# Strange features in houses **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 30, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308 "2004-03-30T14:39:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Obsidian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/51bf81/32.png) [@Obsidian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obsidian)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/61 "2004-04-01T05:58:02Z")
The previous owners of my parents’ house built a bomb shelter in the basement. The walls are a good 2 feet thick, reinforced concrete. As they don’t live in a tornado zone where such a shelter might be useful, my dad converted it into an excellent wine cellar. ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/62 "2004-04-01T06:57:59Z")
> [@Una Persson](#): > > Are you certain about that? Every cistern I’ve ever seen did not have large pipes in the bottom, and a flow of water through them. They tended to be brick or concrete sumps. These “pits” had water flowing through them, and never accumulated any. 😕 I didn’t quite catch the pipes and grates the first time. I’ll second Farmwoman, and say it’s a spring pit for chilling. ---
**Author:** ![Seamonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@Seamonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seamonkey)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/63 "2004-04-01T07:08:58Z")
When I was a teen we lived in a ranch house that was pretty typical except the living room was 50 feet long and my bedroom was 30 feet long. It actually echoed. In the hallway were 2 bathrooms, right next to each other and built exactly the same, not even mirror image. When I lived in FL we used to go visit the “Cave House”. On the outside it was an average looking home. On the inside it was made to look like a cave. It had everything built in with fake concrete with cave man drawings everywhere. Of course you could only see this with the aid of a flashlight, because whomever did this “concreted” over the windows. It really did look like the Flintstone house. ---
**Author:** ![Beauty\_Personified](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e480ec/32.png) [@Beauty\_Personified](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beauty_Personified)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/64 "2004-04-01T08:49:20Z")
My sister’s ex bought a house a few years ago and converted the basement level into an apartment. His bedroom bathroom had a laundry chute to the basement. He removed the chute that extended from the ceiling in the basement, and the hole was simply covered over with a drop-ceiling. Well, he recently got custody of Min-Min the cat from my sister. (New tenants had moved into her basement apartment, and Min-Min was very upset, and making a mess of the carpets). The woman in his basement had at least one cat of her own. Min-Min, being a cat, managed to get into the closet that housed the chute upstairs, and down she went, crashing through the drop-ceiling. Which, of course, led to a confrontation between her and her feline neighbors downstairs. The house I grew up in, is also the house my mother grew up in. Her father sold the house to my parents soon after they married. In fact, my bedroom had once been my mother’s. There’s not really anything odd about the house, though. The basement used to be dirt (walls and floor) and had a well. And there used to be a trap door in the main floor hallway that was used (before my time) to haul up firewood for the stove. I remember when the basement was redone in concrete. My grandparents’ house, where I now live with my grandfather, is a one-level bungalow. It’s a got a dirt basement about three feet high, but in the corner left of the entrance (which is in the garage) there is a six foot high room for the water pump. I basically have to turn into Gollum to shuffle my way to the pump room if anything has to be done. To the right, half-way across the basement, is an opening that goes under the concrete front step. I used to think it led to a deep pit when I was young. It’s still really creepy. Compared to everyone else’s stories, those three houses are nothing. However, one of my best friends, when his family lived here, had a home with a few eccentricities. First off, the attic was actually a finished level, with a window to the front street, two small storage closest to the sides of a short central hallway, and a room at the back with one window off to the side. My friend made this room his bedroom. (There was a door to the stairway to this level on the second floor, which you’d simply think was a closet.) This attic bedroom was actually quite roomy, and the window provided quite a bit of light. It was terribly hot in the summer, though. Oh, yeah! It had a sink. Just a few feet to the side of his bed was a small, wall-mounted sink with open pipes. (I can’t remember if they went into the wall or through the floor.) I’m not sure if the small mirror on the wall above the sink was already there, but my friend kept a tin cup on the sink, making it look like a prison. The second level of the house had four rooms, with closets (and a bathroom). Two rooms became bedrooms, while the third became a sitting room/office. In the closet of the third room, to the right, was a narrow stairway (no door) which led down into a corner of the kitchen (behind the kitchen table). The kitchen entrance to this stairway was covered in a vinyl curtain, and they used it for a pantry. Oh, the ideas that went through my mind, had I lived there as a teenager. Also, when they moved in, there wasn’t a side patio, so the door on the side of the house lead to a five foot drop. My cousin’s house, which is rather new (20 years old, maybe), is quite interesting. There’s basically two upstairs. The central living room is open to the roof, with a few beams where the first floor ceiling should be. There are two separate stairways leading up. One leads to a balcony area overlooking the living room, which leads to two of the kids’ bedrooms. This balcony area is the kids’ homework area, with desks and computer. (You could climb over the railing and walk across the beams over the living room, if you’re brave, and mom and dad aren’t around. 😉 ) The other stair leads to the other kid’s bedroom, which is built over the garage. (The parents’ bedroom is on the first floor below the other two kids’ bedrooms.) In between the balcony area and the bedroom over the garage in another room, with no door! Outside the kid’s bedroom in a closet. At the back of the closet is a small door no more than four foot square that leads into this hidden room. I’ve never been in there, but it’s apparently finished and, I believe, had a light fixture and a window. That would be my playroom! (And where I’d hide my Playboys. 😉 ) A friend from high-school had an interesting home. The entranceway/foyer and living room were open to the roof. To the side was an open stairway along the wall to an open hallway that looked down on the foyer and living room. My friend’s bedroom was at one end on this hall. Her bedroom door was a single French door - basically a window! And the outside wall of the bedroom was just one big window. The house was on the top of a steep hill, and you could only see the roof of the closest house in that direction. (Still, if I had had a telescope… 😉 ) Also, I don’t remember where I heard it but, apparently, it’s bad luck for a house to be completely finished. It’s best to leave at least someplace unfinished, like the ceiling in one closet, or something. Anyhoo… ---
**Author:** ![Beauty\_Personified](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e480ec/32.png) [@Beauty\_Personified](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beauty_Personified)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/65 "2004-04-01T08:50:45Z")
Geez! That was one long post. 4:50! Time to go to bed, I say! ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/66 "2004-04-01T13:26:48Z")
The house I’m trying to sell is pretty ordinary, but the decorating in it was special. The master bedroom had gold metallic wallpaper with Durer-esque woodcut prints of naked people. The second bedrrom and the main bath had satin flock wallpaper: the bedroom was blue on blue, and the bath was black on a very lurid red. The bathroom reminded me of a wild west whorehouse. The back yard at one time had several water features involving naked, rutting cherubs, and a serious privacy fence, but all that was gone when I actually got the house. The massively scary part was that I was buying it from an estate of an old guy, who was the 3rd husband of the lady who had it built, and VunderWife and I are absolutely certain that she was a swinger to the end. “Oh no! Grandma’s pulling another train!” ---
**Author:** ![Sangre\_Azul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bcef8e/32.png) [@Sangre\_Azul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangre_Azul)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/67 "2004-04-01T19:11:36Z")
I lived in a rather unusual apartment in college. The ground floor units were like little tombs - studio apartments with ceilings that were maybe 7 feet high. Folks who lived there tried to find excuses to hang out somewhere else. The second floor apartments, where I lived, were much more spacious. The ceiling was _very_ high and slanted. There was a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and living area… pretty standard stuff. What was bizarre was the wooden ladder bolted to a living room wall, leading to a split level. Imagine a stable loft, only with carpeting and half-walls for privacy. Naturally, the idea of living in my own little loft/fort appealed to me, so this was my bedroom. The ceiling was slanted - the way my bed was positioned, I could not sit upright without hitting my head. What was also bizarre was the “Alice in Wonderland” door - a tiny door in the loft’s back wall, maybe 4 feet high, that led to a crawlspace. The crawlspace itself, being situated under the roof’s slant, petered out into the floor. Of course, it was the ladder that drew everyone’s immediate attention. If you ever thought stairs were a pain to navigate, try climbing up and down a ladder with a loaded backback. Or worse, moving a desk, bed, and other assorted furniture up. I once got stuck on the ladder carrying a desktop computer - if I moved, I would have lost my balance. I had to shout for my roommate to lean against me as a counterweight while I made my way down. The most amusement with the ladder came from my cat. As a kitten, she was determined to climb up the ladder. Problem was that she could not get down in any way \*not \* involving a swan dive onto the nearest living creature. So, as a detriment, I removed the bottom rung of the ladder so she could not climb up. Problem solved, though kitty was a bit put-out. Every few weeks, I would remove another rung. It got to the point where half the ladder was missing. Moving up and down required a bit of gynamstics to haul myself up to where the rungs now began. Of course, this madness finally came to an end. One day as I was struggling to pull myself up, a black furry shape shimmied up the siderail to the loft landing. I was greeted with a very smug “Meow.” As I was in no mood to remove the ladder entirely and begin working on my mountaineering skills, the rungs went back into place. Happily, kitty learned how to get down without jumping - yup, by sliding down the railing. ---
**Author:** ![sinjin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@sinjin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinjin)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/68 "2004-04-01T20:27:40Z")
I have at least one explanation for the toilet in the middle of the basement. We bought a new house in the 80’s that had a rough in for a bathroom in the unfinished basement. It was in a stupid location (toilet almost in the center of the room) and we never intended to use it. However one day while MrPict was working on something in the basement he broke the cap on the toilet sewer line. So he had to go to the hardware store and get another cap. While there he thought to himself, “Hmmmmmm why not just put a toilet on instead” And so we ended up with the infamous toilet in the middle of the room. And Mr Pict and all his buddies used it when we had outdoor backyard parties. (And yes of course beer was involved). Also, we built a new house a couple of years ago and had a laudry chute built into a window seat in our bathroom. We likes it a lot. The builder thought we were nuts. ---
**Author:** ![Francesca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9fc348/32.png) [@Francesca](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francesca)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/69 "2004-04-01T20:34:49Z")
> [@Phase42](#): > > When I was a teenager, I had a paper route. There was an older couple who lived in a house set back in the woods a bit. In the kitchen, the countertops were all about eight inches lower than normal, and all of the upper cabinets were much lower than normal. The man who lived there explained that the previous owner, who had built the house many many years earlier, had an unusually short wife. So the kitchen was custom-built to accomodate her stature. Our kitchen is built for little people too! I’m 4ft10, my mother is 5ft and my dad is 5ft2. So when we had our kitchen re-done, we specified that it should be lower than normal. It’s not terribly noticable, but it’s very handy to be able to reach all of the shelves. But I still need my Kitchen Stool. A small stool I stand on when I need to use the counter to kneed bread or spend a long time beating a mixture. It’s a red stool. I like it very much. ---
**Author:** ![spizzum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@spizzum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spizzum)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/70 "2004-04-01T21:10:00Z")
Well, strangest thing about my house is that it has no real “bathroom”. It was built in 1891, so I’m guessing there used to be an outhouse. As it is now, there is a door off the kitchen that has stairs leading to the cellar, with a toilet smack at the top of the stairs. In the cellar, there is a shower stall under the stairway, and a sink right next to that. Also, the chimney goes right up through the center of the house, and on the first floor, instead of just leaving it exposed, or building the wall around it(like they did on the second floor), someone built this elaborate closet thing around it, with shelves and a high mantle up near the ceiling, right in the middle of the already tiny living room. Hmm, I do have to admit, after reading through this thread, my house doesn’t seem as strange anymore. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2004, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/71 "2004-04-02T20:42:44Z")
When we moved into our present house there was a finished room in the middle of the unfinished basement. It had a fireplace, that very obviously was built when the house was. The door hardware was consistant with the rest of the house, so it appears it wasn’t added later. Since then, we’ve remodeled and finished the stairs and the intervening space. We still have an unusual arrangement, with my glass studio on one side of the finished area and the shop and laundry on the other. But, as **spizzum** said, after some of the puzzling features mentioned in this thread, my house isn’t a bit odd. ---
**Author:** ![Lobelia\_Overhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/54ee81/32.png) [@Lobelia\_Overhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobelia_Overhill)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2004, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/72 "2004-04-02T21:06:07Z")
This house - you come in the front door and you are in the living room, you go through the opposite door and you are in the dining room, to your right is the bathroom, go to your left and you are in the kitchen. There are two doors in the corner, where do they go? The bedrooms … ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2004, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/73 "2004-04-02T21:58:14Z")
> [@quiltguy154](#): > > While gutting the second floor in my previous house, I came across a little-known[to me, at least] oddity. After the covering on the party wall in the bathroom[which used to be part of a bedroom] came down, there appeared a very narrow, shallow rounded-top recess in the wall, A _niche_, I supposed, something you’d be likely to put a statue in, but just above floor level. According to the mason, it was a fireplace. Damned if it wasn’t connected to a long-unused flue.Two logs of small diameter where made to stand in the form of an “X”, so a very hot, very fast heat could be generated. The heat would be of short duration, just enough to start taking the chill off the room, as you prepared for bed, or upon rising in the morning. This style of fireplace was supposed to be well-known throughout the area. Don’t know if the design or concept made it to other cities. Sounds like a Rumford fireplace. Shallow with a big opening, to better radiate heat into the room. The logs are placed vertically leaning against the back wall. ---
**Author:** ![bittersweet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c57346/32.png) [@bittersweet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bittersweet)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2004, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/74 "2004-04-02T22:18:13Z")
I used to live in an older (1930’s maybe?) house in NJ that needed quite a bit of renovating when my family and I moved in. In the bathroom there was an old razor blade chute. You just popped off your dull blade, pushed it through a faceplate, and it disappeared into the wall. I’m currently living in a Mission-style bungalow in FL and the previous owners said it had one of those razor blade thingies as well. I seem to remember seeing those in older hotels as well, once upon a time. ---
**Author:** ![Burnt\_Sugar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee59a6/32.png) [@Burnt\_Sugar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Burnt_Sugar)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/75 "2004-04-03T01:54:48Z")
Our house is pretty, old and we’re in the process of renovating. Our house used to be two apartments, so there are two kitchens. Our block is very steep, and it has 3 levels. There was an apartment on the top two levels and the bottom level was just a concrete slab. Anyway, we’ve built in the bottom level. It now has a laundry and a rec room/ guest bedroom, and a balcony. Our main bathroom is on the top floor, and we installed one of the oft- mentioned laundy shutes. Very handy considering we used to walk down two floors and outside to get to the laundry! The second level kitchen has now become our main kitchen, and there is a balcony which is over the bottom level rec room and balcony. Ie, it’s huge. We live in Queensland (great weather pretty much all year), so this balcony is our dining room at the moment. We haven’t fixed anything on the 2nd level yet except the balcony. Back from the kitchen is the office and the second bathroom. The second bathroom’s roof is not connected to the top level, so our resident possums live on the ceiling. :eek: The top level has the old kitchen which is now the bar. There is a balcony on the top level which has a ledge and a window straight into the bar. The bar is in an alcove off the lounge room. It’s pretty cool. We are having an electric dumb waiter built that will travel between all 3 levels so that we can cook food in the kitchen and make drinks in the bar and not have to carry them up and down levels. Another weird thing is that our driveway is level with our roof. It’s because of the steep slope. (Our driveway is an exit of a very busy roundabout. The only time it is not absolute hell getting out of the driveway is between 10pm and 5am. ) We have to walk down a flight of steps to get to our front door. The great thing about this is because the roof the of the house is level with the road, all the car noise flows over the house and it stays quiet inside. ---
**Author:** ![Gunslinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gunslinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gunslinger)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/76 "2004-04-03T07:28:39Z")
> [@romansperson](#): > > My parents’ house has a clothes chute in the main floor bathroom that goes into the basement - I don’t know of any more recently-built houses that have this feature, and I’ve often wondered why not. It’s fairly easy to build one yourself; just cut out a bit of sheetrock and baseplate, slip a rectangular section of sheetmetal duct in between two studs, and patch up the wall over it. I’ve seen a how-to in a home handyman magazine (sorry, no specifics. It was in the breakroom at a previous job). I’ve only been in fairly new houses, but there are oodles of '20s-'30s ones (east Texas oil boom era) around here that I’d love to explore. ---
**Author:** ![racinchikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@racinchikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racinchikki)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/77 "2004-04-03T07:50:13Z")
Well, there was that 1920s bungalow-turned-antiques store with the odd triangular hallway between the living room and the kitchen, with the bathroom tucked into the angle. It wasn’t really hard to tell what all the rooms used to be, as the goods for sale were piled on top of the existing furniture - the porch was walled in to become a real room, then the living room, on the other side of which was the dining room - I wanted to look at some canes, but they were on the other side of the dinette set, and to get over there would have involved taking boxes full of antiques off of the chairs so they could be pushed in - the bedroom still had its bed, layered over with vintage textiles, and then this freakish triangular hallway to the kitchen that you couldn’t go into - it was blocked off at both ends by furniture. The toilet in the bathroom had a box of sale items on it, though. That was one crazy antiques house. My grandmother’s house has a second floor. I didn’t realize this until I was in high school, because there is no way to get upstairs from inside the house. The cement stairs are accessible only from the screened-in porch. This works well in the current incarnation as a separate rented-out apartment, but I don’t know what they did before, when it was just a single-family dwelling. The house I lived in when I was very, very small (we moved when I was 5) had a door connecting the closets of the master bedroom and the room I slept in. I used to use it to sneak into my mom and dad’s room when I had a nightmare. My other grandmother’s house, which is now my older sister’s, has no built-in lighting at all, except for one fluorescent lamp in the kitchen. Every other room in the house has a floor lamp. The house was built in the '50s or '60s, so I don’t know why they didn’t install any overhead lights. Even the bathroom has a lamp instead of a light fixture. ---
**Author:** ![Gravity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gravity/32/14322_2.png) [@Gravity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gravity)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/78 "2004-04-12T19:17:50Z")
> [@bittersweet](#): > > I used to live in an older (1930’s maybe?) house in NJ that needed quite a bit of renovating when my family and I moved in. In the bathroom there was an old razor blade chute. You just popped off your dull blade, pushed it through a faceplate, and it disappeared into the wall. I’m currently living in a Mission-style bungalow in FL and the previous owners said it had one of those razor blade thingies as well. > > I seem to remember seeing those in older hotels as well, once upon a time. Where on earth do they go? I can just picture moving into a house in a few years and going “Hm. What’s this little drawer for? I’ll just stick my hand in and… OW! WHY THE…!” ---
**Author:** ![Gunslinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gunslinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gunslinger)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/79 "2004-04-12T19:40:59Z")
> [@Gravity](#): > > Where on earth do they go? Just down into the space between the two studs and the sheetrock/plaster. There’s no provision for removal. Builders/remodelers know they’re there and will safely dispose of them when they take the wall out. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/80 "2004-04-12T19:59:35Z")
> [@Gravity](#): > > Where on earth do they go? > > I can just picture moving into a house in a few years and going “Hm. What’s this little drawer for? I’ll just stick my hand in and… OW! WHY THE…!” It’s not a drawer, just a slot in the wall with a metal plate around it. You slip the razor blade in, and it just kind of falls between the walls of the place and piles up. I’m assuming the reasoning was that it was safer than throwing them away in many cases. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308.md?page=5)