# Do you or did you ever live in an interesting or odd or unique house? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 27, 2025, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103 "2025-12-27T20:16:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/41 "2025-12-28T16:15:00Z")
> [@2\_More\_Bits](#): > > notably-old We’ve lived in this 1760 house for almost 30 years. Its age is most visible in the cellar, where the joists are split trees (a few with bits of bark still on them) and everything is built around a central chimney (the chimney itself has a little storeroom with a swinging wood door under it - unusual according to contractors who’ve worked down there). The house itself is traditional colonial with a few odd nooks and crannies (like the little door behind the radiator in the front hall, used to access the inner workings around the chimney). It does have lath wall interiors, and behind the walls/during repairs and upgrades we’ve found corn cobs, old newspapers, and once, a 1770 account ledger/balance sheet. It constantly needs work of some kind, so there’s that. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/42 "2025-12-28T16:28:31Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > We’ve lived in this 1760 house for almost 30 years. Well, that has my brother’s old circa 1900 house beat by a very large number of years! Still, it was cool to have a house built with servants’ quarters in mind, very mature landscaping, the original architectural plans, and most of the original interior. And certainly, yes, lathe plaster walls. There are still a few luxury builders who still build plaster walls in new houses, claiming that they have much better sound-deadening qualities than drywall, but such builders are very rare, and so are plastering skills. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/43 "2025-12-28T16:46:36Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > I used to stay at my brother’s house when I was a kid. He had no running water and an outhouse and an oil heater for winter. I remember helping him haul creek water so they could bathe, wash dishes, etc., and man, was that outhouse cold in the Alaskan winter. I lived in my twenties in more than one house with no running water, and in one with no electricity. We hauled water from a spring which we also used as a refrigerator. The heat was a wood/coal stove. In the winter we hung a toilet seat on the wall behind the stove, where it got quite warm, and carried it out to the outhouse for each trip. The sensation of sitting on that literal hot seat while a cold draft came up from beneath was definitely interesting. The house I grew up in was built at least in part in the late 1700’s. It had clearly been built in two sections, had been used at some points for two families, and still had two kitchens (one of which we used as a laundry room); as well as front and back stairs. It had been significantly modified before we got there, and modified further by the time I was old enough to remember (apparently some of the modifications decided upon by my father over my mother’s objections), but a lot of the original layout and construction was still there. I took it for granted, growing up in it. I wish I’d paid it more attention. I still dream about it sometimes. > [@Alessan](#): > > I grew up in Haifa, Israel, in a building that was fairly normal for Haifa but weird for anywhere else. Much of Haifa is built on steep hills - the so-called Mount Carmel - and the buildings tend to conform to the topography. Our apartment building went uphill, which means that from the sidewalk you went up one flight of outdoor stairs to an indoor area containing the storage units and bomb shelter, That bomb shelter line is kind of a stopper. I expect they’re quite common in Israel, though. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/44 "2025-12-28T16:48:17Z")
Wow, that is quite utopian. Is it still going on, or did it end for some reason? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/45 "2025-12-28T16:57:39Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > That bomb shelter line is kind of a stopper. I expect they’re quite common in Israel, though. They’re mandatory. Every building built since 1948 has to have either a bomb shelter or a safe room. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/46 "2025-12-28T17:06:18Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I lived in my twenties in more than one house with no running water, and in one with no electricity. We hauled water from a spring which we also used as a refrigerator. The heat was a wood/coal stove. In the winter we hung a toilet seat on the wall behind the stove, where it got quite warm, and carried it out to the outhouse for each trip. The sensation of sitting on that literal hot seat while a cold draft came up from beneath was definitely interesting. I wish they had thought of a heated toilet seat. His next home was only marginally better. It was a basement with no superstructure. There was a well inside that provided water, and it didn’t flood in the spring like his first house’s basement. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/47 "2025-12-28T19:35:36Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > Wow, that is quite utopian. Is it still going on, or did it end for some reason? “Utopian” is one word for it 😅 As far as I know, it’s still going! You can visit it in Arcata, California if you’re ever in the area. I can dig up some old photos if there’s interest. ---
**Author:** ![mozchron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mozchron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mozchron)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/48 "2025-12-28T22:00:44Z")
There are a ton of mail-order Sears houses in the town I live in. We looked at a bunch when we bought, not to my taste ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2025, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/49 "2025-12-28T22:07:57Z")
In college I rented a room in a big old Victorian house that the owner had divided up into 13 units (!) to rent to college students. The room I rented was the smallest in the house, and had originally been the pantry. It was right off the kitchen and was 10 feet long and 7 feet wide. To gain a little more usable space I built a platform over the bed, making a kind of bunk bed with the upper bunk just being a carpeted platform that I could sit on and read. Apart from the bed+platform there was just barely room to maneuver around the perimeter of the room. But it was damn cheap. A few years later I happened to be back in that town and stopped by to look at my old room. It was no longer being used for living space, and just had a couple of bicycles and some other junk in it. It looked pretty full with just those odds and ends in it. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103/50 "2025-12-29T10:23:37Z")
Most people know I lived at 11200 ft in elevation. It was a passive solar house with huge windows. Primary heat was wood for years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-or-did-you-ever-live-in-an-interesting-or-odd-or-unique-house/1026103.md?page=2)