many folks in Scotland than there are in the Sooner State. We have just under 3M I think, and they have close to 6M, something like 5.8M. It makes perfect sense to build UP. You should see the blocks and blocks of apartments in Edinburgh and Glasgow! Oh, and most of them, even though they are four stories tall, don't have an elevator! You walk! They call it a lift, and yes, you just walk up the stairs and down the stairs. Also, if you're on the ground floor that's called the ground floor. If you're on the next floor above the ground floor, they call it the 1st floor whereas we will call it the 2nd. That can be confusing.
All in all, I'm looking forward to the next chapter of my life. I'm going to try to be as Scottish as I can be, but yeah, I'm not giving up my fridge, my dryer, or my A/C. I don't think I'll have to bend too many arms and I bet I have more friends over in the summer who will appreciate the flow of air and the buglessness of my window screens. That's right. I don't really like bugs. I can say that with confidence. I don't mind them living in their space, but they don't need to be taking up residence in mine! Call me spoiled. I don't mind because I know I am.
Exterior of a semi-detached (we call it a duplex) house in Scotland.
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