How do you imagine the layout of Number 4 Privet Drive?

Mine:



Block at the front is the front porch. I picture there being a back door in the kitchen out to the back garden. The back door would be at the top right of the above image. Facing the back door, the fridge would be to the left, then an L shaped counter running along the back wall and the wall adjoining the dining room. There would also be a large window looking out over the back garden.

Upstairs is just a general blur, however.

 

Like in the movies.

 

I'm disappointed in you.
(I do too)

 

No downstairs bathroom? I thought the Dursley's were thoroughly middle class.

 

Yeah, for a 4 bed house, I'd usually expect to see a downstairs bathroom of some sort. And I know its never mentioned in any way but I always picture them as the sort to have some sort of porch or conservatory at the back of the house.

 

Here's my interpretation. The important parts are kitchen facing the street allowing Petunia 180 degree view to the neighbourhood while pretending to be a proper housewife and Harry's room facing towards the back to keep the weird out of the main facade (can't have bars on the window visible to passers by).

 

I think you're missing a bedroom there. We know there's the master bedroom, Dudley's room, Harry's room, and then a spare that Marge uses when she visits, don't we?

 

Aren't there rosebushes under the windows of one of the rooms with a television?

 

That's true, I forgot that one.

 

With the size of Dudley and Vernon, you know their bathroom visits can run longer than a full length feature film. They definitely have a second shitter.

 

That gives us a four bedroom house with a minimum of two bathrooms and tbh, almost every master bedroom has an en suite. Plus in smaller houses the "cupboard under the stairs" tends to be too small to actually have anything more than a hoover stored so we can reasonably assume a four bedroom house with three bathrooms and a large attic.

 

Personally I have absolutely zero experience on British houses, but at least here in Finland en-suite bathrooms are very rare (although you have a sauna in pretty much every single family house, so there's that). I thought they were kind of an American thing?

 

I'd swap a sauna for an en suite adjoined to my bedroom any day if it weren't for the possibility of waking up drunk and shitting in it.

 

I'd say it's 50/50 whether the master bedroom is ensuite, and if it is then it's 50/50 on whether it's a full bathroom or just a toilet closet. That's based on my experience of post war housing estates.

My guess for the bedrooms would be 3 full size rooms and a box room - half the size, meant to be a child's bedroom or an office, which is where Harry sleeps.

 

I imagine with Vernon it‘ll be similar to Scully in Brooklyn 99. So 2 1/2 hours, give or take. Particularly if lactose intolerant Vernon can‘t keep his hands off the cheddar.

 

When I need a precise floor plan, I use the Lexicon one:




Only thing that doesn't fit the books, I think, is the living room window which shouldn't be a bay window (Harry hides under it in the beginning of OotP).

 

Yeah, that looks pretty much how I'd imagine it.

 

That sofa strikes me as too far away from the TV for Dudley's liking. I imagine the time the Dursley's spend in the living room is mostly spent watching TV, so the furniture should be nearer and angled more directly towards it.

Also I'm not sure if a ground floor toilet should have a window directly facing the street. Or is that a mirror above the sink?

 

The movies played that aspect up a bit more than the books. Vernon went to a public boarding school (and remember in England that means a fee paying private school) and sent his son their too. He was also a company director. They aren't Joe average.