separate loo, with just a loo

[DonkeyHohtay]

Having a "discussion" with DH while homes under the hammer is on. (As you do). One of the properties featured is in Birkenhead, not a million miles from where he grew up. The property had upstairs one room with the bath and handwash basin, and a separate room with just the loo, no sink. This to me is the height of weird. DH thinks it's perfectly normal as that was the configuration in the house he grew up in.

Is this a Merseyside "thing"? I don't get the logic. DH said his parents before they moved managed to squeeze a teeny tiny handwashing sink into the tiny room with the loo, but the main bathroom is still just bath and sink.

I grew up in Liverpool and did know one or two people with this configuration! Not sure how common or uncommon it is elsewhere though.

I live in the North West and my house was like this when I bought it. It was built in the 70s.

I believe the thinking was that in the days before everyone had showers or downstairs loos, you could still use the toilet while someone was soaking in the bath

For clarity - I grew up in Scotland and never came across it. DH's childhood home was probably post-war, 50s maybe?

I grew up a long way from Merseyside but yes our loo just had a loo. Bathroom had a sink / bath / shower in it. When you'd been to the loo you walked next door to the bathroom and washed your hands. I never thought that was weird. No different from using, say, a loo at an airport or the movies where you walk out of the loo and wash your hands 10 feet away at a shared sink.

I believe the thinking was that in the days before everyone had showers or downstairs loos, you could still use the toilet while someone was soaking in the bath

Logical. But surely you'd put a wash hand basin in the loo? And another toilet in the bathroom? You'd have to use the loo, then go next door to wash your hands.

This is a very common layout in France! Few loos have a sink in them.

A lot of semi detached post war houses have this configuration. Or did, over the years people have knocked it through to one room.

I actually liked it when my kids were small. DD loves to come and poo while I was in the bath, when we moved it meant I could enjoy a peaceful bath 😂

We bought a house with a toilet in a tiny room where the door swung in almost hitting the toilet. No sink but It had a water softener next to it almost touching the toilet seat . We are renovating to sell so for now we disconnected the toilet and are planning to extend the room to put a sink in there in the future and move the eater softener out. The whole idea of no sink makes me feel ill as imagine the germs on the door handle and light switch!!!

It was the norm when I grew up in the 70s. My childhood home had the bath and sink in one room, loo with no sink in a little separate room. You would use the loo then go into the bathroom to wash your hands.

I suppose if you used the loo and someone else was in the bath, you would have to go downstairs to wash your hands. But it rarely seemed to happen, maybe because when I was a child we only bathed once a week.

It sounds horrible now but it seemed normal then.

When I was a child our house was configured like this. The loo was next to the bathroom, with no wash basin. I think it's a hangover from when loos were outside (where they never had basins either), and when they started coming inside, it was possibly seen as the hygienic option. I think if you only have one loo and a family using it, it's quite a good idea, as someone can spend hours in the bath without inconveniencing everyone else. I would want a basin though.

My house , post war has a separate toilet with no hand basin. Same at my mother 70's . Never bothered me. If someone in the bathroom I go back downstairs to wash my hands in the kitchen 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don't see why you think it's weird? That's how it was in the "olden days" - simple as. It was a luxury to have an indoor toilet, let alone a bathroom. Even as late as the 1980s it wasn't unusual to come across properties with no bathroom, mainly they had older occupants though. Just be glad it's not the norm now! Clearly handwashing after going wasn't such a big concern back then.

Our house has that configuration on the middle floor. Just a toilet in one room (with a carpeted floor 🤢, and a sink/bath in the adjacent room. We’ll definitely knock it through into one room eventually. It’s not really a massive problem though (especially as we have 2 other bathrooms with a more usual layout).

NW house, built 1981, was like this growing up.

DP's flat is like this now, no idea when it was built, Essex.

My gran's bungalow was like this. Even as a child I used to think about all the poo germs which must be on the door handles. Still we lived to tell the tale I guess.

I grew up in Yorkshire - my mum still lives in the same house and it still has this layout. It’s a bit of a pain if someone’s using the bathroom when you want to wash your hands, but in general you just pop down to the kitchen to do it.

I've lived most of my adult life in a house like that. Most Victorian to 1930s houses were built like that (unless they were built without a bathroom at all as often happened in Victorian times). It's much better than just having the loo in the bathroom so you have to wait for someone having a soak in the bath when desperate for the loo. This is common across the country. Post war houses usually have a downstairs loo with basin.

I had this set up in a flat I rented in Battersea London in the 1980's. The flats were probably late Victorian, the bathrooms were believed to be original (the plumber thought the toilet pan might be an original Thomas Crapper one) so they would have really been something to "improve the lot of the poor" at the time they were built. Amazing really! (Sorry for the slight history lesson)

1930s semi detached, had this config. I thought it's normal. Very useful with 1 loo shared between 4 of us.
We knocked through a few years back - but only because we put in a cloakroom and another bathroom in the loft.

It's pretty normal, I've lived in houses with this configuration. It makes sense if you think back to times when people didn't have showers. Would you want to wait ages for someone to finish their bath so you could have a wee?

NW, semi-det house built in the fifties, our toilet is separate to the bathroom. I actually prefer it that way, it'll help when we come to toilet train our ASD son as it will have fewer distractions for him.

It's not particular to any one area, it was the norm when bathrooms and toilets were separate, but adjacent rooms. In older houses where there is one room with the bath, sink and toilet in it then either the outside toilet has been replaced with one inside (typical of Victorian houses) or the toilet and bathroom have been knocked together.

I’m in Dublin and we had that layout when I was a child. My friend’s parents still have it the same way.

It’s perfectly normal op.

My house is like this (Berkshire) and when we bought it DH was determined we would knock it through into the bathroom, but actually it's bliss having a shower with no-one coming in to have a wee. It makes the mornings much more streamlined, and any concerns MIL had about DS not learning to wash his hands after going to the loo were completely wrong. We all just walk into the bathroom without a second thought and wash our hands. No plans to knock through any more. I had no worries because my parents house is the same (N London) so I was totally used to it.