Your first Marital Home.. tell us about it ... :-)

hollydolly

hollydolly

SF VIP
Location
London England
In what type of home did you start your married life ?

46 years ago.. I got married to a Serving Royal Navy Sailor...

He'd managed to procure us a Married Quarter.. In the UK MQ's then were houses the Ministry of Defence bought exclusively for forces personnel, but they were situated next to Civvy houses.. ( except on one occasion when were houses on a gated RAF camp)...

We were housed in a beautiful almost new home down on the south coast which is a large Naval area.. The house was fully furnished down to the last teaspoon , which was great because we had nothing except the Baby's things

We already had our first child, she was 3 months old.. and we moved right in.

It was an Upside down house, Bedroom and huge hall and Walk in closet downstairs, and livingroom, kitchen, and master bedroom upstairs

The Livingroom had floor to ceiling wall to wall windows, so it got all the sun....

I liked that little house, and my neighbours were all Naval wives.. so it was a friendly place.. ..but just the very first in a long list of MQ's we would go on to live in..


Tell us about your first Marital home.. 🤗
 

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Our apartment is still there. We were on the upper level of the unit on the left. 1961, one bedroom, furnished, pool, $100 a month. It was a nice place. The rent is probably higher now. The photo is from Google.

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An apartment in Yalova, Turkey. It cost $40 a month and the landlord kindly cemented a toilet over the squatty-potty. We flushed it with a bucket of water.

We had the whole 3rd floor with a large balcony.

The water heater used wood, the range used bottled gas and the heater used kerosene.

We had to treat the water before drinking and there was only water when there was electricity, which went out frequently.

We were young....it was an adventure.
 
Our first home was in a +55 mobile home park. It was 1400 sq ft. This was a challenge, because we each were previously living in 1800 sq ft homes. This was worse than putting 10 pounds of ... into a 5 pound bag, but we did it. The first thing we did was to put in a Meyer lemon tree (far left). then bought a plumeria (far right).


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I was already living in this apartment when I married my son's father. My son was five at the time and we'd lived here for two years so my new husband just moved in with us. Marriage didn't last long because he was being an a*s plus I had a feeling that he was up to no good (later confirmed), so I kicked him out after 3 months and divorced him several years later.

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Third floor apt over a liquor store, (literally climbed over drunks in stairwell). $25 bucks a week, no hotplate, shared bathroom at end of the hall. Lived there a short time while working in a junkyard by Yankee stadium cutting up cars.
Like Chris Ledoux sang.... "And all those old hard times are just cherished memories".
 
We lived in large house in Buckhead, Atlanta, with my MIL. My in-laws had converted it into 2 apartments, and my SIL and her son lived upstairs. We moved in there so we could help take care of my MIL, who was 80 at the time. It worked out very well. I got stuck with training her Beagle puppy, the end result of which was that if MIL accidentally let him out, he would come only to me. So I many times had to come home quickly to get the dog in. That was the dumbest dog I have ever known.

The maid had been with my MIL for 35 years. Some of the rules for her used to piss me off. Like she could only eat food in her drawer in the fridge. There was no retirement fund set up for her. And my MIL just about had a heart attack when I invited her to our wedding. The maid, however, was staunchly loyal to my MIL. After my MIL accept me as her son's wife (she wanted him to remarry his first wife), everything went swimmingly.
 
59 years ago, and just married, we moved into a quartered-off house, with four apartments.
This was off campus, in a college town, where my husband was going to school ... all the units housed college students.

We had an upstairs apartment with maybe 700 sq. ft. of space, with living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. And being upstairs we also had access to the attic overhead.
Our neighbors were all great people to hang out with .... and our first baby was born while living there.
I believe the house is still there today and housing students.
 
After being approved for a low income loan for a house we bought a house . A ranch house with 3 bedrooms, about 1000 sq. ft. We had the electricity and water turned on soon afterward. We went to see the house the next day and it was flooded. Someone had left the water heater valve open. I didn't check the facets or the water heater valve before having the water turned on. It took 4 days of fans and water vacs, and towels to dry it out as quick as possible. We were worried for weeks until we realized that no permanent damage had been done.
 
Pepper said:
A tiny apt. in the East Village off the Bowery on a landmark block with a toilet in the public hallway! No one else could use it but us, but we had to leave our apt. to use it! Bathtub in our kitchen. Lived in several apts like this one.
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I have no idea what the Bold means.. can you break it down for non Americans Please.. :D
 
squatting dog said:
Third floor apt over a liquor store, (literally climbed over drunks in stairwell). $25 bucks a week, no hotplate, shared bathroom at end of the hall. Lived there a short time while working in a junkyard by Yankee stadium cutting up cars.
Like Chris Ledoux sang.... "And all those old hard times are just cherished memories".
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How long ago ?
 
Lower Manhattan (but not the tip) on the East Side. The Bowery, at that time was home to all the down & out alkies, as well as many stores dedicated to lighting your home. As for landmark status there was an old historic mansion across the street. Haunted, of course.
 
Pepper said:
Lower Manhattan (but not the tip) on the East Side. The Bowery, at that time was home to all the down & out alkies, as well as many stores dedicated to lighting your home. As for landmark status there was an old historic mansion across the street. Haunted, of course.
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OK... thanks that's a great description, I can imagine it in my minds' eye .. we had many places on the East and South side of our city simialar..when I was growing up. We lived on the west side, but the vast majority of my relatives lived on the South & East
 
We lived in a rented townhouse in Niagara Falls. when we got married. The firm my o/h was working for (Toronto), found it. Little did we know, it was subsidized housing. Lots of goings-on in the neighbourhood.

After a year, we bought a house across town .. older home with a lot of character. Leaded glass double-doors, oak flooring, sun-room at front of house - and a male spirit đź‘»
 
1st. was a 35X8 trailer off base in Lakehurst N. J. Total pay with housing & food allowance was $198.00 a month. Don't remember what we paid but it couldn't have been much since our major expenses were food, car payments & car insurance to pay for.
 
Our first home was a small apartment in Chicago with a landlord that let himself in any time he wanted when we left for work. It got so bad we changed the lock on the door and point-blank told him he was not getting the key until we moved. Which wasn't long.
 
A 2-room cottage in the landlord's backyard. Kitchen and main-room, and 5ftx5ft bathroom with shower (no tub) on one side, large bedroom with a 5ftx5ft walk-in closet on the other. Shelly brought a large antique dining set that had belonged to her great-grandmother. It took up so much footage in the main-room, we could just squeeze in a loveseat and TV. The rent was $35/mo plus I mowed, trimmed, and watered the shared yard. We lived there until the landlord hit on my wife; 4 or 5 months. By then, we'd saved enough to get into a little old 2-br house near my job and school. It was $125/mo.
 
Over 40 years ago:
A two bedroom apartment near the beach. Nondescript building, standard 1970s apartment. Place was ok but the opportunity to rent half of a cute little duplex much closer to the beach came up so we took it. Again a two bedroom.

We lived there for a couple of years by which time I'd had one baby and was pregnant with twins so we bought the house we still live in, though we've added to it, remodeled and updated extensively.
 
I was discharged from the US Navy in 1972. The first place I could call home, on my own, was a Queens, NYC apartment. NYC is infamous for its tiny apts. My NYC kitchen, bedroom, bath, LR can fit in my present living room. It had a bright red shag carpet. I called it my "hooker rug". I bought some dye and soaked the carpet in chocolate stain. Err, did you know you can't die nylon? I still have the first thing I bought for my new place. It was a framed print for 69 cents, at a "discount store"= stolen, It had a price sticker of $6.97 ($50 in 2022). I loved NYC.
 

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