This is also a room that is bizarre on first brush but begins to make sense when you understand the context behind it.
I live in Utah, and I used to live in a house where my bedroom would have been designed similarly and, had a photo been taken of it at the time, very well may have ended up on this blog.
See, Utah has a quirk in a lot of its older housing of having been built in the 1900's, with many homes being built between 1920 and 1970. The older the house is, the worse the architectural decisions being made become. Utah is known for its high Mormon population, but what most outsiders to the state don't think about is the recency of its population boom compared to other states. The city of Ogden, Utah, around 30 miles north of Salt Lake City (the state capital) is one of the stops that an old transcontinental railroad used to run through. The place got a lot of immigrant foot traffic as a result.
Prior to that population boom, Utah was a rather insular state consisting primarily of Mormon Settlers and whatever native populations hadn't been genocided yet. In southern Utah, indigenous tribes were often partially nomadic or entirely stationary, meanwhile northern Utah tribes were primarily nomadic. As well, the Mormons were a persecuted group in the rest of the United States, meaning that the people who chose to go to Utah typically could not have effective contact with other states and their expert laborers. This isolation meant that the Mormon colonists were forced to become almost entirely self reliant in nearly every aspect of life. Traders would stop by, sure, but it wouldn't be until closer to Utah acquiring proper statehood that they would be more open to engaging in outside, non-Mormon populations.
(side note, the Mormons actually tried to create a new language that could have been used by them, Mexicans, Utes, Paiutes, and other indigenous tribes in order to both make converting those groups who didn't speak English easier alongside creating a further rift between them and the rest of the English speaking united states in their efforts to become an independent nation. that didn't pan out)
This means the Mormons were building their own houses, and by god were they mediocre at it. This also meant the entire state had set a precedent that people would just build their own houses, so when those population booms I mentioned earlier started happening, other immigrants and laborers would show up and build their own houses, too, and their expertise was often just as questionable.
Another very important fact about Mormonism is that having large families is seen as a moral good. While not nearly as openly praises today as it once was, the long abandoned institution of polygamy ensured that having a lot of kids with your spouse(s) would remain a staple of many Mormon families for a long time. In other places in the u.s., hearing about a family with 8 kids is a rare oddity. In Utah, 8 kids is on the higher end of things but doesn't turn too many heads when people talk about having that many siblings.
This creates a scenario. You are a Mormon family colonising Utah. You've got 4-8 children with you. Perhaps there is even more than one wife in the family. You're building a house with little oversight from a real architect and no oversight from OSHA. You are going to maximize your space. You need many bedrooms in order to house yourself, your spouse, and your children. You also need a basement where the temperature remains colder and you can keep food. You build this tall house, and you have all this attic room where an adult can't stand very comfortably, but children? They're practically built for such a small space!
This, you get a room like this. There is an obvious slant on the edge of the room where the ceiling is, and if you cut through that you would remove a few inches of wood and be greeted with open sky.
This example in particular is especially funny because of how obvious the modern renovations on this old style of home are. That weird blue wall on the right was likely added at some point in order to clean up the space a little, make is seem more uniform. Unfortunately it also removes precious square footage, enough square footage to fit an entire queen sized mattress, where with the wall you would be lucky to fit a full.
The kind of teal patterning on the left side of the photo? Absolutely baffling. I couldn't explain that without talking to whoever installed it to ask why it's there. Clearly the wall jutting out of that empty space is hiding necessary support beams that keep the house standing, but what's with the texture? Why is it different from the paint on the wall around it as well as this bright baby blue wall mere feet away as well? Is that what all of the walls look like, but the rest of them have been painted over? Without speaking to whoever built the home and whoever made the renovations later, we could never possibly know.
annaxmalina
ellievsbear
2087
theartofmadeline
yousharknotpass
jacobvanloon
pixelskylines
