"I'm Pretty Sure They're Now Illegal": 35 Now-Obsolete Home Features That Were, Believe It Or Not, The HEIGHT Of Luxury Back In The Day
Every time I watch an old sitcom or a John Hughes movie, I thank my lucky stars I missed the shoulder pad fad. It's easy to look back on fashion from decades past and laugh at what was once the epitome of class and good taste. The same goes for furniture. Once upon a time, certain features were the absolute peak of luxury — the dream additions that homeowners just had to have. From mirrored walls to conversation pits, these fancy home features were status symbols of their time.
Hoping to reminisce about the home upgrades of days gone by, Reddit user Exotic_Accountant565 asked the r/askoldpeople community: "What are the fancy home features that have faded into history?" Let's take a look at the most interesting retro features people remembered and see if some (or any) are worth bringing back into our homes.
1."I've seen photos of homes built in the '70s, and the living room area is kinda designed like a 'conversation pit'... dude that is so cool, and I would love to have a home like that."
"A sunken living room. It was a thing!"
"Sunken living rooms — turned out to be a terrible tripping hazard and just plain inconvenient."
2."We had an intercom in our 1973-built house. We used it as a baby monitor. We would put the baby’s room on listen and pipe it to the family room, which was downstairs. That required a bunch of switch-flipping at the central station to figure out. They weren’t exactly flexible or user-friendly. We had to do everything at the central station. That was the only practical use we got out of it in over 40 years."
"Lots of my friends had those intercoms in their houses when I was a kid, but none of them worked."
3."I was surprised to see a motor device embedded into a friend’s house kitchen countertop. They said it’s a built-in blender motor that was there when they bought the house. Seemed like a super fancy thing."
4."I still have a rotator on my TV in the shop/man cave."
"People don't realize how useful one of those antennas is, especially with a rotator. Not only will they currently pull in tens of television channels, but they're also designed to receive FM broadcasts. This means you can receive FM broadcast stations hundreds of miles in all directions.
Modern antennas sold for homes cannot hold a candle to the old school antennas."
5."Central vacuums."
"I always thought there would be a clog in the pipe inside of a wall somewhere, which would render the whole machine useless. I never had one, but I had friends who did.
Interestingly, though, I'm now seeing these videos on Instagram showing people using them, and all the comments are like people just discovered fire. "WOW!! What a great idea!! No more lugging a vacuum around. Brilliant!!""
6."Laundry chutes. In one house it was from the second floor to the basement, in another from the kitchen to the basement."
"Those chutes make for an excellent amusement park for stuffed animals."
7."I was thinking just the other day how much I miss a water bed and was wondering if you could still get one. We used to have a couple of water bed stores, but they are long gone."
"A properly set up waterbed is a nice thing to sleep in, alone. However, a waterbed is not good for anything else. They were a complete nuisance for anything but sleeping. Also, They were way too heavy."
8."Phone nooks."
9."Plate racks built into the wall."
10."Solid oak doors. Oak everything. This house was built in the 90's but to old standards. It was oak plate rails in the walls. I was going to have them removed when I repainted, but they are glued and screwed to the walls. Removing them would have cost a small fortune, so I left them up... As a result, this house is incredibly solid and very, very quiet. Even my WIC has solid oak doors. Why? Who knows. I'm pretty sure this house could take a direct hit from a nuclear missile and not be worse for wear."
11."Double-hung windows are another thing that isn't common these days. My house has them, and guess what they are made out of. And then! And then! My storm windows are also double-hung. They are an absolute PAIN to clean, but then I can heat the house in January with a match."
12."Bread warming drawers."
13."To show you how poor I grew up: fold away ironing boards. Ooh la la!"
14."Glass brick — very desirable in the 1950’s."
15."Kitchen counters that wrapped around a corner with a little 4-layer shelf thing at the curve."
16."Matchy-matchy draperies, wallpaper, carpeting in every room."
17."Four-poster beds with canopies.
18."Finished basements as 'recreation rooms,' long before family rooms were built."
19."Trash compactors were big in new money homes when I was a kid. We were impressed when people installed them in their existing homes."
"I remember the trash collectors complained that compacted trash was too heavy to lift. It also prevented recycling."
20."Maybe not particularly fancy, but the house I grew up in (from the late 1950s) had an incinerator in the basement. You could just throw in burnable items and *POOF* they were rendered into ashes."
"This now sounds like a nightmare and a disaster waiting to happen, and I am pretty sure they are now illegal, or at the very least, inadvisable."
21."Foil wallpaper."
"My grandma splurged for foil and velvet wallpaper in silver and sort of, I'd say, a pea soup color. They were the toast of the culdesac."
22."An oven embedded in the kitchen wall. I can only imagine what a pain in the butt it would be to have to replace it!"
23."Our house had a brick indoor planter box by the stairs. We never had a plant in it the entire time we lived there. We mostly put junk in it, and we couldn't find a place for it anywhere else."
24."Bright pink, turquoise, or green tile bathrooms with matching tub, toilet, and sink. Whole house attic fans that could suck all of the heat out of the house in minutes."
25."Knotty pine. Our 1950s house has knotty pine kitchen cabinets and flooring throughout. When we bought the house, we didn't know about the knotty pine floors, as the owners had them covered with carpet. The floors were pristine, as they had always been covered since the house was built. We kept all the knotty pine. One other oddity was every closet in the house was cedar-lined."
26."A bar in the home. They are *wildly* impractical unless you are entertaining (aka giving out free alcohol) a few days a week, at which point you're just throwing away your money."
27."I wouldn't call it fancy, but some older homes had open bricks in the attic, I mean just holes where there wasn't a brick, in a cute pattern so there was airflow."
28."Round beds."
29."Milk doors. Small doors usually adjacent to side entrances, where the dairymen would leave products."
30."Atriums, unfortunately. Besides bringing the chores and smells of the outdoors indoors, people were lazy and didn't want to maintain them. Plus, they were a security hazard, an easy way-in for thieves."
31."Popcorn ceilings."
32."At one time, people liked wood-paneled walls. I think they're horrible, dark, and depressing."
33."China cabinets in the dining room."
34."Floor outlets. I had some installed in a condo I owned as the rooms were fairly large, and to run a wired lamp across the floor would have been a real trip hazard."
35."Many homes used to have all-around porches for shade to help in the summer."
Which of these retro trends would you like to see in homes today? And what other "fancy" design trends do you remember from decades past? Let us know in the comments or anonymously via this form.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
