the kitchen door / the door off the kitchen

[tonbei]

How different are they, the kitchen door and the door off the kitchen?

What I guess is :
1) "The kitchen door" is GENERALLY the one to the outside of the house,
meaning you enter the kitchen through that door from the outside of the
house.
2) "The door off the kitchen" is a door on the wall of the kitchen
inside the house, like between the kitchen and the mud room, etc. The
door is on the wall separating the kitchen from other rooms in the
house.

Am I right?

[jerryfriedman]

Post by tonbei
How different are they, the kitchen door and the door off the kitchen?
1) "The kitchen door" is GENERALLY the one to the outside of the house,
meaning you enter the kitchen through that door from the outside of the
house.
2) "The door off the kitchen" is a door on the wall of the kitchen
inside the house, like between the kitchen and the mud room, etc. The
door is on the wall separating the kitchen from other rooms in the
house.
Am I right?

You're right, though context could change either (especially
the first, as you noted with "generally").

I'd guess, by the way, that far less than half of the houses
in the U.S. have a mud room, and that a good portion of
Americans don't know the term.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Tony Cooper]

Post by jerryfriedman

Post by tonbei
How different are they, the kitchen door and the door off the kitchen?
1) "The kitchen door" is GENERALLY the one to the outside of the house,
meaning you enter the kitchen through that door from the outside of the
house.
2) "The door off the kitchen" is a door on the wall of the kitchen
inside the house, like between the kitchen and the mud room, etc. The
door is on the wall separating the kitchen from other rooms in the
house.
Am I right?

You're right, though context could change either (especially
the first, as you noted with "generally").
I'd guess, by the way, that far less than half of the houses
in the U.S. have a mud room, and that a good portion of
Americans don't know the term.

I agree that fewer than half of the houses have a mud room, but think
that even many that have a "mud room" don't use that term to describe
it.

Many Florida houses have a room that serves the same function as a
"mud room", but the owners think of it as a "utility room" or "laundry
room". We don't track in mud very often, or snow at all, but the room
is often included in the floorplan.

[Peter Moylan]

Post by Tony Cooper
Many Florida houses have a room that serves the same function as a
"mud room", but the owners think of it as a "utility room" or
"laundry room". We don't track in mud very often, or snow at all,
but the room is often included in the floorplan.

Older houses here have often had modifications that change the function
of the rooms. My grandparents' house was an excellent example. It was
obviously originally built as a two-room house, to which extensions were
added over the years. The large kitchen had a sloping ceiling, because
it used to be a verandah. The laundry, which was big enough to include a
bath so also served as the bathroom, was obviously once a separate
outbuilding, but eventually the extensions reached the point where you
could walk from the kitchen to the laundry without walking through the rain.

For twenty years or so I lived in another such example. There too the
laundry used to be a separate building. As a result of extensions, the
new back door led into a sunroom. From there you could turn left into
the laundry, or right into the newest bedroom, or straight ahead into
the kitchen/dining area.

[Stefan Ram]

Post by tonbei
How different are they, the kitchen door and the door off the kitchen?

The kitchen door's usually your go-to for rolling in from the
backyard or whatever, straight into where the magic happens.

On the flip side, that "door off the kitchen"? It's your
ticket to bounce from whipping up some tacos to, say, your
man cave or wherever.