MovieChat Forums > As Time Goes By (1992) Discussion > Anyone know where I can find a floorplan...

Anyone know where I can find a floorplan for Jean's house?

posted 10 years ago by onioncreek
15 replies | jump to latest

I'd love to see a real working floor-plan for their town house. It most likely doesn't include many of the spaces that seem to exist in the real thing -judging by exterior shots you can find on Google- but still I'd love to know how theirs fit together logically.

The country house is a real long shot because it changes so much unfortunately. You'd have to piece it together and fill in the rest by your self. Especially the entries relation to the kitchen and library and staircase etc. etc..

[–] contradad-1 10 years ago

From the outside, Jean's house seems to have both an attic and a basement, but we never see either of these in the show.

[–] brandy5 10 years ago

The kitchen is in the basement, and the room Jenny lodged in was in the attic.

[–] nicky-682-764451 10 years ago

The kitchen isn't in the basement. It's along the page to the back of the hall way and off to the left (as you come in the front door).

If you watch the scenes in the kitchen as people come in or out, they come from the right (looking out of the kitchen). It's behind the stair well.

[–] onioncreek 10 years ago

I used to think that too. Maybe that's what the producers of the show wanted, but going by the exterior and the relationship between the kitchen door/back door and the garden, the kitchen is at the back of the basement. It would be below the table at the back of the living-room.

The stairs to the basement possibly go towards the front door underneath the first floor stairs and the closet under those stairs. Once down the stairs you take a left and walk down the little hallway and into the kitchen. Seen from the street side this would be seen as the person heading right at the bottom of the stairs and taking a left exiting the little hall and into the kitchen-away from the street side audience.

But this is exactly one of the reasons I'd like to see the floor-plan of the real house and the floor-plan the producers, perhaps, thought out.

The street side basement windows are rooms never acknowledged in the show, but they would be on the other side of the hallway in relationship to the kitchen, and most likely one would be a laundry. You see them doing things with laundered clothes but we never see the machines or room.

The "audience" side of the kitchen has a door to the garden on the left and must have a window above the sink.

[–] brandy5 10 years ago

Right - thanks. There is an episode where they are having a little tea party in the back garden and Jean walks UP a few steps from the kitchen with some a dish of strawberries to get to the garden level. In a much earlier time those basements were called the servants quarters. At the front of the house there are the area steps leading down to the basement. Lionel was looking for Jean one day and went down the area steps to look through the window to see if her could her in the kitchen as nobody answered the front door bell.

[–] nicky-682-764451 10 years ago

Actually I just remembered that I posted this, about the kitchen being at the back of the house, and guess what....

I just happened to watch a couple of episodes where I realised I was 100% wrong!

One was the tea in the garden one with Penny where Lionel and Jean are trying not to let on they've fallen out.

And the other was one where Sandy comes into the kitchen an says "Can you come up for a minute?"

Sorry for totally getting it wrong. 

[–] onioncreek 10 years ago

That's okay. No worries! What is worrying is no floorplans are forthcoming. I was sure the lady who run fantasyfloorplans was working on one, but there was no mention of it last time I looked on her site.

[–] laurence01 9 years ago

One problem with the layout is this. They hide in the cupboard under the stairs. However in reality the type of house shown from outside does not have a cupboard, the door under the stairs leads to the staircase to the basement.

Let Zygons Be Zygons.

[–] pacwarbuff 9 years ago

Another odd thing about the house is how some of the doors are hinged. In Lionel and Jean's bedroom and the attic bedroom, which is Sandy's room, the doors swing away from the wall! Instead of being able to open a door and have it opened and remaining adjacent to the wall, the doors jut out into their respective rooms!

[–] thebournepainter 8 years ago

I just saw an episode where they were having a discussion on why they were leaving at three am to go to the country house. They were talking on the 2nd floor landing. Judy's bedroom was on the second floor while judy was above on what I took for the third floor

[–] CobblersAwls 8 years ago

I honestly have no sense of how the set matched the configuration of the terraces where No. 21 resides.

But it always did baffle me with regards to that kitchen (wherever it might be located in the show--on the ground level or not).

If they walked through the entrance hall straight back, then turned left into the kitchen, then the window over the sink and the kitchen door to the garden are not possible.

Because the sink window/wall would be the common wall to the house next door. It wouldn't over look the back garden. The wall where the cooker is would be the back of the house and be the opening to the back garden--if that were accessible from a ground floor door.

We might surmise Jean's kitchen was extended into the back garden, freeing a bit of wall on the side of the house for that window, that extended beyond the end of the house next door.

But if you look closely in many of the episodes, when someone is standing in the doorway of the kitchen that goes to the hall, there is a piece of artwork on the wall that you can see from the entrance way at the front door. Think also there was an umbrella stand or something in some of the episodes, also there seen from both sides.

Also, as Lionel says at one point to Stephen after he and Penny have looked at the house next door for sale, "Well, it looks the same Stephen because these houses are identical," or something like that.

Just as an unimportant factoid---through the years the ceramic tile in the kitchen changed. It had Delft blue designs. Then it was plain. Then, some third design or colour. Jean really liked to "remodel" didn't she? :-))

[–] Jkaisken (1) 4 years ago

Late to this, so you’ve probably figured it out by now, but the kitchen is on the basement floor. In the second season when Penny comes to the house and meets Lionel for the first time, they’re in the back garden. When Jean and Lionel get up to go get strawberries, you see 1-an open basement door, and then 2-you see Jean and Lionel go into those doors and directly into the kitchen.

[–] jennylynmasters 10 years ago

I was curious about to the floor plans of those houses on that street so I looked one up that was for sale on a real estate site to see the floorplan. The floorplan of an actual house is similar to Jean's house. The basement did indeed contain the kitchen and a door to the back garden, originally the servants would have had their quarters on this level and deliveries would have been made to the front basement door. The main floor would have originally been two rooms but in most of these terraced houses, it was opened up to make one large room. You can tell in Jean's house that there is a partially enclosed area that doors would have been. The second floor would have two to three bedrooms which were very small, one the the rooms may have been a box room. The attic would have had one to two small rooms. Modern renovations may include the basement servants' quarters taken out to make a large, open kitchen, a small en suite bathroom may have been added to the second-floor master bedroom, or a powder room on the main floor. Jean's house today would be worth close to a million pounds so it is understandable that renovations would he nessassary to justify the cost.

We're on a mission from God.http:

[–] onioncreek 9 years ago

Thanks for the info and detective work!

[–] 9 years ago

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