American expat describes Dutch homes
Houses and apartments in the Netherlands are beautiful from the inside and out, but Dutch homes are truly very different from American homes. In this video, I talk about how the Dutch homes came as a culture shock to me when I moved to the Netherlands from the United States.
Now as an expat, I am used to the Dutch interiors, but they were definitely an adjustment at first. Here I tell you about the things that are different about apartments in cities like Amsterdam and Utrecht, as well as what it would be like to live in one of those cute little Dutch houses!
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I like to share experiences of living in the Netherlands as an American expat. I describe both the unique and everyday aspects of Dutch culture, while enjoying every bit of it!
Blog website: www.dutchamericano.com
Instagram: DutchAmericano
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One of my favorite purchases for my apartment in the Netherlands is this Brabantia trash can: amzn.to/2XVuSXs
I never thought that I would find a trash can pretty!
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As an expat living in Nijmegen since 1999, my advice to you is to get out of Amsterdam and see a little more of the country. Amsterdam is not a good example of Dutch living.
Yeah, I don't really get that she's comparing the Grachtengordel to how all houses look like apparantly.
yes, that is similar in every country. The capital is not a good representation for the rest of the country
I live in Gelderland and I live in a very large house
Just what I was thinking. Most of the time people from other countries appear to think that the Netherlands is just Amsterdam. Lately this seems to change thankfully.....;-) There is a lot more to explore!! Outside the city, in smaller towns and in the countryside the houses are a lot different and more spacious than in Amsterdam or Utrecht. Every provence has its own little differences and dialects. Houses in the east, near the German border, look different from houses in Zeeland or Flevoland. Older cities like Utrecht or Zwolle have a more simular architecture as in Amsterdam, but Rotterdam is much more modern because in the war (WWII) most of it was destroyed by boms.
@@dekemp1986 Grachtenpandjes are a tiny fraction of houses in Amsterdam.
what i find very strange is that many houses in the usa have the front door opening in the living room
Thats sooo weird, really an American thing I guess. You wouldn’t believe how much heat you lose that way
It looks great in tv shows :)
I believe the building code in the Netherlands doesn’t even allow that.
And that alot of houses are made of wood. Yall couldnt offord bricks?
@@Magnusfication it’s different hazards. In the Netherlands we got tired of Amsterdam burning down for the second time in 31 years in 1452, and made brick walls mandatory. In the US they deal with tornadoes, earthquakes, and other things we don’t have (until we started pumping gas out of the ground)where a brick house would become condemned, but a wood house can be repaired. (Just think of the earthquake zone in Groningen).
These canalhouses were originally 1 house! So upstairs were just bedrooms and attics. Bathrooms didn’t exsist 300 years ago. So 100 years ago these houses were splitup in apartments and kitchens and bathroom had to be squeezed in. That’s why everything is so small. The downstairsbathrooms are a result of a law that every house had to have a toilet and shower. So they are build next to the house. Before that people washed themself by the kitchensink and went to the bathhouses in the neighborhood. The toilet was a barrel in the garden that was collected every week. The sink in de bedroom was back then very fancy: having running water just for washing yourself!
You’re right. So good explanation 👍
Cause there’s that less space in the city their gardens are small too. So what do you do when you live on the 3rd of 4th floor and have no balcony? Right, you build a garden on the rooftop. Go check google maps and you will see multiple ‘terrassen’ and ‘tuinen’ at the rooftops.
Fun fact! The reason why wealthy people are called "kakkers", literal translation being shitters, is because they were the only ones who had a toilet! The toilet was called a "kakdoos", aka shitbox back then hence the word kakkers :)
OMG You ask where we buy our fourniture? You could make a complete video about the meubelboulevard!
Ja die irritante kutwinkels!!
IKEA
kringloop.
Many older houses (before 1930s) did not have a bathroom. Just a toilet in a small room in the back of the house (or even an out house). People used to wash themselves and bath once a week in a tub in the kitchen. The whole family used the same water: father first, then the kids (youngest last, so they had cold, soapy, dirty water). Bathrooms were only added (retro-fitted) in the fifties and sixties and often times just added to the already existing toilet area in the back of the kitchen, because that’s where the running water was. Actually, sinks in the bedrooms are the modern version of washing bowls, where you would have a jug/metal bucket with warm water which you would pour into a bowl so you could clean yourself in the privacy of your own (bed)room. These sinks were still very common in the seventies, but most of them have since been removed and replaced by a dedicated bathroom with sink and shower.
Also families were large, a minimum of 5-6 children was considdered small before the 50s. If you had 4-5 bedrooms upstairs, you wanted to keep those as bedrooms and not sacrifice one of them, because adding is not realy an option upstairs, unless you split rooms into smaller sizes. So logically it would be much easier to sacrafice some garden space on the groundlevel to build an addition for the bathroom.
Yes, this is exactly how I had to start my life.
My dad washed like that as a kid and that was in the late 60s. I am from a working class family though so low income.
Let me guess, hans you were also born before 1970 :)
In the early sixties, working class heroes still justed to go to the public bathhouses.
Dutch houses do have curtains but they’re just always open lol
we always close our curtains when it is dark. when it is day light we let them open.
Mine are always closed
I’m not Dutch, but I do know that there is a practical reason why rooms are smaller and separated. It keeps the heat from the kitchen separate from the rest of the rooms. And in the winter, if you need to heat the place, you can just heat the room you’re in to save energy and money.
A lot of older houses were build before people had bathrooms. That is why the placements of bathrooms and toilets are a little strange. They were added later. The “random sink” was the place where people would wash before there where showers. I had a sink on my bedroom when I grew up.
Me too...loved my sink
I think a lot of ppl don’t realize how recent the prosperity of humanity is. How recent plumbing, sewers, water pressure and ‘space’ are. :)
Yeah, I heard my mom talk about the ultimate luxury feature in a 1920's house: a gas burning waterboiler. It was in the attic and could contain 20l. You had to manually pump the water up to the attic an hour or before you wanted to take shower, because there was no such thing as water pressure.
Toilets used to be outhouses and bathing was done in a tub in the kitchen lol.
We used to have sinks in every bedroom. This comes from the time when there was no shower in the house. People would just was them selves at the sink. Having a sink in every bedroom was a statussymbol. It was fancy !
About Dutch windows: In 1811 a law came into effect for the Dutch to pay taxes on doors and windows. The Netherlands were still under French governance that time. To avoid paying these taxes windows and doors were bricked up. Since you had to pay per window (and door) the newer houses got less windows but the windows were made bigger. That is why some old houses (still) have bricked up windows. A wiki on this item : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax
And for the large windows... when the weather is grey and dark you need something to bring in light
60s Doorzonwoningen were also built like that and usually placed East to West for maximum light exposure inside. If you look at the globe, we're about as far north as Newfoundland. Short days, long nights.
If you like small tiny Dutch houses visit Urk! We are the top 5 cutest towns of the Netherlands. When you here I show you around here and our traditional clothes👌🏼
You reeeeeally need to get out of the city centre of Amsterdam. As you're not talking about Dutch apartments. You're only talking about apartments in the center of Amsterdam. Apartments outside the Amsterdam city center are different with less steep stairs and a bit bigger and often in newer buildings with elevators.
Gert-Jan van der Lee She lives in Utrecht..
I live in Utrecht in an apartment that she is describing. It is 120 years old and my bathroom is 1,5m2. Love it!
@@nielsvanhoef4530 Well the point is that apartments in the old city center are completely different from apartments in the rest of the country.
@@gert-janvanderlee5307 Amsterdam is gezellig; not so much in Leljkland
@@AreHan1991 Nothing "gezellig" about Amsterdam. It used to be mostly tourists and awfully smelling coffee shops. Not sure what it is now but definitely not "gezellig".
Where we buy our furniture??? The MEUBELBOULEVARD! Especially at Easter Monday.
I'm Dutch, and I don't want to live without curtains. You should invest some time in studying when and where running water became a standard in houses. Not to mention an indoor WC, that was connected to a sewersystem. Those fancy looking canalhouses didn't come with electricity when they were build.
where I grew up in Gelderland in the 1970s we had no sewer, no gas mains, no water mains, and of course no cable television. Even the 'centrale antenne" didn't service the area, it was too remote. We had a septic tank in the garden, an oil tank under the driveway, and a well with a small electric pump on the terrace behind the house. Took until the early 1990s before the last of the "utilities" was hooked up, cable TV. And that was done only because the city wanted to ban people from having antennas on their roofs and they realised (after some threats of lawsuits I think) that they couldn't do that without spending the money first to hook up the remote areas to cable.
One difference I found is the entrance: in a lot of American houses you directly in the livingroom where as Dutch houses (how small even) always have a entrance for shoes and coats. Do you recognize this?
Jan de Brabander It is the same in Norway. For two reasons we need a small entrance hall: To leave the shoes / jackets because we don't wear shoes inside the house and because of the cold, the main door cannot have a direct entrance to the livingroom🥶
@@evaskjerd Exactly! You don't want the dirt and the cold to get into your living room
As an American this is not the case in very many American homes and apartments; entrance foyers, coatrooms, 'mud rooms', and entry hallways are a common sight
Most of us, as far as I know, buy furniture at IKEA to start with, we inherit a lot of furniture too (I know plenty of people who've pointed at a cabinet saying it was their grandma's or something) and last but not least, thrift stores are an incredibly common source of furniture too.
I have a very nice expensive designer couch that I bought for under 100 euros at a thrift store
Older houses are just adjusted to time. My grandma cooked water on a stove for the bath on sunday. ( the tub was in the kitchen)
RE: Where the Dutch buy furniture, we have these things called "Meubelboulevard", which is like a mall with jus furniture stores. There are expensive stores like Loods 5, but also cheaper options like Kwantum and Ikea.
Oh, good to know!
Yeah, I'm Dutch. My (late) great grandmother's sister lived on the (we actually call it the '3e verdieping') 4th floor in a 'heerenhuis' on the Singel in Amsterdam, up to the age of 92. At that point she was about as wide as she was tall. Needless to say she couldn't physically fit through the stairs anymore. Stairs which had NO handle on the side, only a loose rope, which was used to open the outside door. Now I'm talking about roughly 1995, and she had been there since the 1980-ies, mentally as 'sharp as they come' and on multiple occasions outright refused to be moved somewhere a lot safer. She wasn't afraid, having survived some crazy sh*t in WW2. When her 'time came' the Fire department had to remove the window from the wall in order to get her out. She was waving like the Queen at the gathered spectators, having the time of her life. So lived and went a woman who grew up in 'De Jordaan' (infamous neigborhood).
The reason for those small rooms in old houses you can shut with nice double sliding doors is the heating of those rooms in the old days. It is easier to heat one little living room than a big open apartement if you only have one little wood burning stove
A detail that determines some of the separations into rooms that you discuss around the 7 minute mark is the legal requirement to have two doors between the toilet and any area where food is prepared. That is often why you have a separate kitchen.
The ground floor bathroom probably comes from them being retrofitted into the house. Even in the 50's many homes did not have a bathroom with a shower or bath.
To add, there used to be public bath houses everywhere. In Amsterdam you can still see a few (converted) like het badhuis theater on boerhaveplein and the cafe on Javaplein. In Utrecht there’s still one in Tuinwijk on the Willem van Noortplein, no idea what’s happening there. As a result the houses older than the 1930s were retrofitted, and the bathrooms were installed as close to where the waterpipes were. That’s why they were often right next to the kitchen. In some places in a spare room build for them in the garden (or reusing the “bijkeuken”). Add to that that initially, with the huge expansion of home bathrooms, water pressure wasn’t great, so you’d have a better shower on the ground floor.
I was born in 57 in Boxmeer. The earliest thing I remember me and my sister on saturdays were washed in a tub in the kitchen. Probably because there was no bathroom.
Sinks in bedrooms are pretty nice. I had one in my bedroom growing up and I used to brush my teeth and do my hair there. When I first moved in with my boyfriend we shared a bathroom with housemates but we had a sink in our bedroom too to brush teeth or do hair etc. I guess we could have brushed our teeth in the kitchen but it was nice to have.
Hi Eva, some of these places are real palaces behind the front and can have a huge and beautiful garden behind it, especially at a part of the Heregracht . And sometimes only the front is old and the back is new. But apart from that you're right, some of these places are stil intact and don't have elevators.
I like your random sink statement. In many places we lived in the 50's a basin/sink in the bedroom was the only way to bath yourself, there simply was nothing else no bath or shower. So a basin in the bedroom was a luxury. We now live in Australia and my mum at 94 still does most of her bathing at the basin in her ensuite. She finds the shower too slippery and too much work! So a basin in the bedroom is a leftover from an earlier period and many older people still prefer to use them.
Dutch homes are very much determined by the era they were built in. In Amsterdam and Utrecht, your two main frames of reference, you refer to city historic center buildings, which, by being built some to many centuries ago are subject to the styles of building then. Contemporary houses, even to be found in those two cities more towards the outskirts are completely different, yes, typically a lot less colourful and less characteristic. Also, there's quite a bit of amazing contemporary architecture that may not be your liking but would completely upend your notion of Dutch homes, so I'm afraid this video tells one side of the story. The far majority of Dutch homes is nothing like the historic 17th century buildings in Amsterdam city center, even though I can understand why you would come under their spell as they are amazing.
In the 1920s lots of houses didn’t have a bathroom, just a toilet. The bathroom was added later sacrificing part of the 'bijkeuken' because the plumbing was already there. As for the low ceilings upstairs: people here only started to get tall when living conditions improved- after WWII.
There are some options for furniture besides Ikea, the area around IKEA in Utrecht has alot of furniture stores. It's called a woonboulevard, basically all the furniture you need, you can find there! Alot of bigger towns and cities have these woonboulevards, it can be a nice day out browsing new furniture. If you're only looking I suggest taking the tram from Utrecht Central station to IJsselstein or Nieuwegein and stop at the Kanaleneiland-Zuid stop. There's not alot of parking options besides Ikea. If you're looking for Ikea esque stores there is a Jysk, Leen Bakker and Kwantum at the woonboulevard in Utrecht. I bought my couch at Leen Bakker, but before you're going to buy things, check online. They don't have every couch available, so you might need to visit a different location.
loods 5
I haven't seen a house with bathroom on the bottom floor honestly, but I think it makes more sense, especially when situated next to the kitchen for 1 simple reason: Plumbing is much easier and shorter and doesn't have to go thru the whole house and up a story.
Parts of the USA used to have a lot of houses like that as well. But in general they got torn down and replaced with highways and skyscrapers. I was in New York last year. There are some nice pictures in the metro museum that show very nice Dutch style houses being torn down to build the NY subway. Most European cities (and some cities in Quebec) have kept their old historical centre by building their new business district outside the old city centre. Most North American cities have instead surrendered completely to the Automobile and have thrown away their history in the process.
All the inconveniences about bathroom/toilet etc. you describe are typical for those early houses ('20's, '30's and older) in the historic city centers. When those houses were built there was no central heating or centrally warmed water. Running water was a novelty. So, yes, plumbing was restricted to a small part of the house when it was introduced. The sink in the master bedroom was a luxury. My mum told me about her youth sometimes that their house was one of the first in the area with running hot water (she grew up in the '50's), they didn't have a radiator heating system but a central coal fire for heating in the kitchen that was replaced with a gas stove later on. And 'laundry day' was still a manual affair. There were also many houses built in the Netherlands in the after-second-world-war period. Most notably the 'vinex wijken', which are the Dutch suburbs. And many cities have distinct districts with '70's and '80's style housing. Those do have plumbing throughout the house, including the bathroom upstairs and/or a second toilet on the floor not having the bathroom. They have (at least rudimentary original) insulation of the walls and roofs, central heating and the rooms are set up a bit larger in size. You won't find 2x3 meter (6.5x10 feet) master bedrooms in those buildings ;) What does set apart most Dutch housing from American, is (although I do generalize a bit here), Dutch housing is usually built for the ages while American housing is built for the next tornado (and out of plywood). In early times this meant solid wood beams skeleton and brick and mortar walls. Outside double walls for the living area with a 'spouw' (air gap so walls can dry after rainy conditions). Outside single walls for the stables and production areas only (in case of farm houses). And in modern times, concrete skeletons, if not the entire house made with concrete, bricks again at least for the facade. Sometimes plywood is used in a non-structural way for the back wall, but that's usually only the cheaper subsidized housing. For the rest, always double walls to the outside. From the 80's onward, insulation in all outside walls, insulation of the roof, use of double layer glass panes etc. etc. More modern apartments also have double walls between the units to insulate for noise but especially '60-'70 apartments can be noisy (gehorig). Most houses in the Netherlands have been upgraded at least once already if they were not properly insulated and/or have their internal (electric) wiring replaced if no longer adhering to the code. Unless their monumental status makes it prohibitively expensive to do so.
We used to have coal/peat, or later, gas hearths in one room of the house. Small rooms with glass doors let a lot of light in and keep the heat in too. Bathrooms were often attached to the kitchen or bathtubs were placed inside the kitchen in small houses. To keep as many bedrooms as possible and to tap into the existing water and sewer systems.
I furnished my apartment fully by going to thriftstores.
In Utrecht you have an amazing 2nd hand shop, De Goede Winkel, they have "website" and they deliver. And they always have a shit load of furnitue for quite cheap, I basically got my entire living room from there.
Or De Arm, especially their huge store in Hoograven
I also live in a small old Dutch home. A factory in 1900 wanted to see their workers in better housing... Poor people lived in terrible housing untill then. ...The factory owner builded the streets and houses where I live today. Almost all of those small buildings are build as cheap as possible. We still call these type of buildings "worker homes".
Bathrooms are a phenomenon that became standard in newly build houses and apartments after WW2 (late '50ies)... After WW2 in a lot of older houses bathrooms were retrofitted and when retrofitting an obvious location was chosen : close to the hot water boiler in the kitchen. In those days there also wasn't central heating in most houses.
Even though I realize that NYC is a few times larger, it is kinda comparable. You have huge homes in upstate NY or Connecticut. But in the City, apartments are tiny. In areas outside of Amsterdam, like the Gooi, houses are much larger.
Back in ye olden days, tax was determined by how wide your house was (at least when the canal houses were built), so people did all they could to build a house narrow to avoid too much tax, few were built XXL wide to show off. So there are a few really narrow ones, and one house was built in a very narrow ally between houses and it is so narrow, they could not fit any furniture in and had to paint it on the walls. No joke. Utrecht has a few canal homes, and those things suck because the stairs are extra narrow and steep going up. Moving your shit in and out is absolute hell.
Is the right answer! Thanks for your grrat answer.
Back in ye olden days, moving your shit was done through the front windows by ropes lowering down. Yes even your shit! In England they threw it out of the window. Anglo-saxsen habit of English and Americans.
Yes, on the outside at the roof of the old houses along the canals, you van see a big wooden beam sticking out of the front. Underneath This beam u could hang a old small bicycle wheel where you hang a big rope over it, so you could lift tour heavy fourniture easely to the higher floor levels. kzhead.info/sun/a7NmYJyNsWNrZGg/bejne.html
My tiny 1907 house has no plumbing upstairs and wooden floors. Bathrooms are a recent invention. Adding one upstairs would be complicated. The house was extended several times. Currently the bathroom is indeed in the kitchen. We plan to move it to an extension. For remodeling furnishing our tiny Dutch homes we do look into Tiny homes, RV and boat solutions.
I live in the town where the quaint little white house with the hatches stands, the one you showed in the video. We have a Seats&Sofas, and two local furniture stores. But I bought my furniture in Alkmaar at van Til, a design furniture store. I love design furniture and I had to save for it, until then I used IKEA furniture. You could also go to the big second hand store in town.
Most of those town houses were not built as apartment buildings, but converted into them, because of the high house prices. Just like the older brown stones in Manhattan and similar places.
The shower downstairs is often a later addon to the house, that had only sinks to wash in before. They are often build in the garden in an extra little shed like thing that connects to the kitchen. Its pretty normal in very old/small houses.
The only bathroom on the ground floor I ever encountered was at my grandma's old house, and it was also close to the ktichen. My guess is that it has to do with the plumbing; I know there was a 'geiser' (if I go to the Dutch wikipedia and then switch to English it gives me a page for Tankless water heater), which also was in use when someone would be using the shower/bath, so it seems hot water for the bathroom was routed trough there as well, and perhaps routing that all the way upstairs was more difficult or would cool the water down too much before it got there (the house was also very poorly isolated in general).
All houses I saw, over here in the Netherlands, have their shower upstairs. Having a shower downstairs will be an exception.
So true! I also feel that all the doors open to the wrong side! I really miss to have a laundry space :( And yes! The windows are super! Great video!
Some dutch houses do have more than one bathroom though . When I still lived with my parents, we lived in a house that was built in 1988, which had a toilet in the hallway, a master bedroom ensuite with a bath, sink, seperate shower and another toilet. On the first floor, a second bathroom with a toilet, sink and a shower, and two bedrooms.
Love your stories. It entertains me but I want to work as a tour guide besides my job as an business controller. I studied for it too but now I get very useful information of how Americans look at our ways of live. Thanks!
The Amsterdam houses you did describe are -as Hans mentioned- pre- WW2. Have you ever been in recent built apartments or houses? For instance you can look for it at Leidsche Rijn...
bathrooms on the ground floor usually were made at a later date. Most houses in the 1920's did not have a bathroom. a sink in the bedroom was more common
I grew up in a 1927 house with 3 floors. The master bedroom had a sink, as well as the one in the attic. Why? Well if you have to share one bathroom with the rest of the family, it's nice if you can brush your teeth or wash hands and face independently from the bathroom. There's no space for a second bathroom and you don't want to have to wait in line for it. Secondly, before plumbing, bedrooms used have to a jug & bowl to refresh yourself. The bedroom sink just took that place.
The ground in the Netherlands is very expensive, we have a small country :). For historical buildings there are laws, you may not change the building. In the early days you have a (lafet) that was a higher showertub and the tub was also a washing machine. For furniture we go to a furniture boulevard (woonboulevard). You love old houses, you must visit Brielle, nearby Rotterdam. The small sink in the master bedroom . In the early days the families we"re big. So there was a separate sink for the mom and dad, so they could early in the morning was themself and brush there teeths :)
Your experience seems to be mostly city-centre living. Apartments in Manhattan are small as well. Go visit some of the less dense housing areas, and houses built after 1945. You really need to get out more.
The tiled, (and sometimes mosaics in more high end buildings) entries in the past were for courier-boys to wait in with bad weather. They weren’t allowed inside, and would wait there (dry) for replies. Sometimes there would be a nice painting there as well. The idea being that if they would have something nice to look at, they would not wonder of or do something you don’t want. The practice started in the 17th century in expensive houses, got adopted and made more general, and in a way it still survives in a sort of watered down way.
It is of course practical to have the bathroom on the bedroomfloor but in the twenties the houses were not built with a bathroom as standard. So these were added later in a place where there was hot water, next to the kitchen!
Bathrooms in older houses are many times a later adition mine in from 1916 and i have to get to the bathroom trough the kitchen on the ground floor because it is in what the kitchen used to be and the current kitchen is a later adition
Furniture shopping is done at the Meubelboulevard, and you can find things in any price-range really. 😊 Furnished a new appartment around a year ago, and most of my furniture comes from various meubelboulevard shops and some from online shops (IKEA, and others).
If I’m not mistaken, dakkapellen actually add to the value of your house. You’re only allowed to count the space as official if the ceiling is over 1,50 meter high, so the shallow ends of a pointed roof aren’t taken into the official square meter score. By adding a dakkappel, you’re taking out those shallow ends, effectively increasing the official space and thereby the value.
And I seem to recall they're called dormers in the US
I love the rooms separated by doors.
The sinks in bedrooms are mostly in houses build in the post war boom and from what I get are intended to get a glas of water at night or to get a washandje wet and freshen up. As a kid growing up in one of those houses I used it as a shelve
I discovered you last night and i love your comparisons videos! 🥰👌 Please, keep it up!!!! 😁 When those old houses were built there was no running water, so there was no shower or toilet and when the running water came, people were still used to wash themselves with a bowl of water in the bedroom. The small rooms are there because it's easier and cheaper to heat them up, instead of the whole house, there was no central heating only a fireplace or a coal/wood burner and the front room was only used for special occasions, guests or Sundays. By the way, the Americans were bigger than the Dutch, but in the last century the Americans grew only six cm and the Dutch twenty!
There are furniture shopping malls, like in Beverwijk. And of course a big store from Sweden in almost every city.
For example in Spain you also find tiny apartments with a separate kitchen.... and as far as I know also in German houses.
The reason for a large ground floor and a smaller floor on top of that could be that downstairs is whee you receive your guests, it's where you show off. The first floor is only used for sleeping. I imagine that could be the reason or the difference between floors.
the old houses, like on the canals in Amsterdam, have high ceilings on the ground floor to show off to those who came to visit. It comes across as luxurious and it indicates that you were rich. The floor above, with slightly lower ceilings, was for the homeowners to sleep in, among other things. Above that, the children slept with slightly lower ceilings. And the top floor with low ceilings was for the staff who didn't live a luxurious life. The people in the Middle Ages were much smaller than now, about 1.5 meters. For example, I am now 1.91 meters.
I agree about the Dutch toilet thing. I stayed in a basic bed and breakfast in Amsterdam and the toilet was in a tiny room and my knees were touching the opposite wall in front of me when sitting on the seat! Very cramped for me as I am 6 ft 2 inches tall! Large shower room though!
Hi! For furniture, you can go to Ikea but you should also look into Woonboulevards or Meubelboulevards (translated Living boulevards or Furniture boulevards) where you can find furniture stores in all price ranges. Love to see more of your videos! Keep 'm coming :)
15:30 building the bathroom on the ground floor was a measure to build as cheaply as possible. It was the period of the great depression, and one measure taken in the netherlands was to build as many homes as cheaply as possible at the time. The second reason is to keep the upstairs floors available for bedrooms to accomodate big families.
Groundfloor used to be not very big at all. Usually, there was a bedroom also. Later they put down the walls and used the little rooms upstairs as bedroom, while in the 20ties it was used as an attic. The sink in the bedroom is called: wastafel. In those days didnt have a bathroom at all, they used to wash themselves there. I know in Amsterdam they had bathinghouses. I remember my greatgrandmother used to go there once a week, they payed 10 cents for halve an hour. The bathrooms on the groundfloor were build later on, in the 40ties and 50ties. Because upstairs was not enough room for it. Downstairs was also convenient if you had guests.
Your videos are very entertaining, it feels kind of funny to have my eyes reopened to stuff that we are so used to so that we do not notice it any more. A lot of the things you notice in the homes are the consequence of their old age, being from an era without running water, sewer systems and of course no electricity which only appeared after the 1920´s. The homes of the elite though, eg. the traders of the VOC era, along the canals in Amsterdam had the luxury of spacious rooms, like dining rooms, concert rooms, bathrooms and other luxuries. Try if you can get into one of those homes, you will find it interesting.
I remember my grandparents house in Enschede: they had 7 children. Downstairs: 2 living rooms, one of which had a high ceiling, so high that there was no room for a bedroom above it.... So they had one bedroom above the low living room. ..... And the weird thing: the high ceiling living room was never (?) used. It was just a show off, a status symbol with nice furniture that was never used and 9 people had to sleep in one bedroom (and a little windy attic room with no window.... And a tiny kitchen behind the house and a tiny toilet at the back of the house which you could only enter thru the outside......
In English, such a never-used living room is called a parlour (or parlor, American spelling), and it was for when one had special visitors, not for just friends, family, and neighbours. It's an old-fashioned concept and by no means restricted to the Netherlands.
You see tiled entrance hallways and staircases in apartment buildings in Scotland. The call the entrance hall and staircase, "The Close". Pronounced rhyme with "snow". The tiled "close" is called a "walley close". That is a Scots word meaning glazed pottery. I bought a porcelain figurine of a young Victorian lady for someone and was thanked for " the walley quine ". In Scots "quine" means woman like "kvine" in Swedish/Danish.
They built bathrooms on the ground floor in the 20’s 30’s because its easy for plumming (kitchen sink/bathroom appliances near eachother). But the main reason is waterpressure. It was very difficult back then to create waterpressure on elevated floors
My house in the small but beautiful town of Kampen built around 1700 had an entrance with vestibule and toilet, a bathroom with a big bath with bubbles and jets plus a second bathroom with a large shower and a second toilet on the second floor. There are a few houses in the Netherlands that have indoor swimming pools as well. My parents however lived in the nieuwbouw of Amsterdam Slotermeer in an eengezinswoning with a toilet on the first floor under the stairs, a shower room with a washing sink on the second floor and next to the front door an outdoor brick box with a wooden lid for the coal for the hearth in the winter. Fun fact: there was a small sliding door inside to get the coal without to go into the cold.
Our toilet was outside for a long time :) when we got plumbing and toilets went inside we wanted it as much outside as possible, so against the wall next to the rear-garden door. also before plumbing we tend to wash our face when we wake up, so we had a can of water and a bowl next to the bed, its considered healthy and hardens you against the outside cold, (because next you had to go outside to the toilet), this changed into the "random sink'. so there you go ;-)
About furnishing options, @SK0LLBR0D already mentioned the woonboulevard. They are also called meubelboulevard sometimes. And indeed every city or oversized village in the Netherlands has those grouped shop spaces where you can buy anything home furnishing related, from carpets and wallpaper to couches, cabinets, kitchens and bathrooms. You'll literally find everything 'and' the kitchen sink there, related to (home) furnishing. It's a somewhat modern tradition to visit them on the 2nd day of Easter as they used to be open on that day when not many other shops were. Nowadays shops are open all the time they expect customers... but there used to be a time shops were definitely closed in the Netherlands at Sundays (zondagsrust) and certain festive days, especially religious ones like Easter. Usually DIY stores like Gamma and Praxis are not part of the meubel- or woonboulevards, although they may also sell furnishing stuff beside all their home improvement, gardening and generic hobby materials and tools. And then some of the larger supermarkets may sometimes sell some as seasonal offerings in their non-food sections. But that is very rare and not at all like in the U.S. (with Wallmart).
when the bathroom is on the groundfloor, usualy the bedroom is also on the ground floor (or was originaly on the ground floor) :)
Furniture: 1) Second hand stores and internet places like Marktplaats. 2) Secondly there are also cheap furniture stores, usually at the edges of cities. Go look at a Seats&Sofas, Leen Bakker, Jysk, any many other shops like that. 3) Dutch people buy stuff that lasts, so second hand is more viable, and add a few new items of stuff they really want. You seem to only have experience with city centres.
Hi Dear! I am am from the Netherlands and lived there in a good neighborhood from the 30th. Higher end middle class. In our house was no bath tube or shower at all! That was normal! In stead there was a cellar because there was no frigidaire yet . Those cellars were later oft remodeled into bathrooms. Therefor they were downstairs.
It sounds like you've only been to Utrecht and Amsterdam, you should also visit the rest of Holland...every province is different and the houses are also larger.
Wouldn't even go that far. Would say visit flats on the outskirts of Amsterdam or just the areas built since the 60's. Whole variety just in one city. That said, even though not Dutch and have only been to the Netherlands a couple of times, Amsterdam is not a nice city... too touristy, expensive, and it feels inauthentic.
@Travelling Gamer I am struggling to understand your comment. Not once did I claim Amsterdam was more touristy than other capital cities; I simply said it was too touristy, which implies it is too touristy for my liking... In terms of it feeling inauthentic, I am not referring to the architecture. In central Amsterdam, it largely resembles what one would consider to be Dutch architecture. I am referring to the number of coffee shops and tourist traps, and the general lack of real Dutch culture. Everything seems performatively Dutch to me once you're within a 2 km radius of the central station, and that is because pandering to tourists will pay more than simply serving the local clientele. If you have not, I recommend visiting a small city or just a town in another part of the Netherlands. It will generally be calm, be pleasant, and be a more accurate representation of how Dutch people live. It would also be a nice surprise to not hear American or British tourists continue on about how amazing it is that they just bought an edible... as if it's something special. From your comment about the city screaming history, it suggests you are from North America. If you were from a European country, older buildings may not be as impressive to you. They may even be seen as a given, and therefore nothing special. So if you are used to old buildings, canals are nothing new to you, and you are being asked to buy pills from an opportunistic dealer for the second time in one day whilst later being offered a great discount for the hop-on hop-off city tour, you are going to get an inauthentic vibe from a place. And finally, don't misinterpret my sentiment. I like visiting Amsterdam; I have had some good times in Amsterdam. But it is not a nice city. I would never choose to live there should things remain as they do.
@Travelling Gamer From your comments it was not apparent that you are Dutch. I am not attempting to imply that Dutch culture is incompatible with city living and that to find real Dutch culture you must go to a smaller place. I am simply saying go to other cities. From my perspective of living in cities with populations of over 5 million, all cities in the Netherlands outside of Amsterdam are small cities. Also, many people in Amsterdam aren't Dutch. It's an international city, meaning you can experience many cultures, but I would say this limits how in-depth you can experience one specifically- with that one being Dutch. Overall, I think you are reading into this too much, perhaps it's an emotional thing for you. I simply meant that people should go outside of Amsterdam... everything outside of Amsterdam is smaller than Amsterdam... In reference to still being in awe with older buildings, that is great for you. However, from personal experience, having attended a university that is over 500 years old, lived in victorian buildings, and walked on cobbled roads daily, older architecture is just a normal thing to me. I am not saying certain things will not impress me- I love a cathedral or bridge. However just simply being old is not particularly impressive on its own. In your final remark, perhaps you haven't been asked to buy drugs or to take tours because you are Dutch. I'm British and only speak English. I clearly do not look Dutch either. Perhaps I have been targeted specifically because I obviously look like I am not from there and tourists are more likely to engage.
Have a look at the furniture stores on Overtoom in Amsterdam
the sink in the master bedroom is probably for getting water at night, I know that is/used to be common for dutch people to always have a glass of water with them at night. You could also use it to wash your face or wash your hands.
I buy my furniture in so many different places; Marktplaats, woonboulevards (kwantum, karwei etc.) Ikea, kringloopwinkel (second handstore), sofacompany (one of my faves) to name a few. Accessories I purchase at small shops in my nearest town Arnhem like; Dille en Kamille, Eems, Bos en Heij or Eigen Stijl (in de steenstraat). Or Flying Tiger, Sissy Boy, Hema and Søstrene Grene (Nijmegen) Nijmegen also has a lot of nice small stores and pop-up stores. Deventer also has a lot of nice small shops plus a lot of brocante shops. Towns like Deventer and Zutphen are also nice to visit (they are really old) And Nijmegen and Arnhem off course. And so many more cities..... If you need tips, feel free to ask me ;)
You might benifit to visit Houten, just a bike ride away. In the nineties there was a shortage of houses, it the then government to designate various locations where houses could/should be built. These are the Vinex locations, Houten is such a place. It grew from 5000 inhabitants to 50.000 within 20 years.
I don’t know if anyone already post it. But houses in the 20’ were build without bathrooms. And so thy build it later. It’s near the kitchen because there is already water pipes. And this is also the reason of the sink in the bedrooms. They used to clean up there because there was no bathroom.
Looking at the date of my reaction I start with happy 4th of July to you. A big day back in 1776 and a nice celebration still now although many Americans don't know what it's about any more. And I mean also university students don't know. The house I now live in was build in 1683 but lived in many houses and visited houses in many countries. It's nice to see the differences.
The sink in the master bedroom is a luxury, most homes don't have it. It's used for brushing your teeth or drinking some water in the middle of the night, both of which can be done without spilling any water outside the sink...
At my grandparents home (protestant, 1950-1990 ish) the living room or front room was the room that you invited guests in and had to be nice, neat and respectable. The children in the family weren't allowed in there unless there was a special occasion, the rest of the house was cramped and relatively poor but the outside word would never see that part and that was the only thing that really mattered to them, being seen as respectable. A lot of older canal side properties were build as working residences for merchants etc. lower floor/ road side rooms were set up for masters of the house, back and or higher floors for servants. Later these houses were converted into multiple apartments.
The houses from the twenties did not have a bathroom when they where build. We had bathouses to wash yourself.
REGULAR Dutch homes are typically either single floor apartments, or 1-family homes (usually row-houses). Staircases ARE indeed generally a LITTLE steeper than in the US, and frequently CURVED (a nightmare when moving big furniture .. ) Almost everyone has a small downstairs TOILET-room WITHOUT a bath - and a separate BATHroom to shower or bathe. IF you have MORE than one floor, the actual BATHroom is typically on the first floor up (2nd floor in US), and frequently includes a 2nd toiletbowl for convenience. In single floor apartments typically not - and SMALL apartments often lack space for a bathtub ..
Bathrooms were situated on the ground floor in old houses because in the past people had to buy buckets of warm water to fill your bath at the “water stoker” or heat the water on the stove in the kitchen. You don’t want to lift hot and heavy buckets up-stairs.
And the sink in the master bedroom is meant for daddy who wants to shave his face while his teen daughter is taking a shower.
"Where do you buy your furniture??" De woonboulevard on second easter!! :D
lol i usually take the stairs with half the steps and double the speed (according to test results i'm unusually good at flying up or down the stairs for some reason)
You are describing hundred years old houses. Most of us have a “normal” house. 🏡 🏠 🏢🏢🏠🏡🏠🏠
Somebody told me that canal houses are built crookedly because they were originally warehouses. The goods were loaded from the boats into the warehouse. The hoist was located at the top of the facade. The buildings were built in the 16th and 17th century (without plumbing). At the time the people were also a lot smaller. The Amsterdam harbor was an important entry point for the VOC. The transport of goods/supplies was via the Dutch water canals instead of the road (horse and carriage). Originally, the canal houses were not an apartment, but mainly warehouse and only the owner with his family lived there, also sometime he may have had several buildings next to each other. Still even today in Amsterdam Utrecht and Leiden the m2 are very pricey.
The separate places is an old thing where we dont like to heat all the space of the house or apartment. Shutting the doors you only heat the room where you are at! :) The windows thing: If there is light outside..why not use it? That's why the windows are BIG :) To let the sun in. That's why we usually dont have curtains or we just don't close them to keep the maximum of light in the house. The furniture: Woon boulevards : Furniture malls... preferably on Boxing day or "2e Paasdag" ;-)
A cynnic who knew the Dutch need to keep up appearances would say that the first floor is used to entertain visitors. That is why it has tall ceilings. Visitors don't see the second floor, which is why they weren't made as nice... But also, bedrooms are for sleep and for kids to play in, so it also made sense to spend more on the living areas where adults spend most time.
If space is limited sometimes they build the bathroom on the ground floor but most likely there is also a bedroom on the ground floor. This is done because when people get older they won't be able to move up and down the stairs and live on the ground floor without ever going on the stairs again.
Your vision of our housing is really based on the densely populated and highly expensive Holland/Utrecht area.. in the other parts we have more space and finer houses, although not that extremely huge that seems to be normal in most parts of USA..