The creepy body room would make an awesome food storage space! cinder block walls would be insulating so you could store potatoes and onions and your home canned goods wouldn’t get too hot. You could have enough to feed an army if you only built shelves along one long wall. The lock is so when the end comes you can protect your food from the evil scavengers.
I’ll bet that house was built by a Mormon. 
If my dad buys it, there will be a Vegas bathroom Dopefest. HOLLER!
Ha! I’d agree with you except it’s on a whole different floor than the kitchen (the house is built on the side of a hill, so you walk in on the top floor with the formal living room, dining room, kitchen, master suite, etc., then go downstairs to the other bedrooms, bathrooms, theater room, wine cellar, and. . . . body room.). I’m all for nice pantries, but this definitely wasn’t that. It was right next to the laundry room and by some bedrooms, but that really doesn’t give away any secrets of what it really was. I should have scoured the walls for signs of life.
As far as I know the normal bathing habits of Thais are a couple showers each day, one in the morning and one before going to bed. It’s the minimum required in this hot, sticky climate, some days I’ve taken up to 4 or 5 showers myself. :eek:
The typical modern Thai bathroom does have the shower spraying on the floor, usually with a curtain to separate the shower area, but of the three places I’ve lived in Thailand one (the current) has that arrangement, an older apartment had a bathtub/shower and the newest built place I’ve lived in had an enclosed shower.
Going back to the topic, here’s another one I saw, apartment, 40 square meters (about 430 sq. ft), 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms. :smack: Such a a waste of living space.
I don’t know, my bodies tend to get moldy after some time, I wouldn’t want to get any of that on my potatoes, yuck.
Been there… but you should add large geckos scurrying around in the toilet* and mice running around the mattress (laying on the floor, no bed).
Is not rally that bad after you get used to it.
** Actually a good thing since they keep the cockroaches and spiders at bay.*
It could just be a ‘bonus space’ room that is used as a general storage room, perhaps they had wardrobes in it and used it for out of season clothing storage.
You could turn it into a priests hole by making the doorway hidden, and putting in a captains bed, a portolet that uses the sealable plastic bag system, and a supply of food, water and reading material …
“Another cool thing I saw in recent househunting was a master shower stall, all glassed in…with TWO shower heads, one at each end. It’s totally genius! Never any waiting for the other to finish, and unlike a giant sunken tub, it will get plenty of use (practically and for fun).”
While conceivably one person could direct both heads at themself, as mentioned a more normal usage is probably either that two can shower at the same time or you can install different shower head types on each, thereby allowing a couple to each use the type they prefer.
DiosaBellissima, that cinder block room, is the home in an area prone to tornados or hurricanes? Did the ceiling show structural integrity too or was it just sheetrocked?
Well, “bonus space” is of course the most logical answer 
Still, I’d rather pretend it’s a body room, because c’mon- that’s awesome. Though I will admit I do like your idea, but I think with all that other space, we wont need an additional hidey hole room. As far as maybe putting an actual priest in said priest’s hole-- well, I don’t need no stinkin’ priest in a Vegas house!
Vegas has no such natural disasters. I don’t even think they really get much by the way of earthquakes over there. That particular home is far enough out in the desert (away from things) that I guess there might be a flash flood or two once in a while (that tends to happen in the desert), but the house is on its own little hill, so that’s probably not an issue.
The ceiling was finished just like the other rooms. I’m not an engineer or anything (as far from that as one could get), but I didn’t notice anything that immediately struck me as any different from the other rooms-- except the concrete floor and cinderblock walls.
Sounds like a room to grow marijuana. Was there an exhaust system?
Bonus room, indeed!
You know, I truthfully didn’t check for an exhaust system.
Let me guess: this room is in the basement. Directly above this room is a porch (i.e., a very heavy concrete slab) that’s like 30 feet long and about 4 or 5 feet wide.
I had that room in the house where I grew up, and in the house where I lived shortly after getting married. And in high school, I was a home builder and every house I built had that room.
(Minus the bright lights and HUGE lock. That part is weird.)
Sort of but no. Like I said, the house is built on a hill, so you walk in on the top floor- which has the main living spaces, master bedroom, kitchen, etc. Then, if you go downstairs (which I mean, I guess is you could call the basement. . . but it’s not underground and walks right out to the backyard level, so I’d call that the first floor heh), there’s the rest of the beds and baths, the garage, theater room, wine cellar, etc. and so forth- and, like I said, it walks right out to the main pool/backyard area. Technically, this is on the middle of the hill, because you can still walk down stairs from the pool area (outside) to the ground level, where there’s a tennis court and stuff.
But you are totally right in the sense that it might just be a support thing and they decided to make it usable storage space. That certainly is the most logical thing :). Seeing as I’m from the land of 1,000 earthquakes, I’m not at all too familiar with basements and what they involve, so that might be why I’ve never seen something like this.
And I should note: there are probably folks reading my description of this house, thinking all kinds of things about why my dad would buy such a thing/ has the ability to buy such a thing. Let me just say that Las Vegas has perhaps the worst housing market in the country, which means houses like what I’m describing can be bought for like, a string of beads and a handshake. It’s insane. 
I get the feeling that you have no clue how much food your average Mormon considers adequate food storage. This isn’t “well, there was a good sale so we stocked up” storage. This is “feed yourself and your family for a year” food storage. Nobody, not even Mormons themselves build kitchen pantries big enough. A food storage room in the basement is very, very common. I know a woman who’s husband is a contractor and built her an actual root cellar under the front porch. This was in addition to the food storage room of several hundred square feet already in the basement.
With your description of the house, though, it almost makes me want to move to Vegas. Too bad the weather stinks. Too much heat. And sagebrush is ugly.
Um, you’re absolutely right, Mormon food storage never crossed my worried mind so…why exactly do you store food for a year? Do Mormons have unusually large families? Everything I know about Mormonism I learned from Southpark, my hair dresser, and Mitt Romney.
Googling I see that about 7.5% of Nevada’s population is Mormon. Didn’t know that.
In contrast, my grandparents, since they had a large family, built a home in the 1930’s with 5 bedrooms, more than the typical house of that era.
And they put in a single bathroom. Which was a big improvement over the previous home, since this one was INSIDE the house and had running water.
How things have changed.
I haven’t yet seen anyone mention the enormous advantage of having only one bathroom in their house which is - you only have to clean one bathroom! OK, granted people in a six bedroom nine bathroom house are probably not cleaning their own bathrooms but then you have to pay someone to do it, and isn’t there something more interesting you’d rather be spending your money on?
Our last house was 3 br, 2 1/2 bathroom (one ensuite, one general upstairs, one toilet downstairs) and it used to annoy the hell out of me that there was this bath in one of them that never got used and just gathered dust, ditto the counter tops in the other one (because the one with the nice bath became the “having a bath” one, and the one that was central became the “brushing teeth” one). As the kids grew up, if we’d been able to stay there, I’m sure we would have spread into the space a bit, but I can’t imagine ever needing more than that.
When our landlords moved back into the house, they started renovating - they’ve gutted it (from what I’ve been able to observe by stickybeaking ;)) and I’ll be really interested to see what they do with the whole bedroom/bathroom configuration.
Our current place has four bedrooms, one bathroom (and an extra toilet in the shed). Every time there’s a deadlock my husband goes - “see? more than one bathroom GOOD!” and I do admit there’s something of a point there. One big bathroom and one extra shower and toilet would probably be my ideal, for the five of us. I figure anything you’re doing in front of the sink and mirror can be done with multiple people in the room (in fact, sometimes that the ideal - I sure can’t dye my hair by myself!) so why put yourself to the effort of maintaining multiples?
My house only has two bathrooms and I have a house keeper. $50 every two weeks and I don’t have crawl on my hands and knees, scrubbing the grout on the tile throughout my house (CURSED TILE!!!)? $50 and I don’t have to dust all of the stupid shutters on all the windows in my house? $50 and I don’t have to try to teeter my vacuum on the stairs?
Worth it. Absolutely worth it. I spend a lot of money on a lot of stupid shit, but I would cut off my cable before I got rid of sweet Martha. I love her. So, so, so much.
No way will I live life with one bathroom. One bathroom/person would be ideal, if not, one bathroom for two people would suffice. What if you want to renovate your bathroom, or your toilet breaks?
I am an ex-mormon and I can’t even remember the exact reasoning. It had something to do with the Apocalypse; you were supposed to keep 1 years’ supply of food, toiletries and water in your house so you wouldn’t starve. Apparently, in recent years, some bishops encouraged members to also store firearms and ammo to fight off the looters.
And yes, many mormons do have unusually large families, so a years’ supply of food and water for a family with 6 or 8 kids would be… a LOT. 
My parents kept about 6 months in the basement and did things like: buy 50 pound bags of wheat, grind it themselves, and use the flour for however many years it takes two retirees to go through however much flour can be made from a 50 pound bag of wheat.
In recent years, the meme sort of changed a bit from preparing for the End Times, to just sort of being prepared, like a good Boy Scout, for a disaster of some sort and only keeping about 3 months’ worth around. It’s kind of ridiculous when you think about all the mormons in New Orleans whose homes were flooded; that years’ supply of food did them fuck all lot of good when it was 6 feet underwater, no?
Are there a lot of Mormons in New Orleans? It’s not really a Mormon-friendly town from what I understand : )
