# 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:** 16\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/81 "2004-04-12T21:21:52Z")
My friends have a Sixties subdivision house with the laundry “chute” (a simple hole in the floor of a closet) as well. It’s about 40 cm squate; good thing they can close the closet door, or the baby would fall into the basement… When I was a kid, we lived in an extremely cool and funky house in Whitby. It was big and old (1920s, perhaps) and had several interesting features. We moved in in 1970. We found: A kitchen tiled in green and grey squares, with a black border and grey around the walls; A partially-demolished room in the basement painted a mindboggling shade of purple; The traditional basement toilet out in the open (underneath the stairs); A monster of a coal furnace (my father worked for the gas company, so that was one of the first things to go) Push-button light-switches. Push one in and the other popped out. The house had an enclosed porch, with a screened crawlspace beneath. Underneath we found _knob-and-tube_ wiring. The main floor had the stairs, the kitchen, the dining room, and the foyer, plus the porch. The top floor was cross-shaped. My parents’ bedroom was across the back; my sisters across’ the front. Between them on the south side was the bathroom and the stairs. Between them on the north was my room. You could exit my sisters’ room by a door onto the balcony, then climb onto the roof. I loved that house. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/82 "2004-04-12T21:46:06Z")
When we were house hunting about 10 years ago we toured a gorgeous house that we might have bought, except… the living room was dominated by a **“Conversation Pit!”** Picture a hot tub without the water, or John Lennon’s bed in _Help_, but square, with benches all the way around. WTF?! I can’t think of anyone - even my dearest friends - with whom I’d like to spend a few hours, exchanging views in a “Conversation Pit.” Has anyone ever heard of one of these? Anyone actually have one? ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/83 "2004-04-12T22:06:57Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > … My parents’ house in suburban Buffalo was supposedly a model house when the subdivision was developed in the mid-1960s. There were all sorts of space-age gizmos installed to impress potential homebuyers, one of which is still in the kitchen - a built-in toaster. > > Ever see any houses with features that made you go “hmmmmmm?” Some acquaintances of mine once lived in an older house that had a built-in appliance base in the countertop. The wife looked up the company name on the internet and contacted them, and discovered she could special-order the accessories that went with… like a blender carafe, a mixer, can opener, etc. The weirdest thing in our house (built 1957) is the phone niche in our hallway. ---
**Author:** ![percypercy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@percypercy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/percypercy)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/84 "2004-04-12T23:24:36Z")
We have a laundry chute except when we remodeled the kitchen, the middle of the chute got cut off so if you drop something down it, it’s pretty much gone forever. Now the house we had in Hawaii was really strange. There were two bedrooms connected to the main part of the house. Then there was a separate bedroom you could reach from the porch or… From the shower. Yep that’s right. You opened a door in the laundry room and found the shower for that bathroom. So if you wanted to go into that bedroom from inside the house, you had to climb through the shower and then walk through the bedroom. It was fun. -Lil ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/85 "2004-04-12T23:57:37Z")
> [@spizzum](#): > > … there is a door off the kitchen that has stairs leading to the cellar, with a toilet smack at the top of the stairs. … Wait a minute. There is a functioning toilet built into the basement stairs? :eek: **koeeaddi** we have some friends with an older house in New Jersey where the previous owner spent a small fortune “modernizing” it. Unfortunately from the look of it he did this in the late 60s/early 70s so all his improvements look thoroughly horrendous now. One of his improvements was a conversation pit which I am pretty sure they have never used…they might have had it filled in by now. ---
**Author:** ![spizzum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@spizzum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spizzum)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/86 "2004-04-13T02:27:32Z")
> [@Laughing Lagomorph](#): > > Wait a minute. There is a functioning toilet built into the basement stairs? > :eek: Maybe I didn’t explain it as well as I could have. The toilet is at the top of the stairs. The area is about 3’x3’. The door from the kitchen is in front of the toilet, and to the right, there’s the staircase. Not much room in there. People who see the setup for the first time always comment on the liklihood of someone falling down the stairs in the dark(or while drunk) :eek: . ---
**Author:** ![pipperroo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7feea3/32.png) [@pipperroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pipperroo)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/87 "2004-04-13T03:00:20Z")
First house I rented living in Michigan I used to call the “Escher” house because of all the stairs. Walk in the front door, turn right and go up 2 steps to the Living room, or open the door straight ahead and go down the steps to the basement, or turn left 180 degrees to the first 1/2 bath, or turn left then right and a short hallway took you to 3 steps up to the butler pantry off the kitchen. From the Living room you could walk up a flight of stairs open on one side without any railing to keep you from falling off the side of the stairs, to a door that opened onto the first landing. From this landing you could choose to walk down a flight of stairs to the butler pantry, stay on the same level and enter a large room over the garage, or go up a flight of stairs to the next floor. The room over the garage contained the second 1/2 bath. On the top floor there was one bedroom with a french door out to a balcony, the only full bath, a room with linoleom floor, and a Master bedroom with the third and final 1/2 bath. The kitchen was behind the butler pantry and then you could go down 2 steps from the kitchen to the laundry room. It had a laundry shute, but it was boarded up. I do miss the living room because the back wall was all window looking down into a flowered backyard and a small woods of evergreens. The next house I rented had a door to nowhere on the landing of the stairwell. When the owners had remodeled and enlarged the kitchen, the room it had originally openned into was gone into the kitchen space, but they chose to leave the door and all hardware in place on the opposite side of the kitchen wall. ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/88 "2004-04-13T12:20:30Z")
> [@Sangre Azul](#): > > 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. > > 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. Freaky coincidence… My pseudo-sister had a very similar loft in her apartment. The builing used to be a bank but was renovated into a bunch of “artist lofts” Her small living room also had a ladder going up to a glofified cubby hole, that was just big enough for her to fit her queensize futon and a nightstand. Her’s didn’t have half-walls for privacy, just a regular rail-and-balluster railing. She was _just_ the right height that if she sta up in bed she wouldn’t hit her head. She too had a black kitten that was gung-ho about the railing. Climbed it like a little black, furry human. Coming down was hilarious, he didn’t jump unless he lost his balance. He would come down _head first_ as if he was walking down _really_ steep stairs. Basically, he was climbing down the ladder upside down! We always used to watch and sing the theme music to Mission Impossible. He was the ultimate action kitty! Dum-dum-da-da dum-dum-da-da… Oh, and Sniffs\_Markers family had an honest to Og castle in her family for several generations (they sold that estate a few years ago because no one in the family lives in Scotland these days). It had all sorts of secret passageways. They mostly seemed to be designed to be discreet shortcuts for the “servants.” So they could come and go witout being seen by the “lord of the manor.” Example/ You could pull on the shelving unit in the kitchen, it was actually a doorway to a tunnel that went to the laundry room. She said it was a blast when she was a kid. ---
**Author:** ![LateComer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5ac83/32.png) [@LateComer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LateComer)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/89 "2004-04-13T15:26:48Z")
> [@quiltguy154](#): > > 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. My wife’s grandmother’s former house had a similar feature in the bathroom. It was a niche, maybe 18in by 18in and a couple of inches deep. It was all ceramic and had about 8 gas jets which faced into the structure. There was no venting. It was simply a heater for the bathroom. When lit (manually) the jets (which were adjustable) would shoot out blue flame several inches long. It seemed an efficient way to heat an otherwise unheated bathroom. Regarding bathrooms in the basement: My deceased dad’s house (which I’m currently trying to sell) is a small 2 story working class house. when my family bought it, they had to put in a bathroom on the second floor because the only bathroom in the house consisted of a toilet on one side of the basement and a bathtub (with shower) and sink on the other side of the basement. The previous owners had raised 2 kids in this house with this configuration. My current house has a shower built into the basement, the wall is made of cinder blocks. I call it a “miner’s shower” because this house is in a heavy mining area and often showers are built in the basement so that they can clean off without dirtying the rest of the house. It was built in 1950. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/90 "2004-05-01T15:18:52Z")
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**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/91 "2004-05-01T15:29:58Z")
> [@angelicate](#): > > My granny’s house had a door between two closets. If you opened the door to the closet in one room, and went behind the clothes and along the wall a little you would find a door behind the clothes. When you opened it and walked through, you’d be behind the clothes in another room. I’m guessing that one of the rooms was added on and it was just easier to build closets around the doors that it would have been to seal up the wall and then build the closets. That, or the rooms were there, with a door between and no closets and the closets were added later, but they didn’t feel the need to get rid of the door. Sorry for the belated bump, but I was just reading the thread because it was linked from a different thread… The house my GG Grandfather built in 1884 had 2 2 bedroom suites which were the style and fashion of the time. One bedroom of each pair was for the husband, and one was for the wife. The closets were in general ‘armoires’ and the corridor between each pair of bedrooms ended up getting turned into a pair of closets for the most part. one one side of the hall, the linen room and shaft for dirty linen to be sent to the absement laundry room was on one side, and a bathroom was on the other side of the hall, so each passageway was about 6 feet long, whichmade 2 very nice though smallish 3 foot by 4 foot closets. The house was designed for my gg grandparents, a visiting couple as guests and had 2 nursery ‘wards’ that were 2 long bedrooms suitable for 3 girls and 3 boys connected by a common ‘playroom’ and bathroom, with a govornesses room attatched. There was also a very small servants area in the attics above the dhildrens wing. These were over the ‘service area’ of the house [kitchen, servants stair, servants dining room, servants parlor and butlers pantry.] There were also 3 moderately small but nice bedrooms [for singles i guess] and small library in the attics above the main part of the house where the 2 nice bedroom suites were. ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/92 "2004-05-01T18:44:23Z")
When i was little, we lived for a while in a house that had been a small bungalow with a detached garage, and the previous owners enclosed the passageway between the two buildings to make a very wide, very long kitchen – its length was the width of the house. It was very cosy, actually, and we did most of our living in it as it was so big. At one point, my parents thought about lowering the ceiling, and thick beams were put in, but they never went past that – there was space over the wooden beams and my brothers used to reach up and chin themselves on them, and then on oldest brother got the bright idea of suspending a swing from one of the beams – it never bothered my mum in the least to have me swinging in the kitchen up and over the table, etc. My dad had a lareg mechanic’s garage built on this property because in their spare time he and my brothers would rebuild cars to sell second hand. They had a number of interesting features in the garage including a pit so they could drive the car over it, go down into the pit, and change oil, work on the underneath parts, etc. Meanwhile, I used to play in the adjacent woods, and whenever I found wild animals that had died or the cats had got, I would bury them and mark the wee graves. We had a big field between the house and garage, and the woods, and my parents put in all sorts of fruit trees and a lovely garden. Eventually, we had to move because they were building a new road through the property; the garage was torn down, as was the kitchen and house garage, and the bungalow part was purchased and actually moved a few miles down the road. Everything they had planted grew up all wild and overgrown – and turns out when they knocked down the garage, the company never filled in the car pit. Flash forward about 5 years, and I was taking a course of study at the local uni, and a lady in the class, on break, was telling us about this bizarre piece of overgrown property she had had to survey for her company – in all the weeds and scrub were these neglected fruit trees, and what had set everyone off, and they’d ended up calling the police, was that they found graves in the woods, and then this weird cement-lined pit – and they’d thought it was the scene of some mass murder or something :eek: I realised she was talking about our old property, and told her…she said it had seriously freaked out her survey team… * * * When I was little, I used to play frequently at a friend’s house – a previous owner had customised the basement by digging tunnels along either side of the basement’s longer walls and making them into hallways that turned and connected at right angles behind of the shorter walls. The tunnel walls were about a foot or so outside the basement’s original walls, and what he did was make aquariums in that space along the length of the two longer walls. Meanwhile, the only shower in the house was at the end of one of those narrow tunnels…her mum used to wonder why we never played in the basement, as it was a big, comfortable room – but they didn’t keep fish, and to have those unlit empty fish tanks there…as little kids that used to freak us out too much – we’d be playing, and constantly would stop to look up quickly, because we’d seen a reflection and thought someone/thing was on the other side in one of the tunnels… and going down that narrow hallway to take a shower was downright creepy… ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/93 "2004-05-01T19:19:40Z")
> [@koeeoaddi](#): > > When we were house hunting about 10 years ago we toured a gorgeous house that we might have bought, except… > > the living room was dominated by a **“Conversation Pit!”** Picture a hot tub without the water, or John Lennon’s bed in _Help_, but square, with benches all the way around. WTF?! > > I can’t think of anyone - even my dearest friends - with whom I’d like to spend a few hours, exchanging views in a “Conversation Pit.” Has anyone ever heard of one of these? Anyone actually have one? We had one in one of our houses when I was a kid. It was three-sided with the 4th side being the fireplace hearth. (Supposedly you would hold cozy conversations around the fire.) We never used it, not once, to my knowledge. It just ended up being the place where all the dog’s toys ended up. After we lived there a few years it was time to replace the carpets so before the carpet guys came my dad just built it up with a 2/4 and plywood base and the carpet guys covered right over it. ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/94 "2004-05-01T19:43:22Z")
PS because the kitchen was an enclosed space, the bathroom and one bedroom had windows that opened into the kitchen…it used to drive me bonkers as a pre-teen when my dad would insist the curtains and window to the bathroom had to be opened especially when there were people in the kitchen! The other thing about that house – if you went into the bathroom that led off the kitchen, there was a door there that led to what had been a small barbershop… You know, I used to think all of this was perfectly normal…like the old fashioned, claw footed bathtub mum kept just outside the back door (I photos of me and the dog lounging in it, taking in the afternoon) or that my sister kept a working 19th century upright piano on her front porch for years… ---
**Author:** ![Kayeby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de0a6/32.png) [@Kayeby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kayeby)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/95 "2004-05-02T01:08:51Z")
A friend of a friend had a secret passage in his house that you accessed through a bookcase. I don’t know if this next one counts as a strange feature since it was deliberate, but I’ve never seen anything like it before. In a backyard, which was on a slope, there was a smallish pool on higher ground, then a waterslide (with water running down it and everything) which joined to a larger pool at the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![dook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@dook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dook)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308/96 "2004-05-02T01:20:08Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > I also knew a guy who lived in a silo. His rooms were stacked one on top of t’other, with stairs connecting them. Cool, but probably rather exhausting. I’d bet you become good at managing the ups and downs you’d have to do to put laundry and stuff away. Are we talking about a grain silo? I’d like to build a house into a missile silo. There are a bunch of the scattered around missouri and kansas… I think it would be cool. Maybe build a barn over the top of the silo and have the entrance inside the barn. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strange-features-in-houses/237308.md?page=4)