Parts of my house and locating things in it in Spanish

The title of the post may have surprised you a little bit…We are going to see vocabulary about your house in order to locate after the thing that we have in it; besides, it is also an important thing to know housing vocabulary. 

To make it easy, as every house is a bit different but the same in its essence, we are going to explain the housing vocabulary of one of our houses. Here it is:

♣ Note:

1. LIVING-ROOM; we do actually not use this word often. It is right in Spanish its meaning and the use of SALÓN, but, you will barely find any living-room in a Spanish speaking country. The fact of having a house with a living-room and a dining-room separated is a cultural thing and also a long time ago it required to have quite a lot of money; not everybody could afford to have a house with those two rooms. Spain and South-America, they have never had a splendid economy, so, we use the dining-room as a living-room as well; the sofa, tv, and so on…are located in the dining-room. So remember LIVING-ROOM ⇒ COMEDOR as well.
2. DINING-ROOM; as we have explained above, this is the place where we have our meals, and also the area where we have the sofa, tv… Even in some houses, el  COMEDOR, actually is used for the meals of the special days; within the week, if the kitchen has enough space, a table and chairs, usually people will eat there.
3. BAÑO, it is the room where we take our baths and we do refer also to the toilet in general. But if you want to be more specific and refer just to the toilet area, we call this room in a colloquial way LAVABO or in a formal way, SERVICIO.
4. HABITACIÓN; as it is written above, the meaning of habitación is plain room but we do use this word to refer to the bedroom as well. In case you want to be more specific about what type of room you are talking about, we use the preposition de after habitación -remember that express type-. HABITACIÓN DE… If it is just habitación, remember that we will think of the bedroom.
5. HABITACIÓN; we refer to this noun again to tell you that it is a feminine noun even though it ends with the consonant N. Most of the nouns that end with -IÓN are feminine. Let’s see them as an exception in their gender.
6. DORMITORIO; the meaning is also right and it means bedroom, but, as we have explained above, we will not really use this word very often.  We do refer to habitación to express the bedroom. Some Spanish speaking countries do use it often; the use of the vocabulary depends also on what Spanish speaking country you were born in; this is, of course, our way of using the language. 
7. TERRAZA; just to clarify in case it is not clear, is the open area of  a condo or a house, where you normally have your plants and a table to enjoy the sun.

Once we have seen these housing vocabulary, let’s be a bit more specific and see the things that we have inside of COMEDOR and HABITACIÓN:

COMEDOR 

♣ Note:

1. SOFÁ; even though this noun ends with the vowel A, it is a masculine noun. Remember: EL SOFÁ or UN SOFÁ
2. TELEVISIÓN; as we have explained previously, most of the nouns that end with -IÓN are feminine. Let’s see them as an exception in their gender.
3. ARMARIO; it is a very useful and easy noun in Spanish. Unlike English, where you have so many words to express a piece of furniture that has doors and can be opened and closed, no matter what it is inside; such as wardrobe, closet, cabinet, locker…in Spanish we do only use ARMARIO to refer to all of them. It does not matter the things are in it, as long as it is a piece of furniture with doors.

HABITACIÓN

♣ Note:

1. ESCRITORIO has the same idea in English. The desk refers to a working or a studying table.
2. ARMARIO; we will explain it again…Unlike English, where you have so many words to express  a piece of furniture that has doors and can be opened and closed, no matter what it is inside; such as wardrobe, closet, cabinet, locker…in Spanish we do only use ARMARIO to refer to all of them. It does not matter the things that are in it, as long as it is a piece of furniture with doors.