- Under Our Stairs
One of the charms of living in an old house is its many nooks and crannies. It’s not that the house was constructed with hidey-holes in mind. From what we know of our house, it was pretty straightforward when it was built in 1869. Each room and each space had a clear purpose.
But, over the years, as plumbing and electricity were added and as renovations occurred to accommodate changing lifestyles, the house has taken on a character of its own. One of the best examples is the little room off the library. It is just behind the stairway and, originally, when the library was the kitchen, that little space was probably a pantry. It now has a small window – obviously a ‘recent’ addition – but in my mind’s eye I can clearly see the shelves filled with the jams and jellies, pickled beets and pickled pears that must have been stored there in the early days.
In 1913, my grandmother began what I think of as her ‘westward movement,’ incorporating what were then outbuildings into the living space of the house. The kitchen became the library and that pantry morphed into a storage closet. Then, in 1938 when rural electrification came to Oysterville, that little room became the first indoor bathroom with a flush toilet and running water. I remember it well.
As hard as it is to imagine, it was a full bathroom, complete with tub. It’s the tiniest claw foot tub I’ve ever seen, and it fits right into the space under the stairs. My grandmother bathed in that tub for the rest of her life. It’s hard to imagine how my grandfather even installed it, and perhaps that’s the reason it is still there even though that room is no longer a bathroom.
When my folks moved into the house in 1971, the little room was converted to yet another use – a wet bar. Where the toilet once was, there is now a small refrigerator. The sink is in the same spot as it has always been in my memory; so is the bathtub. The tub is seldom used at all, and never for its original purpose, although we have been known to fill it with ice and bottles of champagne for special occasions. And people often ask if we use it to make bathtub gin…
Mostly, the tub under the stairs is just one of those curiosities of the house that’s fun to show first-time visitors.
Electricity and Memi arrived in Oysterville the same year!! It was a couple of years later that we finally had a flushing toilet and a bathtub. As the bathroom was in progress, we called it the Pout Room because when Betty and I did anything wrong we were sent there to do our pouting and to think about what bad children we were. When the tub was finally installed Mom and Eddie let me choose the linoleum I wanted to go around the walls and I selected blue with white stars. Often, Bitty and Nita and I would take a bubble bath in it at the same time. The tub wasn’t big, we were small. We filled our mouths with carnation-scented bubble water and spit it at the stars to see who could spit the farthest. You brought back memories to me, Sydney, and I would love to see your little tub.
I love the notion of one of your parties complete with a bathtub full of ice and champIt is one of the entertaining aspects of owning an older home to speculate what was built first and where things were changed or added. You are lucky to know so much about your house. I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that our “big” bathroom was originally the pantry, a use to which I would like to return it to. When indoor plumbing came to Ilwaco a tiny bathroom consisting of a corner sink and toilet only was tacked onto the back of the house on the porch which was then enclosed. We would like to expand that area and have a bathroom in which you don’t have to leave to change your mind and a place for a washer and dryer so that I’m not running in the rain to the barn where our machines are currently located.