Unusual things about your house

My last two houses had laundry chutes, one was nowhere near the washer and dryer.  Wish I had one now.

Ann

Not exactly the kind of things you mentioned but there are things that I am so used to that I forget to tell visitors about until they have trouble or ask.

The bathtub has the hot and cold faucets reversed (if you want hot water, you turn on the "C" knob and if you want cold, you turn on the"H" .  The water lines are correct, but the knobs were put on in reverse.

You have to slightly lift the storm door for it to close correctly. I just do it automatically I suppose without thinking so wonder when guest have such a time closing it until I have to help them and realize I am slightly lifting it.

I have lived in my house 20 years, I have NEVER had to replace the light bulbs in the kitchen - ever!! It still amazes me. They are 2 round bulbs like THIS

I live in a house that was built in the 20's and it is chock full of strange goings on. LOL

I have a spot on the dining room wall where the old fashioned wall phone hung. I have a medicine cabinet in the bathroom that has the functional razor disposal slot. My fire place floor lifts up so I can sweep the ashes under the house/crawl space. I have plaster walls that make it damn near impossible to hang anything up with out creating cracks. I have asbestos shingles.

None of these are unusual for old houses though. My whole neighborhood is like this. Remodeling is like a gift box waiting to be opened.  

My house was built in the early 90's so nothing much unusual in it other than a useless wetbar in the family room ... why they would think we'd need a sink 20 feet from the kitchen escapes me    

Our house was built in the 70s with a lot of modern technology for its time. We, too, have an intercom system. The wiring went bad and it hummed all the time, so DH disconnected it. I was sad about that, because it came in very handy. Instead of yelling for the kids, I could just make an announcement over the intercom. There was even a front door speaker so if someone rang the bell and I was in another part of the house, I could ask who was there.

We also have a central vac system. It works very well.

Our electric stovetop is very large. It has 4 burners with a covered griddle in the middle. We've never seen anything like it. It will be hard, if not impossible, to replace if we ever need to. There are built in wire shelves above it with heat lamps to keep food warm. The hood of the stove covers them so you don't see them unless you're standing right by the stove.

All of the bathroom lights are pendant lamps hung on chains. Very retro. At first I wanted to get rid of them, but they've grown on me.

We found remnants of the original wallpaper hidden under the stairs. Most of it was flocked with raised patterns in bright oranges and yellows. Too funny.

Oh, we have an avocado green bathroom, as well as a harvest gold one.

Our house was built in the 1940s.
When I tore down the wallpaper in the dining room, I found an old door frame that once opened onto the screened in porch.
We have two light switches that don't seem to turn on anything...after 20+ years in the house, we've never discovered what those switches do. We even had an electrician here once and he didn't have a clue.

We built our house in 1997, so everything in it seems normal to me.

Our lot is built on a big granite formation, so our driveway turnaround ends in an 8' wall of pink granite. It sheared off in a perfect wall when they hit it with the rock pounder -- looks like we designed it that way. It's a favorite hangout of the cats in the early evening when the rock holds the heat of the day.

There is so much weirdness in my house. It was built in the early 70's by a golf pro and it has a "pro shop". We are in a small gated residential neighborhood and it has never been a commercial area. The pro shop is part of the house and is about 13' by 7' adjacent to the laundry room. There is a door to the outside, plus there was a door closing it off from the laundry room. We use it as a utility/linen/storage room which is great since there are no linen closets in this house.

Then there are the exterior doors. There are five regular doors and five sets of sliding glass doors. Now keep in mind this is not a giant house, just about 3000 of interior space. There were more, I mean a regular doors right next to a set of sliders leading outside. We have walled some up as we remodeled over the years.

The last significant weirdness is the air conditioning and plumbing infrastructure. There are two water heaters and we only have two bathrooms. Plus we are in the south so it is central AC/Heat systems. There are three separate zones/systems. It is good and bad. The good is if one breaks we can relocate to a functioning area. The bad is three systems to maintain, repair and replace. Gets a tad pricy.

Overall, in the land of track zero lot Mediterranean style housing developments and "planned" communities, we a very happy to live in our little unique neighborhood with non-Mediterranean homes, trees and acreage.

Oh gosh, so much is weird about this house. It's 100yrs old and was once owned by a dr who practiced out of the basement, he also had plenty of money and liked to entertain so that explains some of the novelties.

There's what we believe was a milk door, it's just inside the side door on the landing.

In one of the basement closets is a gauze dispenser and another first aid supply holder on the wall. There's also a sauna in the basement (it works, we don't use it)

There are 3 fireplaces, they all have the trap door on the bottom for the ashes.

In the family room (it was an addition in the 60s) there's an indoor grill (it works, we don't use it), there's 2 bar sinks (1 by the grill, 1 across the room at the bar), there's an ice maker (it doesn't work ). There's also paneling in the family room

There's a media cabinet with wiring for speakers in the family room and kitchen.

Before we moved in I counted how many knobs we'd need to update the pale yellow kitchen cabinets.....52! And all the ones along the ceiling don't have knobs. We've embraced the yellow cabinets for now.

There's wallpaper everywhere, stairway, kitchen ceiling, everywhere, mostly painted over.

There's 2 sunrooms. There's 2 phone lines coming into the house. At one point there was a whole house vac, the ports are there, but there's nothing in the basement. The pool is gunite.

I'm sure there's more, but I can't remember it all. Whoever said remodeling is like opening a present is right, however it's more of a gag gift because you don't usually want to see what's behind the wall.

In  our old house one of the bathrooms had a functional razor disposal slot.  When we gutted the bathroom, the number of rusty blades in the wall was astounding.  Years and years worth of razor blades.

We have a laundry chute, friends houses have intercoms but I have never seen a fire hose in a home before. Is the hose actually hooked up to a water source? It would be interesting to know if there was a reason for that to be added. Did the home builder lose their previous home to fire? Was he a firefighter?

In the home I lived in as a kid, we had a trap door in the bathroom to get to the basement. That may not be strange in some locales but where I am from (Ontario), it is pretty odd and I have yet to hear from anyone else who had a similar set up.

My parents have an intercom system in their house, which is the one I grew up in. It's even got an intercom for the front door area, which was a lot of fun for us on Halloween. My Aunt had a laundry chute that we'd play in and crawl through. 

I've never know anyone who had a fire hose in their house, however. It looks like it's hooked up to a water source? There's just no chance that hose would've gone un-tested by my brothers if we'd had one growing up 

Early 1960's ranch here. We have a brick fireplace with a built in firewood cabinet. Not so unusual, I know. The interesting part is that the cabinet has access from both inside and outside the house. So instead of bringing logs through the house and seeing a stack of dirty spidery wood, it's kept in a large 3'x3'x4' metal lined cabinet that you load from the outside, keeping the house clean.