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I was just wondering how he stands the cicadas since he's not from here. I've lived here all my life and I hate that noise. It's really the tree frog noise every summer that I hate, but when the cicadas came out and joined the chorus this year, I thought the tornado siren was going off. Then it didn't stop for hours, and the horrific realization slowly dawned on me... Days and days of this whining, droning siren blaring over that whirring clicking tree frog noise, and then the snakes came. I was waiting for more plagues. They all left, and then the scorching heat came. The country is fun like that. Can't wait for the fall when we get the deer-jumping-in-front-of-our -pickup-truck plague.
@@cocobutter3175 As someone who's lived with Cicada's all my life I've completely droned out the noise and it's like it doesn't even exist for me. Sometimes I have to be reminded the noise is indeed still there.
@@cocobutter3175, the cicadas this late in the season come out annually in Chicagoland and other areas in the USA -- as opposed to the "one in a lifetime" occurrence of the 13-year and 17-year cicadas emerging in the SAME year. (OH MY, those were REALLY NOISY!)
@@cocobutter3175he did a video on cicadas a few months ago, when it was the “thing” in the news. But like you or someone else said, cicadas are ever present, just a few special broods that arrive every so often.
About 30 years ago, a business associate mentioned that she would be vacationing in the Adirondacks. I flippantly asked "Are you going to study the chairs?" When she returned, she presented me a stack of photos of every Adirondack chair she saw while on vacation. Even though each chair was clearly an Adirondack, details such as the curve of the back and the angles of the seat and legs were significantly different. My bucket list includes building a set of mismatched Adirondack chairs, using those photos as guides.
My uncle remodeled one of his Adirondack chairs. He replaced one of the armrests with a piece with a wider area at the end (like those one piece classroom desks) and added a tapered hole for a small bucket. He'd fill the bucket with ice and a few beverages so he didn't have to get up so often. Later, he changed it again to hold an insulated ice bucket with insulated lid. Don't know if he saw that somewhere or not.
Another furniture item that differs across the pond is the wardrobe. Here in the U.S. they are far less common (due to newer housing with built-in closets), and rarely if ever serve as portals to magical lands filled with talking allegorical animals.
Chifferobes. My grandmother had 2. Her house only had 1 closet. We had a metal wardrobe, as my sister had no closet so used mine. She and my mother had a LOT of clothes!
@@AmyKozerski In my understanding, a chifferobe has a space for hanging clothes on one side & drawers in the other side, both sides enclosed by double-doors. An armoire is often a larger, heavier piece - they were originally the cabinet used to store arms & armor, hence the name. Now, they can be used for clothes, books, shoes, anything - whereas the chifferobe & wardrobe are just for clothing storage. Of course now, as people use these pieces less & definitions have been forgotten, many interchange the words as if they are the same. The more high-end furniture stores often retain the older definitions.
When I was a kid my father "invested" in a "Davenport" with matching chair. The "Davenport" being this really long 7+ sofa/couch....it fit all 6 of us kids while dad had "His Chair"...to watch Walt Disney and Mutual of Ohama's "Wild Kingdom" on Sunday nights right after bath time. But we casually always called it a couch.
Porches were very popular in areas that were real hot in the days before air conditioning when families would sit out on the porch at night because it was cooler than inside and would even listen to the radio and hang out there. My mom said in the summers she would sometimes even sleep on their screened in front porch when it was real hot, and everyone felt safer back then.
When I was growing up we had two cots in the screened porch. They were used every night from May-September. We had a neighbor who slept on his porch year round - in Maine.
Our hospital had them at one time the end of every floor. They were screened so that patients could lie in the cooler night air in the summer and breathe a bit easier.
We bought 2 of them and immediately gave them to the very young neighbors...because there should be an age limit on these things! They're NOT meant for old people!
Not only that, but before 60 or 70 years ago, it was specifically front porches--so that people could interact with their neighbors while sitting on the porch. Later on, people retreated to back porches--specifically to avoid their neighbors.
Little known fact/trivia: Adirondack chairs originally had their characteristic sloped seat because the were designed to sit (pun intended) facing downhill on a slope - which would make the seat level, rather than sloped back, but nowadays, their lounge-chair aspect is their feature. (Even though that makes them hard to get out of, sometimes.) ...Or so I understand. (Yeah, yeah, I read a book about the design history of chairs, once. I'm a really exciting guy.... Really!)
I HATE these sloped chairs!! They need to stop making them because, like you said, they're hard to get out of! Plus, I HATE sitting back in my chair - or car seat - like some low riding thug lol 😊
@@FourFish47 Well, if they're hard to get out of, I find that bringing an extra drink makes that less of a problem... But yeah, one is kinda stuck in them for a while...
I’m getting another of these chairs from Lowes this weekend. I love mine on my FRONT porch with a cheap cushion. Oh, with a cooler of cold beer in front of me watching UA-cam.
Front porch swings are popular in America for a few reasons. Our weather allows for a lot of time outdoors, particularly in the spring and summer. Moving back and forth on a porch swing stirs a little breeze, even if there's no wind around. Some homes in the American South had porch swings that could be made into a bed, offering fresh air on hot, still summer nights. There's also something quite comforting in a gentle swaying, back and forth. Think of rocking a fussy baby to sleep with just such a motion; it's soothing. With a swing on the front porch, you could easily socialize, inviting a friendly passerby to sit with you to enjoy a cool drink as you discover what the latest news might be in their lives. It's a comfortable place to pass the time and watch what's happening in your neighborhood.
The loss of that sociability is one thing that has been blamed on changing home architecture. It varies by region, but having a patio in the back yard instead of a front porch, has been a long time trend for newer houses.
Loved to sit on the swing on the back porch which was high up the hillside to watch storms come up the valley....till the lightning and wind chased us inside. In the summer the entire family split up between the swings on the back porch and front porch along with the "glider" to sleep outdoors on hot humid nights. We lived on a side street, so it was fairly quiet and SAFE!.....we had plenty of guns handy, but NOBODY ever worried about safety or robbery when and where I grew up. HOW times have CHANGED in the USA!
My grandmother, who lived in PA called her couches a Davenport. I live in the Midwest and call mine a couch. They however are advertised in the sales papers and commercials as sofas
Apparently, "sofa" still sounds a bit more refined than "couch." I'm in my 40s and am from the Midwest. My mom always corrected me as a child when I called it a couch instead of sofa.
When I was a little kid (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) in northern Ohio everyone called it a davenport, as did my relatives in Michigan. I'm not sure when that changed, or if it did, because then we moved to California where no one called it a davenport - SoCal was couch territory. No one I knew called it a sofa unless you were referring to a sofa bed, but maybe we weren't high class enough. As far as settee, I think of that as a small couch (or double chair) for two people, whereas a couch can be 6-8 feet long depending on the size of your living room or den. (No one calls that room a parlor or lounge, although my Mom used to call it the "front room" as opposed to the den, maybe because that room was closest to the front door.
There's nothing better than sitting out on the porch with a beer during a warm summer rain storm. Porches are covered, patios are not, so you get to stay dry. This is dependent on a rain-storm and not just a storm. Lightning and flying debris are counter to the ambiance you're looking for.
My Southern grandmother called a couch a Divan, the first time she handed me a decorative pillow she'd just been gifted and instructed me to go into the parlor and put it on the Divan, I had no clue where to put it, lol. I use couch and sofa interchangeably.
Mine did too!! I’ve looked all through these comments and you and I are the only ones who said that. There was one person in Britain who said they called box springs a divan.🤗❤️🐝
That's a new one.... Although also a Kansan, I watched enough of Norm Abram on TOH and TNYW in the 80's and 90's to hear him say "Adirondack" many, many times. 😄
Finally figured out English always call their rear property a garden. I was totally confused thing that isn’t very pretty. Rather makes me now wonder what exactly an “English Garden” really is! Beautiful estate arboretum, or just a patch of dirt and grass?
@@DancingPony1966-kp1zr Exactly. You think you're going to see a beautiful "English garden" always talked about, and see just a postage stamp of grass and patio.
I agree. I actually watched it all the way through... although I do wonder how much of a discount $30 off a position-controlled desk actually is. I suspect it falls under the "If you have to ask about the price, you can't afford it." category.
I'd say you don't watch much UA-cam, but it is in the top 10... somewhere. Having said that, I still had to blow past because I am not remotely interested in an office chair. I don't even own/want any other type of chair.
Preach! I bought a cheapie plastic one a couple of years ago and I frequently fall asleep in it in my shaded back yard in the summer evenings. It's amusing that he mentions a cat in the lap as an excuse to not get out of a chair: Cat in lap + Adirondack chair...... ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
We have something similar in Canada called Muskoka chairs, which are incredibly popular. I, however, find them extremely uncomfortable. They are definitely not designed for short people.
Chesterfield is also common parlance among Canadians of a certain age for pretty much any type of sofa or couch, but I think it's slowly falling out of use.
Like many things, the most popular brand in a local area often gets to be the generalized name for them there. Like there's the common thing of what a public drinking fountain is called. The majority of the USA calls them either a water fountain or a drinking fountain. Where I am in Wisconsin they're bubblers, which was originally a brand of drinking fountains. This is mostly in a pocket around SE Wisconsin, so it's just a more local thing.
My grandparents had great big Adirondack chairs on their backyard stone patio from the 1950s until the early 2000s. My grandfather made them. They also had a swing under the vine-covered pergola. Flowers everywhere. It was Heaven.
@@janinebean4276 Muskoka Chairs have become even better known throughout all of Canada ever since Loblaws PC (President's Choice) created a molded plastic resin version...which I find even more comfortable than the clunky wooden ones.
The Ottoman Empire died for this and you just call them "Little foot stools", like, damn man wtf. Great vid tho! I'm typing this from an Adirondack chair in my yard lol
(Chuckles) In the United States, there are families with relatives all over everywhere. So when they come to visit, a sofa, or couch, is often referred to as a guest bed…
Nah, just looks like lush naturally healthy grass. Can't stand when people feel the need to give their yard a buzzcut every 3 days. It's a mental illness.
I'm afraid to count the numbers of Adirondack chairs that we have here at the lake. They vary in design. In the living room, they're white-painted log-framed chairs, while the front porch has four red ones like your blue ones. The lower porch has white versions. Our family room is graced by two beautifully crafted pine Adirondacks that my late father designed and made as gifts when my husband and I built this house. I grew up in the same home in which my mother grew up, and one of my earliest memories is sitting in my dad's lap on a white-painted Adirondack chair that my mother's father had made in the 1930s. The chairs were gathered under a bower of huge trees, it was late summer and, yes, as in your video, a chorus of cicadas was creating that lovely, pulsating background "music." Love it.
My son built a Murphy Bed for his California King mattress. It doubles as a guest bed and a sound barrier for my daughter-in-law's office which is on the other side of the wall. It's great!
I thought Murphy beds were a UK thing! There was an episode of Are You Being Served with a plot that featured a Murphy bed prominently. There was also one featured in the UK comedy series Allo Allo. I've never seen one in the US, though I imagine in Manhattan, where apartments can be minuscule, they might be more popular.
When I was a kid in the 60s we called them bed springs. They were all metal with coils and weighed about a ton. Later on we bought a box spring with a wooden frame and it weighed far less.
no, you called them bedsprings because they were CALLED bed springs... box springs are box springs because it's a wooden frame (a box) as opposed to the all metal type. I would guess that the metal style was a pre-war innovation, and people returned to the wooden version during wartime efforts, or maybe just because it is easier to deal with the box spring: weighs less, cost less, easier to handle.
@@better.better I recall when my open springs were replaced with a box spring (early/mid 50s) and my mother said they were the absolute BEST because you didn't have to crawl under the bed or remove the mattress to dust the springs!!
In the '60s my parents called our couch a "divan." But actually, a divan is a deep sofa, generally without arms or a back, which can be used as a bed. It did fold out into a bed, so perhaps they believed that any sofa bed was a divan. I cannot ask them now, unfortunately.
@@EinsteinsHair it’s weird isn’t it, cos my folks say divan bed to mean a mattress on a fabric coated frame (and it sometimes has drawers in), but I can also see a divan as a backless seating/sleeping place
Before I forget ... here in California I was raised to call the attached covered area out front a porch and the area out back is a patio. I have 4 names for living room furniture... loveseat, sofa, couch, and sectional depending on the size. Loveseat is for 2, sofa 3, couch 4, sectional 5 or more. A single seat for a lady is usually in a bedroom a la a fainting couch or a settee.
Keep up the good work. As an American who grew up in a neighborhood with mainly Scottish immigrants, you often provide insight as to why I say things in a manner that isn't normal for most Americans, but is normal for Brits.
I grew up one town away from Westport, NY and never even realized that’s where the Adirondack chairs were invented. It’s nice to see one of my favorite UA-camrs giving my area a shoutout. The Adirondacks are an absolutely beautiful region, and there are some spectacular views around the High Peaks area, especially during peak foliage season in the fall.
Michigan Baby Boomer here (tail end). My family says "couch," but we had neighbors who were either WWII vets or Rosie Riveters, with kids our age, and their children sat on the Davenport to watch television after supper while their former Rosie Riveter mom warshed dishes in the kitchen zinc. I always felt like I was visiting a living history museum when I was there. They were also subscribed to the original "cable television" in the area, which gave them access to about 5 extra channels on their black & white TVs. They were kind of chintzy channels, like the time and weather clocks that were fixed to a board that was rotated in a circle. And yes, they were weather clocks, just like analog clocks, but the hands pointed to wind direction, wind speed, and icons that showed the forecast for rain, sun, clouds and snow. But mainly we watched old movies from the era of the parents' childhood and young adult years, even as we watched the parents wearing the same clothing and hairstyles and talking just like the people in those old movies. They even still had a wringer washer.
Wringer washer!! Hadn’t thought about those in years! My parents had one for the longest time because we were in some serious 😉 desert 🌵 and water was extremely expensive 💰💰
I'm interested to see you in Michigan use the term "warshed;" today I learned that it is a pronunciation of "washed" not limited to southwestern Pennsylvania, where I am from. So, may I ask what you call a carbonated beverage, such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Fresca? Here, it's traditionally pop, but a few people from here say soda, and in my opinion are acting too big for their britches. 😉
My mother (b. 1928) and my grandmother (b. 1890’s) in northern Indiana, always called them Davenports. I use the more common term couch though. I also migrated to TX.
The original wooden Adirondack chair: forever scraping and repainting. The plastic composite Adirondack chair (which is what I see in this video): heavenly
Regretfully though, those comfy resin plastic ones are quite light, hence even a small squall blows them off of your dock into the lake where you last see them floating off into the sunset.
There was a "Peanuts" comic strip from the late fifties or sixties where they are playing "Cowboys". Lucy comes running up to Charlie Brown complaining loudly about how Schroeder won't play fair: "I shot him and he won't fall dead!" Charlie Brown asks where she shot him, to which Lucy states, "I shot him right behind the davenport! And if that isn't fatal, I don't know what is!"
My mom always called it a davenport and is from Wisconsin. My dad was born in the south and called it a sofa. I've called if by both names. Up until maybe 5-10 years ago, my tendency strayed from davenport to sofa. I don't really like the sound of couch.
My grandmother from Minnesota also called it a Davenport. Her kids (my mom and my aunts and uncles) called it a couch as do I. I wonder if it is more a generational thing vs a colloquial thing.
Murphy Beds were hugely popular in France in the 20th Century.... probably due to small apartment sizes. In fact I can personally recall driving across France as a child (with my parents) in the late 1970's, and literally EVERY hotel we stayed at, had a murphy bed!!
My family would vacation in the Adirondack Mts. of New York, lovely wood cabins, those chairs, and bears going through your trash like they owned it. They kind of did own your trash unless you had a death wish. Those chairs were popular in Big Moose Lake.
On our first vacation to Old Forge, my now son-in-law grilled steaks one evening. He forgot to out the trash can into the shed. About three in the morning, their dog started to bark her head off. She looked out the front door. the trash had been knocked over and a bear was outside. Later we noticed some claw marks on the house and the window screen was ajar. That darn bear was trying together in! Yes. my future s-i-l knew about the importance of keeping your trash secure as he'd been coming up to the Adirondacks since he was little. He also used to be a camp counselor at a camp near Big Moose Lake.
@@JeffreyHawk Haha. I just moved to Chicago from NYC 2 months ago. Not used to this yet!! I thought they were done because I saw some expired ones on the ground. I guess they're still kickin! I grew up in WI & we never had them.
I live in Alabama and they love to shriek their heads off. I keep a fan going when I'm sleeping as I like the ambient noise but it also works to block out the screeching.
My grandparents called the sofa a devan, pronounced in Okie language, DA-van. I flip between couch and sofa. I visualize a couch as something hard, straight, square, line, while a sofa is a soft, fluffy and comfy.
Yeah, I think we can come up with some oddities in furniture, but I suspect both populations on both sides of the pond understand what to sit on and what to put a plate on to eat. And since I am stricken with the disease of crossword puzzles (American version usually, but I sometimes do the cryptic version when I run across it) I knew every version of sofa that you mentioned. We are more alike on both sides of the pond than we are different. My wife and I watch a LOT of BBC programs! (Well, she watches, I mostly sleep, but that is only because of the time of the night.)
My great-grandmother had a metal "glider" on her front porch. It seated two and rocked gently back and forth within a couple of inches limit. As I remember.
Here in the Northeast US, generations of my family always called them settees, too! Back in the late 1950s, my parents bought their huge settee and matching upholstered chair from a high end furniture store in Manhattan. They had super deep seats (even we kids had long legs), super-dense down-filled cushions, and were built on hardwood frames that didn’t twist when the pieces were moved. You can’t find that quality today. Mom got them reupholstered after about 20 years. Also, we always had big wood red and white painted Adirondack chairs and two-seaters at our lake’s edges - but they had really big ‘paddle’ arm rests (big enough to fit an appetizer plate, a beanbag ashtray, plus your arm), and magazine and newspaper racks built into their bases! I loved lake living and the memories so much, I once painted a watercolor of the waterfront and those chairs (some turned over to lose the prior night’s rain).
LOL...as someone from the ADKs I gotta admit i was impressed by your pronunciation of Adirondacks. Then you explained your journey to the proper pronunciation. Now say Sacandaga!
Forgot about the term Davenport. I grew up with it in the 60s. Haven’t heard that term in decades. Before box springs were widespread, there was another style of bed called Hollywood beds which had the connected coils like the box spring but were completely exposed springs (no box). A thick mattress was laid on top but there was no bedframe whatsoever. It made it easier to use a torch to destroy bedbugs and their eggs from the springs. The downside was that the springs had a tendency to catch and snag bedding and would bend out of shape over time. Now that’s a blast from the past!
2:02 Similar to what you are talking about are regions and groups who call a refrigerator, Frigidaire. There are also regions and groups who call a tissue, Kleenex. I have heard the word Davenport used for sofa, but it is very rare.
I have almost every piece of furniture mentioned here, including a box spring and a slat support bed. My Adirondack is on the front porch. The only time I've ever seen a murphy bed was a studio apartment my brother had in the 1980s. I wouldn't mind one of those now.
Growing up in the West I learned Davenport, but my friends would giggle. I learned couch and sofa later. Found it was something my mom learned as her family was from Kentucky.
My parents used that term as well and are in Michigan. I still use it in my head sometimes, although I still connect it with the most uncomfortable one they bought when I was young.
My Canadian family of Anglo-Irish descent called it a chesterfield. Since no one I knew as a child called it that, I quickly switched to couch or sofa depending on context.
We bought a mattress last year. Typically you buy a box springs with the mattress as a set, but I was informed that box springs are now obsolete. "Foundations" are now sold with mattresses.
As someone a stone’s throw from the Adirondacks, I’m glad he got around to the realization that they’re named after the mountains. I’ll take all the Upstate acknowledgement I can get.
Way back in the '50s and early 60's I heard sofa/couch/davenport/chesterfield all used. Nowadays it is mainly sofa or couch. BTW, the first apartment my late wife and I lived in back in 1978 was a furnished. We negotiated that as we bought our own furniture, the rent would be reduced. Fast forward and while in the process of moving from California to Arizona, we rented a furnished apartment until we bought a house.
"Chesterfield" was the common term across all of Canada at one point, but getting steadily less so. I also don't hear people say "serviette" as often as "napkin" anymore.
A friend of mine in college moved into an OLD apartment building in our city and it not only had a Murphy bed that folded up behind lovely oak doors, but also had a wall safe (which we could never open)
11:29 "Thomas Lee, who was based in Westport, New York..." Funny you should mention that, I was chilling out after work at Ballard Park in an Adirondack chair... in Westport. Just yesterday. Funny how this video wound up on my "For You" feed. 🤔
Laurence, in addition to the term Adirondack applying to the mtns. in the northern part of the state, they apply to the huge Adirondack Park, which begins just a short drive north of Albany, continuing almost to the Canadian border, and covering nearly 20% of the entire state.
Ooo Laurence. Your talk of porch swings and Davenports reminded me of my grandparents home, and I wondered if you've come across gliders? Often a 2 seat or 3 seat bench, some with cushions, some not, that are common on porches, especially screened ones. Nearly the glorious motion of a swing, without having to suspend it. Are they available and/or common in the UK?
Gliders were great fun, especially if you were a kid. My cousins and I always used to commandeer the glider on our grandparents' porch. Alas, now only the oldest houses in the oldest neighborhoods have porches and probably without gliders. Ranch houses, especially in the West, pretty much took over in the 50s and 60s - no porches, no basements.
Furnished apartments are also more expensive per month. The longer you stay the less sense it makes. Since furniture is easily damaged, one can expect a much higher security / cleaning deposit.
@@larryprice5658 That makes sense I suppose. I just moved into my first apartment and my wife had had a blast making the place fit her aesthetic. I don't really care what it looks like so I let her do everything, but if I had furniture that wasn't technically mine I would go crazy so in a way I'm glad we own all the stuff in here, so if any of it breaks it's just a matter of throwing it away.
@@aprilpotter3054 If you're lucky, the landlord might be willing to take some of the original furnishings you're replacing away, gratis. Mostly that's just when they're in the process of preparing another apartment to be rented, though.
Settee is usually an antique small love seat type sofa. The Adirondack chairs sloped seat has one sitting appropriately. The knees are supposed to be higher than your hips to relieve back pain and so forth.
My maternal grandmother worked at the tuberculosis sanitorium in Saranac Lake, NY. Mom was born in Saranac Lake. As an Adirondack native, I can say I am not a fan of the Adirondack chair. Mostly bc my aging body finds it easier to sit down with an assist from gravity than to stand up to the adversity of gravity. 🤣
I heard a sofa called a davenport in Minnesota and South Dakota. Otherwise, it was couch, sofa or loveseat (smallish sofa). Interesting about the Murphy bed!
It's interesting that Adirondak Chairs were invented in upstate New York but today are the iconic symbol of beach leisure. You even had a picture of them on the beach. Everyone dreams of sitting on the beack under a palm tree sipping on a large tropical drink through a large colorful straw, adorned with a tiny umbrella and a slice of pineapple stuck on the rim.
Nobody lugs those heavy chairs to the beach. We use “ fishermen “ chairs. Those are the guys who beach fish, who bury the end of the big rods in the sand. They sit low and have built in foot rests and double drink holders in the armrests.
As a short-legged person, I have never in my life encountered an Adirondack chair that was comfortable to sit in, but getting out of them is damn near impossible. I will never understand why they're so popular.
I grew up (1970s Toronto suburb) calling them Chesterfields, but the other kids on my street did not. I usually call them couches now. The Chesterfield Shop is a company that still sells them
In my family's US usage, a settee is a more formal piece, not very stuffed or comfortable. A sofa was fancier, like for the formal living room, and a couch was less formal, like for the family room or den.
In the mountain states of the US, Adirondack chairs even have their own variant, in that of ski chairs, not the chairs form ski lifts though that’s also a thing, but Adirondack chairs made out of skis. This type of chair is especially common in Colorado, heck I have one in my backyard.
I seem to remember an episode of the British sitcom "Are You Being Served" where Mr Humphries gets tangled up in a murphy bed. That has to be 45 years ago.
@@johnhelwig8745 I haven’t seen that one, but I do remember when Lucy and them went to Japan and they were in their room and she thought the dresser was a small Murphy bed but the hostess said no Murphy’s bed then she realized that they had to sleep on the floor with pads underneath them
Great episode. One of the things I love best about AYBS, and so many British sitcoms, is the inclusion of so many people with a range of accents and physical characteristics. Talent was more important that fitting a visual mold, or so it seemed to me. The naughty humor with Mrs. Slocombe's cat also tickled my funny bone.
yep Season 10 Episode 6 - Friends & Neighbours he wasn't alone Ms. Belfridge and 2 babies were along for the ride. There is also the season 1 episode where Rumbold and Lucas share a mobile Murphy bed on the sales floor.
it was always explained to me growing up that a couch was a low-backed 3+ "seat". sofa was a high backed 3+ seat. and a davenport was a fancy 3 or 4 seater with middle arm rests.
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...so you must have noticed during the edit but do you even _hear_ the cicadas anymore?
9:47 just call them lawn chairs
❤❤
Mate you are loosing it, Davenport? Na mate you meant to say Chesterfield
Don't tell me what to do.
The funny thing about complaining about the noise of the planes is how loud the cicadas are. I couldn’t even hear the planes.
"What?"
- "I SAID I COULDN"T HEAR THE PLANES OVER THE CICADAS!!!"
I was just wondering how he stands the cicadas since he's not from here. I've lived here all my life and I hate that noise. It's really the tree frog noise every summer that I hate, but when the cicadas came out and joined the chorus this year, I thought the tornado siren was going off. Then it didn't stop for hours, and the horrific realization slowly dawned on me... Days and days of this whining, droning siren blaring over that whirring clicking tree frog noise, and then the snakes came. I was waiting for more plagues. They all left, and then the scorching heat came. The country is fun like that. Can't wait for the fall when we get the deer-jumping-in-front-of-our -pickup-truck plague.
@@cocobutter3175 As someone who's lived with Cicada's all my life I've completely droned out the noise and it's like it doesn't even exist for me. Sometimes I have to be reminded the noise is indeed still there.
@@cocobutter3175, the cicadas this late in the season come out annually in Chicagoland and other areas in the USA -- as opposed to the "one in a lifetime" occurrence of the 13-year and 17-year cicadas emerging in the SAME year. (OH MY, those were REALLY NOISY!)
@@cocobutter3175he did a video on cicadas a few months ago, when it was the “thing” in the news.
But like you or someone else said, cicadas are ever present, just a few special broods that arrive every so often.
About 30 years ago, a business associate mentioned that she would be vacationing in the Adirondacks. I flippantly asked "Are you going to study the chairs?"
When she returned, she presented me a stack of photos of every Adirondack chair she saw while on vacation. Even though each chair was clearly an Adirondack, details such as the curve of the back and the angles of the seat and legs were significantly different.
My bucket list includes building a set of mismatched Adirondack chairs, using those photos as guides.
This needs to be a youtube channel
You may find the Wave Hill chair of interest as well!
These chairs are so cute in various colours, for little kids. They are a trap for adults !!
This is a wonderful read, thank you! Sounds like a fun collection to receive!
My uncle remodeled one of his Adirondack chairs. He replaced one of the armrests with a piece with a wider area at the end (like those one piece classroom desks) and added a tapered hole for a small bucket. He'd fill the bucket with ice and a few beverages so he didn't have to get up so often. Later, he changed it again to hold an insulated ice bucket with insulated lid. Don't know if he saw that somewhere or not.
Another furniture item that differs across the pond is the wardrobe. Here in the U.S. they are far less common (due to newer housing with built-in closets), and rarely if ever serve as portals to magical lands filled with talking allegorical animals.
Chifferobes. My grandmother had 2. Her house only had 1 closet. We had a metal wardrobe, as my sister had no closet so used mine. She and my mother had a LOT of clothes!
@@sophierobinson2738”chifferobe” gawd, I haven’t heard that word in forever… I’m a month short of 79 years old.
"rarely if ever" 😭😭
I always heard them called armoires but that might be the wrong word maybe we're not cultured
@@AmyKozerski In my understanding, a chifferobe has a space for hanging clothes on one side & drawers in the other side, both sides enclosed by double-doors. An armoire is often a larger, heavier piece - they were originally the cabinet used to store arms & armor, hence the name. Now, they can be used for clothes, books, shoes, anything - whereas the chifferobe & wardrobe are just for clothing storage. Of course now, as people use these pieces less & definitions have been forgotten, many interchange the words as if they are the same. The more high-end furniture stores often retain the older definitions.
you left out one of the best benefits of Adirondack chair arms -- you can put a beer on them and still have plenty of space for half a roast chicken
Nachos!
💯 I used to get work done in the Adirondack chairs next to the café on the pier downtown. For that reason precisely
😂😂😂😂
I feel like this is the most mid-western use for a piece of furniture, and I'm here for it!! 🎉
But, sadly, with time you will have to get up and out of the Adirondack chair. Never an easy task for many.
Southern US here. Couch can refer to any multi-seat chair. "Sofa" usually refers to 3+ seaters while "love seat" refers to a cozy 2-seater.
When I was a kid my father "invested" in a "Davenport" with matching chair. The "Davenport" being this really long 7+ sofa/couch....it fit all 6 of us kids while dad had "His Chair"...to watch Walt Disney and Mutual of Ohama's "Wild Kingdom" on Sunday nights right after bath time. But we casually always called it a couch.
Same in New England.
@@josephcernansky1794
You just described my childhood , Dad's chair , being the youngest, I had the floor, and TV watching. 1960+ era.
Thank You Captain Obvious.
@@lennybuttz2162 **KAREN ALERT**
Porches were very popular in areas that were real hot in the days before air conditioning when families would sit out on the porch at night because it was cooler than inside and would even listen to the radio and hang out there. My mom said in the summers she would sometimes even sleep on their screened in front porch when it was real hot, and everyone felt safer back then.
Yep. 50plus years ago
When I was growing up we had two cots in the screened porch. They were used every night from May-September. We had a neighbor who slept on his porch year round - in Maine.
Our hospital had them at one time the end of every floor. They were screened so that patients could lie in the cooler night air in the summer and breathe a bit easier.
We bought 2 of them and immediately gave them to the very young neighbors...because there should be an age limit on these things! They're NOT meant for old people!
Not only that, but before 60 or 70 years ago, it was specifically front porches--so that people could interact with their neighbors while sitting on the porch. Later on, people retreated to back porches--specifically to avoid their neighbors.
Little known fact/trivia: Adirondack chairs originally had their characteristic sloped seat because the were designed to sit (pun intended) facing downhill on a slope - which would make the seat level, rather than sloped back, but nowadays, their lounge-chair aspect is their feature. (Even though that makes them hard to get out of, sometimes.)
...Or so I understand. (Yeah, yeah, I read a book about the design history of chairs, once. I'm a really exciting guy.... Really!)
I HATE these sloped chairs!! They need to stop making them because, like you said, they're hard to get out of! Plus, I HATE sitting back in my chair - or car seat - like some low riding thug lol 😊
😊😊😊
@@FourFish47
Well, if they're hard to get out of, I find that bringing an extra drink makes that less of a problem... But yeah, one is kinda stuck in them for a while...
I’m getting another of these chairs from Lowes this weekend. I love mine on my FRONT porch with a cheap cushion. Oh, with a cooler of cold beer in front of me watching UA-cam.
@@FourFish47 I totally agree. They are very uncomfortable and hard to get out of. I'd rather sit in the ground.
Front porch swings are popular in America for a few reasons. Our weather allows for a lot of time outdoors, particularly in the spring and summer. Moving back and forth on a porch swing stirs a little breeze, even if there's no wind around. Some homes in the American South had porch swings that could be made into a bed, offering fresh air on hot, still summer nights. There's also something quite comforting in a gentle swaying, back and forth. Think of rocking a fussy baby to sleep with just such a motion; it's soothing. With a swing on the front porch, you could easily socialize, inviting a friendly passerby to sit with you to enjoy a cool drink as you discover what the latest news might be in their lives. It's a comfortable place to pass the time and watch what's happening in your neighborhood.
I have fond memories of wrapping up in a blanket and drinking hot tea or cocoa when it was raining.
The loss of that sociability is one thing that has been blamed on changing home architecture. It varies by region, but having a patio in the back yard instead of a front porch, has been a long time trend for newer houses.
Loved to sit on the swing on the back porch which was high up the hillside to watch storms come up the valley....till the lightning and wind chased us inside. In the summer the entire family split up between the swings on the back porch and front porch along with the "glider" to sleep outdoors on hot humid nights. We lived on a side street, so it was fairly quiet and SAFE!.....we had plenty of guns handy, but NOBODY ever worried about safety or robbery when and where I grew up. HOW times have CHANGED in the USA!
Same with a rocking chair…
I had my naps on the front porch swing as did my daughters.
My grandmother, who lived in PA called her couches a Davenport. I live in the Midwest and call mine a couch. They however are advertised in the sales papers and commercials as sofas
Apparently, "sofa" still sounds a bit more refined than "couch." I'm in my 40s and am from the Midwest. My mom always corrected me as a child when I called it a couch instead of sofa.
I can confirm midwest grandparent called it a davenport
@@profosistsame here
We didn't call our sofa a davenport. But we had a table places behind the sofa that we called a davenport table
When I was a little kid (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) in northern Ohio everyone called it a davenport, as did my relatives in Michigan. I'm not sure when that changed, or if it did, because then we moved to California where no one called it a davenport - SoCal was couch territory. No one I knew called it a sofa unless you were referring to a sofa bed, but maybe we weren't high class enough. As far as settee, I think of that as a small couch (or double chair) for two people, whereas a couch can be 6-8 feet long depending on the size of your living room or den. (No one calls that room a parlor or lounge, although my Mom used to call it the "front room" as opposed to the den, maybe because that room was closest to the front door.
There's nothing better than sitting out on the porch with a beer during a warm summer rain storm. Porches are covered, patios are not, so you get to stay dry. This is dependent on a rain-storm and not just a storm. Lightning and flying debris are counter to the ambiance you're looking for.
This might sound silly but when you said “this is my experience and no one can take that away from me” it meant a lot to me.
My Southern grandmother called a couch a Divan, the first time she handed me a decorative pillow she'd just been gifted and instructed me to go into the parlor and put it on the Divan, I had no clue where to put it, lol. I use couch and sofa interchangeably.
Mine did too!! I’ve looked all through these comments and you and I are the only ones who said that. There was one person in Britain who said they called box springs a divan.🤗❤️🐝
My grandparents did as well in Ky. It got passed on down to us kids. I used to say it until I noticed everyone else said sofa or couch.
My grandma called it a davenport.
Divan…another term I haven’t heard in years and years.
Yep, I grew hearing 'divan' also. I've often wondered if it was slang for 'davenport'. Probably southern/country slang.
A friend of mine came from Kansas to attend college in upstate New York, and one of the things she wanted to see was "the Outer Rondacks."
:)
😆 😂
delightful
Ha ha! We’ll be retiring there, in a few years. That’s too cute.
That's a new one.... Although also a Kansan, I watched enough of Norm Abram on TOH and TNYW in the 80's and 90's to hear him say "Adirondack" many, many times. 😄
I call the back garden, the back yard!
The back yarden.
Also call it the backyard.
Finally figured out English always call their rear property a garden. I was totally confused thing that isn’t very pretty. Rather makes me now wonder what exactly an “English Garden” really is! Beautiful estate arboretum, or just a patch of dirt and grass?
Front yard, back yard, and two side yards. I’ve always been confused by the use of “garden” to refer to them.
@@DancingPony1966-kp1zr Exactly. You think you're going to see a beautiful "English garden" always talked about, and see just a postage stamp of grass and patio.
Congratulations on having the best incorporated, entertaining , and least annoying advertising piece within a UA-cam post ever!
I agree. I actually watched it all the way through... although I do wonder how much of a discount $30 off a position-controlled desk actually is. I suspect it falls under the "If you have to ask about the price, you can't afford it." category.
Yeah I have no interest but it flowed so well I let it play.
Jolly does a good sponsor added in,as well 😄.
@@kimnapier8387 I would probably go with The Why Files. The ads are fully on comedy skits that are almost better than the episodes.
I'd say you don't watch much UA-cam, but it is in the top 10... somewhere. Having said that, I still had to blow past because I am not remotely interested in an office chair. I don't even own/want any other type of chair.
Adirondack chairs are supremely comfortable. If an airline had all-Adirondack seating, they would have me as a customer for life.
Preach! I bought a cheapie plastic one a couple of years ago and I frequently fall asleep in it in my shaded back yard in the summer evenings. It's amusing that he mentions a cat in the lap as an excuse to not get out of a chair: Cat in lap + Adirondack chair...... ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
We have something similar in Canada called Muskoka chairs, which are incredibly popular. I, however, find them extremely uncomfortable. They are definitely not designed for short people.
I'm an 86yr old 3rd generation Central Californian, and we always called a couch a "chesterfield".
Chesterfield is a type of overstuffed tufted leather sofa from England!
To me, Chesterfields are the cigarettes my grandmother smoked
Chesterfield is also common parlance among Canadians of a certain age for pretty much any type of sofa or couch, but I think it's slowly falling out of use.
Like many things, the most popular brand in a local area often gets to be the generalized name for them there.
Like there's the common thing of what a public drinking fountain is called. The majority of the USA calls them either a water fountain or a drinking fountain. Where I am in Wisconsin they're bubblers, which was originally a brand of drinking fountains. This is mostly in a pocket around SE Wisconsin, so it's just a more local thing.
@@moxievision I hear you have to have something like a million dollars to get one (or an ottoman).
My grandparents had great big Adirondack chairs on their backyard stone patio from the 1950s until the early 2000s. My grandfather made them. They also had a swing under the vine-covered pergola. Flowers everywhere. It was Heaven.
In Ontario we call "Adirondack chairs" "Muskoka chairs", as our cottage country is in the Muskoka area of Ontario, not Adirondack, NY.
I've heard them called Muskoka chairs from BC to NS. I have one on my front step. Love my Muskoka chair!
@@wendyh2708 To be honest, I wasn't sure what they were called in the other provinces, so thanks for the info!
I call them that too! Southern Ontario
@@janinebean4276 Muskoka Chairs have become even better known throughout all of Canada ever since Loblaws PC (President's Choice) created a molded plastic resin version...which I find even more comfortable than the clunky wooden ones.
@@wendyh2708Yes, Canadians are wrong about many things (jk!:)
The Ottoman Empire died for this and you just call them "Little foot stools", like, damn man wtf. Great vid tho! I'm typing this from an Adirondack chair in my yard lol
(Chuckles) In the United States, there are families with relatives all over everywhere. So when they come to visit, a sofa, or couch, is often referred to as a guest bed…
Now that he mentioned it, that lawn does need a mowing. Glad to see the pupper spending time with Laurence while filming
In Tennessee, we “ Cut the grass”
Nah, just looks like lush naturally healthy grass. Can't stand when people feel the need to give their yard a buzzcut every 3 days. It's a mental illness.
@user-kp6we9qw7i 'Whereas in my central PA region we just say "The grass needs mowed." 😀
I say "gotta go mow the lawn"
I'm afraid to count the numbers of Adirondack chairs that we have here at the lake. They vary in design. In the living room, they're white-painted log-framed chairs, while the front porch has four red ones like your blue ones. The lower porch has white versions. Our family room is graced by two beautifully crafted pine Adirondacks that my late father designed and made as gifts when my husband and I built this house. I grew up in the same home in which my mother grew up, and one of my earliest memories is sitting in my dad's lap on a white-painted Adirondack chair that my mother's father had made in the 1930s. The chairs were gathered under a bower of huge trees, it was late summer and, yes, as in your video, a chorus of cicadas was creating that lovely, pulsating background "music." Love it.
My son built a Murphy Bed for his California King mattress. It doubles as a guest bed and a sound barrier for my daughter-in-law's office which is on the other side of the wall. It's great!
My sister had a Murphy bed built as a guest bed. It had to be assembled in place.
I thought Murphy beds were a UK thing! There was an episode of Are You Being Served with a plot that featured a Murphy bed prominently. There was also one featured in the UK comedy series Allo Allo. I've never seen one in the US, though I imagine in Manhattan, where apartments can be minuscule, they might be more popular.
Consider yourself
A chair
Consider yourself
Part of the furniture
ROFLMAO
Very clever...the song from Oliver, which took place in England. 😏
Excellent!😅
Lol! Very good
👏👏👏👏👏
When I was a kid in the 60s we called them bed springs. They were all metal with coils and weighed about a ton. Later on we bought a box spring with a wooden frame and it weighed far less.
no, you called them bedsprings because they were CALLED bed springs... box springs are box springs because it's a wooden frame (a box) as opposed to the all metal type. I would guess that the metal style was a pre-war innovation, and people returned to the wooden version during wartime efforts, or maybe just because it is easier to deal with the box spring: weighs less, cost less, easier to handle.
@@better.better I recall when my open springs were replaced with a box spring (early/mid 50s) and my mother said they were the absolute BEST because you didn't have to crawl under the bed or remove the mattress to dust the springs!!
You missed the bed inside the couch; A fold-away bed. Popular in America.
Also called a sofa sleeper or hide-a-bed.
A sofa bed? We have those in the uk
In the '60s my parents called our couch a "divan." But actually, a divan is a deep sofa, generally without arms or a back, which can be used as a bed. It did fold out into a bed, so perhaps they believed that any sofa bed was a divan. I cannot ask them now, unfortunately.
@@EinsteinsHair it’s weird isn’t it, cos my folks say divan bed to mean a mattress on a fabric coated frame (and it sometimes has drawers in), but I can also see a divan as a backless seating/sleeping place
And the futon!
Before I forget ... here in California I was raised to call the attached covered area out front a porch and the area out back is a patio.
I have 4 names for living room furniture... loveseat, sofa, couch, and sectional depending on the size. Loveseat is for 2, sofa 3, couch 4, sectional 5 or more. A single seat for a lady is usually in a bedroom a la a fainting couch or a settee.
Keep up the good work. As an American who grew up in a neighborhood with mainly Scottish immigrants, you often provide insight as to why I say things in a manner that isn't normal for most Americans, but is normal for Brits.
I grew up one town away from Westport, NY and never even realized that’s where the Adirondack chairs were invented. It’s nice to see one of my favorite UA-camrs giving my area a shoutout.
The Adirondacks are an absolutely beautiful region, and there are some spectacular views around the High Peaks area, especially during peak foliage season in the fall.
I had to pause at 8:20 to see if they were my cicadas or your cicadas 😂
I did the same!! 😂
Michigan Baby Boomer here (tail end). My family says "couch," but we had neighbors who were either WWII vets or Rosie Riveters, with kids our age, and their children sat on the Davenport to watch television after supper while their former Rosie Riveter mom warshed dishes in the kitchen zinc. I always felt like I was visiting a living history museum when I was there. They were also subscribed to the original "cable television" in the area, which gave them access to about 5 extra channels on their black & white TVs. They were kind of chintzy channels, like the time and weather clocks that were fixed to a board that was rotated in a circle. And yes, they were weather clocks, just like analog clocks, but the hands pointed to wind direction, wind speed, and icons that showed the forecast for rain, sun, clouds and snow. But mainly we watched old movies from the era of the parents' childhood and young adult years, even as we watched the parents wearing the same clothing and hairstyles and talking just like the people in those old movies. They even still had a wringer washer.
Wringer washer!! Hadn’t thought about those in years!
My parents had one for the longest time because we were in some serious 😉 desert 🌵 and water was extremely expensive 💰💰
I'm interested to see you in Michigan use the term "warshed;" today I learned that it is a pronunciation of "washed" not limited to southwestern Pennsylvania, where I am from. So, may I ask what you call a carbonated beverage, such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Fresca? Here, it's traditionally pop, but a few people from here say soda, and in my opinion are acting too big for their britches. 😉
I would love to have a wringer washer.
My grandma lived in Michigan and said "davenport" as well .... ! and my Mother -in-law (god rest her soul) always added the R to wash...... 😄
Try a home or hardware store in Mexico. I’ve seen them there brand new.
My Grandmother called sofas Davenports. She was born in 1894, in the upper Midwest.
My grandma b. 1899 in Indiana also called them davenports. Somehow I ended up calling them couches.
Mine did too. Davenport. Born in Upstate NY. 1918
Was she from Davenport Iowa?
My mother (b. 1928) and my grandmother (b. 1890’s) in northern Indiana, always called them Davenports. I use the more common term couch though. I also migrated to TX.
My grandmother was from Tennessee and she also called them davenports. Of course, she pronounced it, "dab'n'port".🤣
My paternal grand mother called a sofa a “Chesterfield”. Many new RVs have Murphy beds for space saving.
this is a giggle, pulling together such an odd topic. fun!
The original wooden Adirondack chair: forever scraping and repainting.
The plastic composite Adirondack chair (which is what I see in this video): heavenly
I just bought two Adirondack chairs for my fire pit area. My grandfather every few years would do the scraping and repainting…mine are the composite…
Regretfully though, those comfy resin plastic ones are quite light, hence even a small squall blows them off of your dock into the lake where you last see them floating off into the sunset.
@@alecs1196 Ours are heavy same as wood is
Just use linseed oil, and oil it every-other year or so. No need to scrape it. That might only work if you buy unpainted ones to start with.
My dad makes them. They live at a lake, so he mostly winds up making them out of teak. Expensive, but they last a lot longer.
LOL! Always interesting Citizen Laurence.
There was a "Peanuts" comic strip from the late fifties or sixties where they are playing "Cowboys". Lucy comes running up to Charlie Brown complaining loudly about how Schroeder won't play fair: "I shot him and he won't fall dead!"
Charlie Brown asks where she shot him, to which Lucy states, "I shot him right behind the davenport! And if that isn't fatal, I don't know what is!"
September 25th, 1953
Charles Schultz was from the Midwest (Minnesota) and born in 1922, so that may explain the usage.
I remember reading this in a collection, and though initially confused figured out from context it was a couch.
Growing up in Iowa in the 60s, we called the sofa a davenport.
My grandmother called it that too. She spent most of her life in California but did start off in Nebraska.
My mom always called it a davenport and is from Wisconsin. My dad was born in the south and called it a sofa. I've called if by both names. Up until maybe 5-10 years ago, my tendency strayed from davenport to sofa. I don't really like the sound of couch.
My grandmother from Minnesota also called it a Davenport. Her kids (my mom and my aunts and uncles) called it a couch as do I. I wonder if it is more a generational thing vs a colloquial thing.
Did you sit on your davenport in Davenport?
@@securitycamera8776 damn, you beat me to it....
My mom referred to a settee as a loveseat.
I think a settee is a smaller couch-like seat, less stuffed, more uncomfortable, more formal.
Murphy Beds were hugely popular in France in the 20th Century.... probably due to small apartment sizes. In fact I can personally recall driving across France as a child (with my parents) in the late 1970's, and literally EVERY hotel we stayed at, had a murphy bed!!
My family would vacation in the Adirondack Mts. of New York, lovely wood cabins, those chairs, and bears going through your trash like they owned it. They kind of did own your trash unless you had a death wish. Those chairs were popular in Big Moose Lake.
Yes, the bears up there own everything that smells like it could be food, and rightly so
On our first vacation to Old Forge, my now son-in-law grilled steaks one evening. He forgot to out the trash can into the shed. About three in the morning, their dog started to bark her head off. She looked out the front door. the trash had been knocked over and a bear was outside. Later we noticed some claw marks on the house and the window screen was ajar. That darn bear was trying together in! Yes. my future s-i-l knew about the importance of keeping your trash secure as he'd been coming up to the Adirondacks since he was little. He also used to be a camp counselor at a camp near Big Moose Lake.
Hearing rhe cicadas buzzing made me think i was hearing them at my house. But the windows are closed and the AC is on!
LOL, same. They're going nuts outside right now, so I thought I left the back door open.
@@JeffreyHawk Haha. I just moved to Chicago from NYC 2 months ago. Not used to this yet!! I thought they were done because I saw some expired ones on the ground. I guess they're still kickin! I grew up in WI & we never had them.
I live in Alabama and they love to shriek their heads off. I keep a fan going when I'm sleeping as I like the ambient noise but it also works to block out the screeching.
@@phazesixI pray they don’t make it to Southern California! 🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗
In Australia the box spring bed is considered two pieces, the sprung base and the mattress, together they are called an ensemble
It’s the same in the U.S. you don’t sleep on a box spring
Love how the paid advertising was done. Not annoying at all.
I thought that desk/top/counter thing a ma jig was pretty cool!
My grandparents called the sofa a devan, pronounced in Okie language, DA-van. I flip between couch and sofa. I visualize a couch as something hard, straight, square, line, while a sofa is a soft, fluffy and comfy.
The Adirondack chairs!! Got two in my backyard 😅
Yeah, I think we can come up with some oddities in furniture, but I suspect both populations on both sides of the pond understand what to sit on and what to put a plate on to eat.
And since I am stricken with the disease of crossword puzzles (American version usually, but I sometimes do the cryptic version when I run across it) I knew every version of sofa that you mentioned.
We are more alike on both sides of the pond than we are different. My wife and I watch a LOT of BBC programs! (Well, she watches, I mostly sleep, but that is only because of the time of the night.)
Back in the 50s we used to have lawn/patio chairs that were all metal and you could bounce in them. Loved those.
They are still around. I have 2 I sit in all the time.
My great-grandmother had a metal "glider" on her front porch. It seated two and rocked gently back and forth within a couple of inches limit. As I remember.
Here in the Northeast US, generations of my family always called them settees, too! Back in the late 1950s, my parents bought their huge settee and matching upholstered chair from a high end furniture store in Manhattan. They had super deep seats (even we kids had long legs), super-dense down-filled cushions, and were built on hardwood frames that didn’t twist when the pieces were moved. You can’t find that quality today. Mom got them reupholstered after about 20 years. Also, we always had big wood red and white painted Adirondack chairs and two-seaters at our lake’s edges - but they had really big ‘paddle’ arm rests (big enough to fit an appetizer plate, a beanbag ashtray, plus your arm), and magazine and newspaper racks built into their bases! I loved lake living and the memories so much, I once painted a watercolor of the waterfront and those chairs (some turned over to lose the prior night’s rain).
LOL...as someone from the ADKs I gotta admit i was impressed by your pronunciation of Adirondacks. Then you explained your journey to the proper pronunciation. Now say Sacandaga!
...or Susquehanna...
Or Ticonderoga
Forgot about the term Davenport. I grew up with it in the 60s. Haven’t heard that term in decades. Before box springs were widespread, there was another style of bed called Hollywood beds which had the connected coils like the box spring but were completely exposed springs (no box). A thick mattress was laid on top but there was no bedframe whatsoever. It made it easier to use a torch to destroy bedbugs and their eggs from the springs. The downside was that the springs had a tendency to catch and snag bedding and would bend out of shape over time. Now that’s a blast from the past!
@3:08 "....just sort of sailing around South America as you do." 🤣🤣🤣
The greatest American furniture invention in my opinion is the rocking chair!
I remember using davenport, then couch. I'm in Michigan.
We called them that when we were kids. Also from Michigan.
2:02 Similar to what you are talking about are regions and groups who call a refrigerator, Frigidaire. There are also regions and groups who call a tissue, Kleenex. I have heard the word Davenport used for sofa, but it is very rare.
and Xerox.
@@mmmpotstickers8684 Thanks, I forgot about that. In fact, that is the only thing people call copying.
Also "coke" as a generic term for carbonated beverages.
@@CptJistuce Are ya'll talking about coke cola? LOL
@@wayneyadams Coca-Cola is a kind of coke, sure.
Live in the South now, but I still call it a couch. I even call the loveseat a couch. First hour!
Not just in the south! Love seats and sofas are specific cushion numbers for a couch!
My granny (who grew up in Idaho) used to call couches Davenports sometimes. I had forgotten that 😅
My grandma and Great-grandparents did as well after spending most of their life in Iowa and Indiana.
I have almost every piece of furniture mentioned here, including a box spring and a slat support bed. My Adirondack is on the front porch. The only time I've ever seen a murphy bed was a studio apartment my brother had in the 1980s. I wouldn't mind one of those now.
Growing up in the West I learned Davenport, but my friends would giggle. I learned couch and sofa later. Found it was something my mom learned as her family was from Kentucky.
My parents used that term as well and are in Michigan. I still use it in my head sometimes, although I still connect it with the most uncomfortable one they bought when I was young.
My Canadian family of Anglo-Irish descent called it a chesterfield. Since no one I knew as a child called it that, I quickly switched to couch or sofa depending on context.
We bought a mattress last year. Typically you buy a box springs with the mattress as a set, but I was informed that box springs are now obsolete. "Foundations" are now sold with mattresses.
As someone a stone’s throw from the Adirondacks, I’m glad he got around to the realization that they’re named after the mountains. I’ll take all the Upstate acknowledgement I can get.
Hearing the cicadas singing away was my favorite part of this video. Yay for the cicadas.
That's an interestingly niche topic for sure!
I grew up in the Adirondacks and I'm pleased the chairs rank so highly
Way back in the '50s and early 60's I heard sofa/couch/davenport/chesterfield all used. Nowadays it is mainly sofa or couch. BTW, the first apartment my late wife and I lived in back in 1978 was a furnished. We negotiated that as we bought our own furniture, the rent would be reduced. Fast forward and while in the process of moving from California to Arizona, we rented a furnished apartment until we bought a house.
In Canada a couch is also called a chesterfield. A string trimmer is a whipper snipper. Garbage disposal is a garburator.
Growing up in Newfoundland, what others elsewhere called a couch, we called a chesterfield.
"Chesterfield" was the common term across all of Canada at one point, but getting steadily less so. I also don't hear people say "serviette" as often as "napkin" anymore.
A friend of mine in college moved into an OLD apartment building in our city and it not only had a Murphy bed that folded up behind lovely oak doors, but also had a wall safe (which we could never open)
in Canada we have Muskoka chairs which are almost exactly the same as an Adirondack chair, only the back legs are longer and bow flat.
11:29 "Thomas Lee, who was based in Westport, New York..." Funny you should mention that, I was chilling out after work at Ballard Park in an Adirondack chair... in Westport. Just yesterday. Funny how this video wound up on my "For You" feed. 🤔
At 1:55 Thank you for bringing up Davenport. I’ve only ever heard it in the Midwest. No one out in Cali seems to use that term. Thank you!
My parents used Davenport and we're from Spokane
@@M167A1 Same here, grew up in Spokane and learned Davenport, but it came from my Mom from Kentucky.
I can confirm midwest grandparent called it a davenport
And no one in California refers to it as "cali"
Laurence, in addition to the term Adirondack applying to the mtns. in the northern part of the state, they apply to the huge Adirondack Park, which begins just a short drive north of Albany, continuing almost to the Canadian border, and covering nearly 20% of the entire state.
It's the largest State Park in the country, bigger than the Everglades, Yellowstone and Grand Canyon National Parks combined.
At six million acres it's larger than about 50 whole countries. Small ones... but still.
Ooo Laurence. Your talk of porch swings and Davenports reminded me of my grandparents home, and I wondered if you've come across gliders? Often a 2 seat or 3 seat bench, some with cushions, some not, that are common on porches, especially screened ones. Nearly the glorious motion of a swing, without having to suspend it. Are they available and/or common in the UK?
Gliders were great fun, especially if you were a kid. My cousins and I always used to commandeer the glider on our grandparents' porch. Alas, now only the oldest houses in the oldest neighborhoods have porches and probably without gliders. Ranch houses, especially in the West, pretty much took over in the 50s and 60s - no porches, no basements.
Your little laugh at your own Tyler Howe pun made me smile.
Apartments that COME FURNISHED? That sounds awesome, and simultaneously I can see me wife slowly getting rid of it all and replacing it anyway.
If you rent a furnished apartment that includes a bed. Throw away the mattress.
Furnished apartments are also more expensive per month. The longer you stay the less sense it makes.
Since furniture is easily damaged, one can expect a much higher security / cleaning deposit.
@@larryprice5658 That makes sense I suppose. I just moved into my first apartment and my wife had had a blast making the place fit her aesthetic. I don't really care what it looks like so I let her do everything, but if I had furniture that wasn't technically mine I would go crazy so in a way I'm glad we own all the stuff in here, so if any of it breaks it's just a matter of throwing it away.
I suspect you cannot dispose of the furniture b/c it belongs to the landlord. You would have to store the original stuff.
@@aprilpotter3054 If you're lucky, the landlord might be willing to take some of the original furnishings you're replacing away, gratis. Mostly that's just when they're in the process of preparing another apartment to be rented, though.
Settee is usually an antique small love seat type sofa.
The Adirondack chairs sloped seat has one sitting appropriately. The knees are supposed to be higher than your hips to relieve back pain and so forth.
That older Laurence is cuuuute.
Although I know “sofa”, I always call it the couch. The shorter 2 seater the “love seat”.
Ooooh, Laurence! Big time subscriber here!
My maternal grandmother worked at the tuberculosis sanitorium in Saranac Lake, NY. Mom was born in Saranac Lake. As an Adirondack native, I can say I am not a fan of the Adirondack chair. Mostly bc my aging body finds it easier to sit down with an assist from gravity than to stand up to the adversity of gravity. 🤣
This was sofa king interesting 😏
😂😂
Porch swings are oddly popular in Scotland, the weather is not suitable but strangely many houses have them there.
I heard a sofa called a davenport in Minnesota and South Dakota. Otherwise, it was couch, sofa or loveseat (smallish sofa).
Interesting about the Murphy bed!
It's interesting that Adirondak Chairs were invented in upstate New York but today are the iconic symbol of beach leisure. You even had a picture of them on the beach. Everyone dreams of sitting on the beack under a palm tree sipping on a large tropical drink through a large colorful straw, adorned with a tiny umbrella and a slice of pineapple stuck on the rim.
Nobody lugs those heavy chairs to the beach. We use “ fishermen “ chairs. Those are the guys who beach fish, who bury the end of the big rods in the sand. They sit low and have built in foot rests and double drink holders in the armrests.
7:37 Murphy beds I've never ran across any, but what about Hide-a-way ??
Growing up in Massachusetts, couch and sofa was used interchangeably. But most often couch.
As a short-legged person, I have never in my life encountered an Adirondack chair that was comfortable to sit in, but getting out of them is damn near impossible. I will never understand why they're so popular.
A porch swing in the back of the house sounds like a patio swing to me...? Fun video. Thanks Laurence!
Where I'm from:
Sofa = Chesterfield
Adirondack chair = Muskoka chair
🇨🇦
I grew up (1970s Toronto suburb) calling them Chesterfields, but the other kids on my street did not. I usually call them couches now. The Chesterfield Shop is a company that still sells them
It looks like a settee is the equivalent of a love seat (2 cushions). A couch / sofa has 3 cushions.
Here, couch is any soft-cushioned, multi-seated furniture. Love seat is specific to 2 seats, and sofa to 3 seats.
4 or more is a sectional.
In my family's US usage, a settee is a more formal piece, not very stuffed or comfortable. A sofa was fancier, like for the formal living room, and a couch was less formal, like for the family room or den.
Sofa, couch, davenport. :)
In the mountain states of the US, Adirondack chairs even have their own variant, in that of ski chairs, not the chairs form ski lifts though that’s also a thing, but Adirondack chairs made out of skis. This type of chair is especially common in Colorado, heck I have one in my backyard.
I seem to remember an episode of the British sitcom "Are You Being Served" where Mr Humphries gets tangled up in a murphy bed. That has to be 45 years ago.
@@johnhelwig8745 I haven’t seen that one, but I do remember when Lucy and them went to Japan and they were in their room and she thought the dresser was a small Murphy bed but the hostess said no Murphy’s bed then she realized that they had to sleep on the floor with pads underneath them
Great episode. One of the things I love best about AYBS, and so many British sitcoms, is the inclusion of so many people with a range of accents and physical characteristics. Talent was more important that fitting a visual mold, or so it seemed to me. The naughty humor with Mrs. Slocombe's cat also tickled my funny bone.
That show is still hilarious
@@bjdefilippo447 Actually, wasn’t Mrs Slocum’s cat 🐈 always referred to, by her, as “my pussy?”
yep Season 10 Episode 6 - Friends & Neighbours he wasn't alone Ms. Belfridge and 2 babies were along for the ride. There is also the season 1 episode where Rumbold and Lucas share a mobile Murphy bed on the sales floor.
In Canada when I was growing up we used to call a sofa/couch a chesterfield.
My grandma called them Davenports, and she lived her entire life in Michigan.
it was always explained to me growing up that a couch was a low-backed 3+ "seat". sofa was a high backed 3+ seat. and a davenport was a fancy 3 or 4 seater with middle arm rests.
The Adirondack chair is so perfect. I've burned through a plastic one, and it's on my list to build a proper wooden one.