What is a cellar vs. basement to you

No stoops in the UK either, altho' there's plenty houses who have them , but like @StarSong , we just call them front or back porches or patios... I only learned what a stoop was after joining this forum... ( again tho' when I was young porches were big structures as described by you Star, but not now..)...

'Front rooms' are a staple here depending on where you live.. less so here in the south, but pretty generic for most of the UK..... when I was a child, my grandad and his era, kept their front room immaculate at all times regardless of how poor they were , in case of sudden births deaths or marriages.. etc.. it was rarely ever used outside of those events and it was called the parlour

We in my family have always called it the livingroom.. some people call it the Lounge ..my mother always said lounges were in Bars, and airports, not in houses..
 
debodun said:
But an attic is still an attic...no, wait, it might be a loft in some places....
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It's intechangeable in my house. I call it a lof and an attci... either way.. I think a loft space might describe something that's dark and dingy and just used for storage ( different to a Barn loft).. whereas an attic to me anyway.. conjures up an image of something like mine, which is boarded out, got electricity.. window.. etc..
 

Our 1905 house here in Toronto ( built by my Grand Father who was a house builder for 40 years ) has a full basement, that we renovated into a seperate apartment. It has modern appliances and a bathroom kitchen and living room , and it's own side door entrance. The furnace is in the basement hidden behind a sliding door, while the central air conditioner is mounted outside . Here in the centre of Toronto a home with out a basement would be a rare thing. JimB.
 
hollydolly said:
It's intechangeable in my house. I call it a lof and an attci... either way.. I think a loft space might describe something that's dark and dingy and just used for storage ( different to a Barn loft).. whereas an attic to me anyway.. conjures up an image of something like mine, which is boarded out, got electricity.. window.. etc..
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I think a loft as I see on hgtv shows like house hunters is a space you get to by stairs and is open to lower area but is surrounded by a rail to keep people from falling to lower level and is used for what ever you like it to be.
 
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Never really thought about it. Where I grew up there were neither, no need for a furnace room, and very shallow groundwater.

I tend to call all rooms below the house basements, we have 2 and they may be closer to what folks are calling cellars. Old and not fixable for living space, we just use them for storage. And neither are complete, only under part of the upstairs.

This was the only cellar I knew of as a kid.
 
We live in a traditional Georgian house. When we bought it there was a basement, cellar, scullery, huge kitchen. Over the years we changed things quite a lot. The basement became the billiard room; the cellar used for storing wines, liquers etc; the scullery became the mud room.

Kitchen is on the ground floor with a butler’s pantry. All at great cost, but worth it. Will never sell that house…a labour of love!
 
debodun said:
How are homes without cellars or basements heated? Every house I've lived in had a furnace in the cellar/basement.
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For a house on a slab or crawl space, the utility room is set up with access from the inside of the house for the furnance, water heater, water softener, etc. In some small houses, I've seen access to that room from an outside door.
 
About 20 years ago, I was looking for a house even then. One I looked at had a strange looking appliance in the living room. I asked the agent what it was and he said it was the furnace. That killed it there for me. I don't want an ugly thing sitting right there taking up space in a major room. When I did my aunt's estate, she lived in a modular home (another word for a trailer on a foundation). Her furnace was in like a utility cabinet in a hallway.
 
I don't know. I never lived in a place that had either.

That table is really collectable. The cabinet also. Very cool pieces.
 

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