Since many of y’all asked in the comments yesterday, I feel compelled to explain the backhouse. I knew when I wrote it that most people would have no idea what I was talking about, and I started to give a brief explanation in yesterday’s post, but it seemed to disrupt the flow to write “a backhouse is a wooden structure, similar to a garage, located behind my home” or whatever. But since I care about y’all and don’t want anyone to lose any sleep over it, I will tell you about the backhouse.
The backhouse is a wooden structure, similar to a garage, located behind my home.
We live in an old house with a detached garage/backhouse. It is a building with dual identities, much like Clark Kent, that encompasses the finest features of both garage and dwelling. The garage section is just a one car garage with a door that slides open and when you pull in, there is actually a set of doors that can be opened at the back of the garage that access a back shed-type area. The doors are there because our house was built when the majority of people still drove horse and buggies, and so our garage is all fancy-like. The original owners could pull their buggy into an enclosed garage area and tie their horse in the shed. Charles Ingalls never had it so good.
The non-garage portion of the backhouse is the actual house part, although I use the term “house” loosely, and I suppose its original purpose was to serve as maids’ quarters, but since I am now the only maid around here, we use it for other things. Plus, no one would actually want to live there, well, except for maybe a few rats.
When we bought this house almost 10 years ago, P immediately adopted the backhouse. It is his domain and sometimes, if I ask nicely, he’ll let me store some stuff out there. In fact, when I told him I was going to explain the backhouse, he said, “Make sure you use the term ‘man-cave’”. We’ve even said that one day if P starts his own blog, he can call it “Tales from the Backhouse”, and I can assure y’all it won’t be about meaningful things like cute shoes or purses, but will involve words like “bullet casings”, “gunpowder”, “maximum kill percentages”, and “carnage”.
A lighthearted look at a man and his great loves.
The “house” portion of the backhouse consists of three rooms. Room 1 contains metal shelving filled with assorted tools, caulk, paintbrushes and a few cans of paint and paint thinner. You could label this room, “Supplies Bought with the Best of Intentions”. There is also a small partition that used to house a non-working toilet, but P got rid of the indoor plumbing facilities to create a storage space for a few cots, some buckets and a sleeping bag, which tells you that it is, indeed, a man’s place. No self-respecting woman would get rid of the indoor plumbing.
Room 2 is where the magic really happens. It’s where P manufactures his own ammo. There is a butcher block table covered in bullets and gunpowder and Nilla wafer crumbs. He has been known to disappear out there for hours at a time. In fact, he even installed a window air conditioning unit, because the non-functioning toilet just didn’t add the amount of class he needed.
Room 3 is a storage haven for more fishing equipment than any one person could ever need. Roy Scheider didn’t take out this much equipment when he was looking for Jaws. On the bright side, if 250 people ever show up at our house and need fishing tackle, we can provide it. This section also contains all of my various door wreaths, a bicycle, a twin bed wrapped in plastic covering, a 50 pound bag of birdseed and an old stroller. So, basically, the essentials.
Back in my drug rep days, P was kind enough to allow me to store my mass quantities of promotional items in exchange for him being able to pick any of the items he might want for personal use. To this day, he still uses Zyrtec golf towels to clean up any big spills, and he can check the time by looking at his Ditropan XL clock hanging on the wall. And if it rains? He can use his Rhinocort umbrella to walk back to the house.
From the outside, the backhouse looks like a small, plain version of our house, complete with windows and a front door, but on the inside it is a man-cave filled with the manliest of manly things.
P can have the backhouse. I’ll take the front house. And at least I know I’ll see him when he needs to go to the bathroom.
How about y’all? Do your husbands have a man-cave?
Skip to Comment Form
Dude. My husband’s gonna be so jealous that you have a backhouse with reloading stuff in it! We’re waiting, impatiently, for the last of the kids to move out so he can have a man room and put out all his reloading stuff.
My father is a pharmacist and my mother and I work for an allergy and asthma doctor’s office so I can relate to the drug company paraphenalia. It made laugh:)
Thanks for the explanation – even if you did write it WAAAAY back then, before I ever discovered you!
Oh the plans I would have it that was behind our house. If it was not a ‘man-cave’ and you could do what you want with it – what would YOU use those rooms for?
I’m so glad you explained a backhouse. I wasn’t even close with my visuals of it. LOL
We built a new house in 2000 on our acreage. We left 3 rooms of the old house which were attached to the double garage (which we also kept). They were the laundry room, 1 bedroom, and the kitchen. Those are now known as “Mans Domain”. The bedroom is mostly storage, and the kitchen is hubbys workshop, which does work great with all the cupboards to store his junk, I mean priceless items. The best is the laundry room, which now has a door in the wall and a ramp outside. Hubby drives his little convertible in there as a storage place during the winter. Oh yea, it’s a classy place.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Skip to Comment Form