The Mighty Maisonette

Adelaide has had a long-term love affair with the mighty semi-detached maisonette. Along with row cottages, the maisonette ruled supreme with builders between 1836-1925. It became the compromise build between a row cottage & a free-standing house & often families lived in one side & rented out the other for economic gain. Each side was a mirror image of other & always shared a common parapet party wall. For economy of scale they often shared other features such as a continous front verandah (often eye-lash or bull-nose corrugated iron in design) with the traditional tesselated tile floor. Squeezed onto a single allotment, space was tight & the majority of them were built to the boundary fence, with just a small rear access running off a back lane for wood deliveries & the ubiquitious night cart man.

Most were constructed with sandstone or bluestone facades with brick side walls, the standard internal design was 3-4 rooms all running off the side passageway. The front room was generally the sitting room, followed by either one or two bedrooms then a kitchen. The bathroom, laundry & loo were housed in a corrugated iron lean-to either attached or detached leading off the back verandah. Again for economic reasons those rooms sat along a party wall with the adjoining maisonette, so they could share the one set of plumbing connections. Generally a row of them were built in the same street which meant that the gutters of each adjoining house nearly touched, really restricting the flow of natural light & ventilation through the side windows. For those of us who have experienced life in an unrenovated Adelaide maisonette, even with a largish window, you'll know that those 2nd & 3rd rooms were black holes of unrelenting darkness.

My how things have changed, just look at this renovated maisonette in St. Peters, a lovely leafy suburb just 5 minutes drive from the Adelaide CBD. Sadly a number of the internal period features are no longer - the original ceilings, cornices & fireplaces have disappeared, but I think it's a pretty schmicko reno job all the same.

I've had another good but very tiring week at work, with not a smidgy of blogging happening. That will be fixed later today. We celebrated our largest single order of the year yesterday arvo, so the 2 of us were doing the Happy Dance around the office. The boss surprised me by ordering a very ritzy coffee machine for our little 2 roomed, 2 person office, so I take that as an indication that I'm doing OK & he might want me to stay. It's the weekend dear Hedgies, so go enjoy!
Images: Klemich