What was/were the home/s you grew up in like?

[chooch]

Suburban two up two down terrace with big flowery curtains and swirly carpets like a pizza on a dansette. Small garden with a plum tree (good for throwing at pebbledashed walls) and a dusty alley behind that was great for mischief.

Later a semi round the corner with an amazingly long garden that flooded every winter, with some dark and scary woods at the back. Decor was solidly woodchip and anaglypta, though there was some truly nasty 'feature' wallpaper (gold with fleur de lys) and some great vomity colour combos- purple and brown, and orange and green. Mirrors, plastic teak, cork and scrubby carpet tiles also strongly represented. Big wooden tv set with 'itv2' on one of the buttons, and a kitchen that had a mysterious hole in the wall from where some earlier DiY had gone wrong. The place was later extended and double-glazed, badly.

They moved again when I was just leaving school- big, dull house in a place I hated. And they've moved, twice, since.

 

[nightowl]

two bed semi-detached council house. had fantastic views over penzance and mounts bay. could sit there for ages just watching all the boats coming and going. one of the things that seems unusual now is that there was a big attached coal cupboard thingy just outside the kitchen. a guy in a big flatbed coal lorry would come around every week and fill it up. we used to do chestnuts on a shovel on the fire in the front room and also do toast over it as well. one of the other things i remember is that one of those big old fashioned fish and chip lorries would stop outside the house every friday. you actually walked in one side of the lorry and out the other.

 

[May Kasahara]

Cork tiles and woodchip wallpaper! Oh yes. And paper balloon shades, a tradition I'm carrying on to this day.

 

[kyser_soze]

My old road from the air

 

[nightowl]

Cork tiles and woodchip wallpaper! Oh yes. And paper balloon shades, a tradition I'm carrying on to this day.

i always had a bad habit as a kid of picking the chippy bits out of people's woodchip wallpaper

 

[May Kasahara]

Join the club My brother had one of those high-rise beds when we were little, you know the ones with the desk space and wardrobe underneath, and the ceiling above his bed was riddled with pick marks.

 

[chooch]

Join the club My brother had one of those high-rise beds when we were little, you know the ones with the desk space and wardrobe underneath

I had one of those. There was some unspeakably nasty stuff underneath. Good place to sulk too. Best I managed was a day and a half before hunger set in.

I still find woodchip-picking almost irresistible. Did some absent-mindedly in a holiday house I was staying in this summer

 

[quimcunx]

I was brought up in bungalow built by my dad covered in that bloody red and white harling (pointy pebble dash) so inexplicably popular back in the old country. It was pleasant but dull.

My dad still takes part in the hill race from the park I was stood in when taking the pic and the top of the hill and back again. He's 74 you know.

 

[trashpony]

I lived in nine different houses by the time I was twelve so there isn't really an answer. I usually shared a bedroom with my little sister though and my elder one got her own room.

Which of course still rankles till this day

 

[Firky]

That's a lovely house Firky. No roof though

Meh, brought up in a farm house for the first part of my life on the grounds of a lunatic asylum.

 

[equationgirl]

I lived in three houses until I left home - one just outside Oxford, then two in a new town outside Birmingham. All were new build houses, and whilst each one was perfectly pleasant, and warm and dry, none ever felt like home. The lsat one was sold about 5 years ago, when my parents retired and moved North.

 

[Gavin Bl]

a nice late 1960-ish semi, originally built for Hoover staff, after the firm set up a washing machine factory in the town. Next door to what was then, the largest council estate in western Europe.

 

[longdog]

A large three story, three bedroom Victorian terraced house overlooking a playing field (there's a sport centre now).

The bottom floor was half below ground level and obviously used to be servant's quarters and was effectively abandoned due to damp, it got condemned as 'unfit for human habitation' by the local rates office. What it did have was a passageway from outside at the back of the house right through to the coal cellar under the pavement. It was my own personal rifle range

The place was always a bit run down really. My dad was an early DIYer (or more accurately a skinflint) but not actually very good at stuff and his work usually made things worse not better.

Last time I saw the place it was still painted the same hideous white and orange it was when we moved out.

 

[Cloo]

An interesting variety of family nests among the urban crew!

 

[Geri]

We moved into a council house when I was 4. It was 3 bedroomed, end of terrace, with two rooms downstairs (front room and kitchen/diner) and separate toilet and bathroom upstairs (both tiny - I'd have knocked them into one bigger bathroom).

Reasonable sized garden, we had an aviary at the bottom for my dad's budgies (he now has cockatiels) and plenty of room for our various pets.

My dad still lives there, he bought it under the right to buy. I'm in two minds whether to buy it when he croaks it, as I can't bear the thought of anyone else living there - although not sure if I want to live there myself.

I also had my own room (the box room) with the high bed and woodchip wallpaper. There wasn't a desk and wardrobe underneath, just some cupboards which my dad built himself. My sisters shared the room at the back and my parents had the front bedroom.

 

[mr steev]

2 bed 1930's semi, which my dad turned into a 3 bed when me and my sister were little. My mum and dad have lived there since they were married and are still there. My mum was born in a house 4 doors up, where she lived all her unmarried life.

The usual 70's decor... psychedelic brown and orange carpet, clashing curtains, woodchip walls, one electric fire in the living room and a coal boiler for hot water in the kitchen.

 

[mrsfran]

i always had a bad habit as a kid of picking the chippy bits out of people's woodchip wallpaper

Me too. I totally wrecked the woodchip walls by the time I was 10.

Did no one else have shelves of Reader's Digests?

 

[soam]

Lived in tow places before i left at 18.
Suppose the place i really grew up in was where i lived from 9-18, three floor victorian house in Sheffield, my folks bought it off an interior designer who was the spitting image of Freddy Mercury, so was all pretty plush inside. My room was in the attic, was great, big attic window to lean out of and smoke illict cigarettes etc
It was a huge house really, we always had students lodging with us to fill the extra two rooms.
Big garden and garage...it was all very middle class!!
It felt really sad when i helped them move out when i was about 21 - hard to explain but it felt like a door on part of my life shutting in a way. Dont really go back to that part of Sheffield much now, but i feel emotional when i do..

 

[butterfly child]

We moved into a council house when I was 4. It was 3 bedroomed, end of terrace, with two rooms downstairs (front room and kitchen/diner) and separate toilet and bathroom upstairs (both tiny - I'd have knocked them into one bigger bathroom).

Reasonable sized garden, we had an aviary at the bottom for my dad's budgies (he now has cockatiels) and plenty of room for our various pets.

My dad still lives there, he bought it under the right to buy. I'm in two minds whether to buy it when he croaks it, as I can't bear the thought of anyone else living there - although not sure if I want to live there myself.

I also had my own room (the box room) with the high bed and woodchip wallpaper. There wasn't a desk and wardrobe underneath, just some cupboards which my dad built himself. My sisters shared the room at the back and my parents had the front bedroom.

What she said although I'm not bothered about the idea of someone else living in it.

Oldest one always had the box room, although by the time I became the oldest, there was only my little stepsister left, and I'd worked out the back bedroom was biggest, and therefore best!

 

[mentalchik]

Have never had a 'family' home we moved around far too much......and my mum has moved around even more since !


lived at one place for only 9 months !

 

[wtfftw]

First home was large. 4 bedrooms and one damp box room. The parents room had a balcony overlooking the Oval cricket ground (pre current stands). There was another balcony from the groundfloor living room (huge, knocked through from the front) which led down to the split level garden. Had a concrete lowest level that the basement opened on to. Kitchen, dining room and toilet/utility area were all downstairs. I remember it quite well but we moved when I was 6.
.
The next house had a larger garden and even more space (brixton/camberwell/loughborough/minet backstreet). 2 parents and 4 kids. We'd communicate over an intercom and then msn once computers spread to t least one per floor. Another usable basement this time as a utility room, workroom, office and kids area. As a teen I'd have friends take over the basement when parents were away. I worked my way through 3 bedrooms before moving out.
.
The family have moved now. Possibly to an even larger house even tho' various kids have moved out. I'm actually on a big old Chesterfield which has ended up in my flat and had been in the oval house and fortress brixton.

 

[Sweaty Betty]

a pokey flat in loftus rd

caravan in sligo

caravan in deptford

semi in cardiff