Stupid but true
Jun. 2nd, 2025 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicollI like to look at online real estate listings to see how people use interior spaces. I've come to the conclusions that:
A: Few people use more than 2000 square feet effectively. Above that, they seem to run out of ideas about how to use each room*.
B: Lots of houses have gratuitous features whose purpose seems to be to make them unusable to mobility impaired people.
C: (this is the stupid one) Townhouses are fine but I hate the idea of a duplex. For some reason, having to cooperate with 50 people bothers me more than having to get along with one specific person or family.
* More libraries is always the right answer.
There was a place for sale just up the road from me whose entire basement was given over to sturdy-looking bookcases.
A: Few people use more than 2000 square feet effectively. Above that, they seem to run out of ideas about how to use each room*.
B: Lots of houses have gratuitous features whose purpose seems to be to make them unusable to mobility impaired people.
C: (this is the stupid one) Townhouses are fine but I hate the idea of a duplex. For some reason, having to cooperate with 50 people bothers me more than having to get along with one specific person or family.
* More libraries is always the right answer.
There was a place for sale just up the road from me whose entire basement was given over to sturdy-looking bookcases.
Re: Translation?
Date: 2025-06-03 04:46 pm (UTC)UK translation chart:
"Duplex" is unknown. The term for "shares a garage wall or a full wall" is "semi-detached". (Note that > 50% of the UK housing stock was built before garages were a Thing because car ownership really only caught on in the 1960s-1970s and our houses average 75 years old.)
"Townhouse": really posh shares-a-full-wall-with-both-neighbours. Normally called a "Terraced house".
"Back-to-back": cheap terraced house that shares a back wall with one neighbour and each side-wall with another neighbour. (Pretty sure this style doesn't exist in North America; it's Victorian-era factory worker accommodation.)
"Maisonette": a split-level apartment in a block of flats.
"Condominium": unknown term in the UK. Substitute would probably be "leasehold" plus the added context of "in a block, under common management".
"Tenement": where I live right now. (Not a slum: it's a grade 1 listed building in a posh-adjacent part of town. Individually owned apartment opening off a stairwell.)