Madmeg
When I was growing up my parents called the room for resting (sitting) in, the "house place". I think it is because their first house had only two rooms - one downstairs and one upstairs. The downstairs room contained the sofa (called a couch) and an easy chair, and a small table and chairs separated it from the kitchen area. So the sitting room was the house place. Later we moved to a house twice the size of the first but they still called the living room "the house place".
In the late 60s my elderly student landlady in Yorkshire referred to her one downstairs room apart from the kitchen, as the house’. It was a sitting/dining room with a fireplace. The mantelpiece always had a lot of little ornaments on it, which her budgie (often let out) liked to knock over.
Upon which she’d say, ‘What’s tha doing, tha little booger?’
(She loved him dearly).