El cuartito del fondo

[aleCcowaN]

"El cuartito del fondo" (the small room/shed at the end of the lot), "el cuartito de los cachivaches" (a room full of junk items) are two of many ways to call different parts of a building or house that are neglected, that are secluded, that are away from daily affairs. I know many would refer an attic, but what other terms can we use in English to refer those corners or rooms where things are left to gather dust, or hidden, or where something wrong can happen "fuera de la vista de todos"?

[Rusty]

junk room
storeroom
storage room
box room
lumber room (BrE)

progression: junk drawer - junk closet - junk room - (attic, garage, shed, backyard)

[Johndiv23]

It could be a basement.
My room perhaps... :):applause:
storage room

[poli]

the cellar too

Is a cuartito del fondo separate from the house. If it is, than the equivalent term in English is shed. Cuartito del fondo sounds like backroom to me. The word backroom is usually reserved for rooms behind bars or taverns and have a kind of shoddy reputation, but sometimes rooms reserved for parties.

[wrholt]

As poli says, a backroom (one word, first syllable stressed, second syllable unstressed) is a type of private party room, usually in a tavern or bar.

However, a back room (two words, primary stress on "back", secondary stress on "room"), can be any room in the rear section of a private home. Such a room may be designated primarily for storage or for doing a variety of household tasks, rather than being furnished for a more formal function such as a kitchen, pantry, dining room, parlor, living room, den, playroom, library or entertainment center.

At the home that my grandfather inherited from his mother, and which she inherited from her father, who built it in sometime in the 1890's, the back room was the built-in two-holer at the far end of the attached shed on the back side of the house. The family stopped using the back room when my grandparents put in an indoor toilet in the 1950's. The back room is gone now; my uncle tore down the back shed and replaced it with a bedroom and a porch after he inhertied the house 10 years ago.

[aleCcowaN]

Thank you very much all of you for the options and information. Those wonderful stories and vivid descriptions make much easier to remember all the new terms.

It'd be good to add some terms for closets and other small rooms that may be under a fly of stairs or landings, or those in a hallway for keeping a broom and a bucket. Those indefinite tiny rooms that are called "sucuchos" in Argentina (from Spanish "su" and Quechua "kucho" -corner, place-)