mid nineties: bathtubs, showers, bathroom styles, and kitchen furniture, appliances, and styles

[smallbrownfrog]

I'm writing a scene set in a mid-nineties neighborhood similar to the ones the Dursley's lived in

Comments

[sushidog]

There's likely to be a shower over the bath, which is likely to be fitted rather than a free-standing claw-footed tub

[starry_diadem]

Stand mixers have been around for years and years, though. I still have my mothers Kenwood Chef, which is a glory of 1970s "harvest gold and brown". It's cast metal and weighs a ton.

[sollersuk]

In the 1970s I looked at the stand mixers at the Ideal Home Exhibition sitting around waiting to be washed, shuddered and got a Bamix, which is washed by giving it a whir in a mug of water. It was reconditioned (actually upgraded - they sent us back a new model) in the 1980s and it's still going strong.

[starry_diadem]

I love mine, but it's a heavy brute and cleaning it can be a pain.

[veronica_milvus]

Yes. The shower might be over the tub (we wouldn't call it a tub, we'd just say the shower was over the bath). Or it might be separate if the bathroom was bigger. There might also be a second bathroom - an en suite as well as a family bathroom, or there might be a shower room downstairs with a loo, a sink, a shower, but no bath

[lothy]

There would almost certainly be a shower within the bath; there might also be a separate shower room or en suite. The bath would be porcelein and fitted.

In the kitchen there would definitely be a cooker (with hobs, grill & oven), a fridge & freezer (either separates or joined together with the fridge on top - or sometimes, as sushidog mentioned, a fridge with a small freezer compartment), cupboards covered by a work surface (and more cupboards on the wall), a sink, a microwave, a toaster and an electric kettle. There might also be a blender and a mixer or food processor (the latter is a little bit more common in the UK, though my family's been using a free-standing mixer for decades) depending on how much the people living there like to cook/bake. Bigger kitchens will have a dining area with table & chairs, or there may be a separate dining room in the house.

[rumantic]

In the mid 90s in a middle class suburban house, yes I would expect there would be a shower - we got one installed over the bath in the early 90s and it seemed very swish. If they have an en-suite then there might be a separate shower in there, or they might conceivably have a separate shower in the bathroom as well as the bath. Definitely nowhere other than the main bathroom or an en-suite, though. Garden sheds rarely have electric hook-ups, let alone plumbing! And they wouldn't really be big enough for a shower anyway. When I think of a typical garden shed, I think of something like this

[rumantic]

Blue bathroom - and in fact such a typical 90s house!

http://12chesneyroad.co.uk/4.html

[smallbrownfrog]

Would the hose/shower head arrangement always be fixed in place? In other words could the shower head be taken off the hook so you could aim the water spray where you wanted? I've seen some hose-and-shower-head arrangements where the shower head was fixed in place and I've seen other ones where the shower head rested in a cradle or hook that it could be easily removed from so you could hold the shower head in your hand and hand-aim it.

[rumantic]

In a kitchen, not many small appliances other than a microwave, kettle and toaster. Everyone has electric kettles in Britain, so they'd definitely have one. A toaster and microwave would be fairly likely. You might have a food processor, but an electric mixer would be handheld and kept in a cupboard or drawer, also known as an electric whisk. Stick blenders like we have now weren't around. At that time in a suburban semi-detached house it would be usual to have a separate kitchen and dining room, the idea of the "kitchen-diner" was just coming in, but it was only really new houses which were accommodating this. Your typical semi would probably still have a serving hatch from the (tiny) kitchen into a generous-sized dining room, although some had been converted into doorways. Some kitchens still had a pantry where dried/tinned goods would be kept, often in the space under the stairs or built as a lean-to on the side of the house. Sometimes there would be a door directly from the kitchen into the garage

[eofs]

Stick blenders were definitely around - my parents are still using their early 1980s stick blender, bought to whizz up grown-up meals into baby food for my brother and me.