Inspired by the thread about the main hallway shower here. Can be either a weird design or just weirdly decorated.
Had a friend who’s home had the stairs to the second story that kind of wrapped around the wall, like you walked up and followed a 90 degree angle up. Was normal except halfway up the stairs was a small door that lead to a small closet sized room except it wasn’t a closet it was a toilet only restroom. So it was quite literally 2.5 baths, a bathroom downstairs, a bathroom upstairs, and a toilet right in the middle.
My cousin home has a walk in shower in his basement that also has a urinal and sink in the shower. No toilet, just a pisser and a place to shave. The spray from the shower just barely misses them.
We’ve got some friends who used to live in Lawrence, KS, and they lived in this cool old house from the early 20th/late 19th century.
Everything about the house was normal, except that there was this moderate sized room in the back of the garage/basement with no windows and a LOT of electrical power run to it- like 3-4 20 amp circuits worth, along with a shit-ton of outlets. The room itself wasn’t not readily noticeable from the outside- if you didn’t already know it was there, it wasn’t obvious.
As best as we could figure, some previous owners had a weed grow room there, and had very carefully sited it so that it wouldn’t be visible via IR from the street, had plenty of power for lighting, and was also situated in a way that kept it warm in the winter.
A weed grow room in Lawrence, Kansas? Say it ain’t so!!
Seriously, though, what else would that room be used for? A room full of computer equipment with no ventilation would quickly get far too hot. And I can’t think of any other use that would require that much electricity.
My father had painted his childhood bedroom black and then used black light & neon paint to draw all kinds of psychedelic designs on the walls and ceiling. What can I say, he was a teen in the 1960s.
I’m sure they figured it out pretty quickly when they moved in. We just all got a good laugh out of it is all. They pointed the same things out (they’re an engineering professor and a working engineer) when showing us the room.
We’d just never seen a purpose-built grow room though. It was more the investment involved that had me surprised- you’ve got to love your weed (or have gone commercial) to spend that much money on a dedicated grow room.
My in-laws house had a toilet/sink bathroom halfway up the stairs from the basement. Some friends had a big closet or small room halfway up the stairs from the first to the second floor.
When I was a kid in the 1970s one of the neighborhood kids had a proper 1950s-era bomb shelter in the center of his basement. It was probably 8 x 8 feet and had a single lightbulb in the center of the cement ceiling. The ceiling was kid height, so any adults would have been stooping.
The entrance was a similarly robust concrete hallway that had a bend so there was no direct path from the outside into the room.
We used it as a clubhouse.
These days if I saw that same room in a house I’d be figuring it was a predator’s dungeon and would be expecting to see ring bolts in the walls.
Either potential purpose makes such a room downright creepy.
Can anyone explain the ‘Pittsburgh Potty’ in the basement of some older houses in, well, Pittsburgh? A toilet right next to the washer/dryer, no walls. Just, have a seat and a good long constitutional while waiting for the laundry to be done?
We have that in our current house and it was built in the 1980’s. I scratched my head when I saw it, as I have never seen such a thing in any other house I’ve ever lived in or visited (although I’ve never been to Pittsburgh). However, the toilet is handy while watching TV in the basement and you don’t want to run up the stairs when the beer you drank comes calling.
Edit: the laundry room itself has a door so the rest of the TV watchers don’t need to watch you dispose of the beer. And there’s a laundry tub and sink for hand washing. But no door or any other bathroom-like features - just the toilet next to the washer and drier.
Upthread someone mentioned a bomb shelter. When looking to buy our first house, we viewed a house in Roseville, MI (near Detroit) that had a triangular cement block about three feet tall in the back yard. There was a handle attached to the block and it swung up easily, revealing a ladder down a shaft that went to a subterranean bomb shelter, apparently equipped with electricity and other comforts - all in the back yard of this otherwise boring suburban house. The realtor told us the teenagers used it for a hangout with their friends.
I went to college in a fairly small college town with a lot of rentals that were primarily used by college students. We rented a home that had a hidden room in the basement and it was obvious it was used to grow weed because of all the leaves left behind.
The first home I owned had a shower head under the staircase leading down the basement. Like, pointing under the stair case. No water-proofing, no way to keep the wood stairs from getting soaked and no way to contain the water. There was a drain under the nearby utility sink. I have no idea why they would’ve plumbed in that shower head. When I remodeled the basement, I removed that piping, shower head and valves.
We went to an open house once a long time ago that had a very odd room(s). Off one of the normal rooms was a short stairway. You could configure the stairway to go either up or down (not both). If you go up, you’re in room A. If you go down, you’re in room B (which had a hot tub). If you have the stairs going one way, the other room is hidden. The stairs were easy to reconfigure so it wasn’t anything semi-permanent. I wish I could remember exactly how they did the stairs, I’d attach a diagram if I could.