Unusual things about your house

I saw a remodeling show once and the razor blade compartment in the house had some old pot in it!  It was their stash hiding spot, LOL!

I am surprised as well that kids could live in that house since the 1960s and never have tested out the fire hose!

The people that built my parents house put storage in every possible corner. The cabinet under the staircase has two doors in it which go from the living room into the bedrooms, forming a secret passage way.

The house I grew up in had 2 stair cases.  The house was approx 2400 sq ft. Stairs in the living room and another set right behind it in the kitchen.   They both ended in the same spot.  We currently have 2 sets of stairs. But they go to 2 different parts of the house.

My my current house has a feature useful at XMAS.  One light switch to turn on candles in all windows on the front of the house. 

Our previous  house in Austin had an elevator shute in the middle of the house. But not the elevator equipment. The previous owners of the house had it built ready to install because they anticipated the wife wouldn't be able to do stairs due to illness.   Made for great closet space. 

That firehose is the coolest thing I've ever seen! My son who aspires to be a fireman would love that.

One of our neighbors was a fireman and he had a working fire hydrant in his front yard.

Our house was built in the late '80s but there are some odd things about it. Almost every room has an outside door. Almost every room has pocket doors, too. The builder must have had a thing for doors. The house is covered in rock, which is very unusual for California. And the driveway is rock, too. And we have a working intercom.

A previous owner installed a 'one can deep' pantry between the studs in the hall right off the kitchen. Everyone thinks it is very cool, and for a small house, it's a good space for canned goods and the like.

I also have a little 'key door' on the wall going down the basement steps for extra keys, etc. it's built into the wall.

I grew up in a house with a laundry chute. Loved it.

My house is a cookie cutter, built in the 50's, so nothing interesting was done when it was built.

The people who have lived here have done 2 interesting things.  They installed a fireplace in the basement and ran the flue thru the bedroom above it.  They then built a small closet around it.  The room is small enough as it is, so it's pretty annoying to have this *fireplace closet* in there.  

They also installed a hose in the basement.  It's not a cool fire hose, just a regular garden hose.  But it's pretty funny that it's there.  They built a little closet around that, too.

You are right. The doors created air flow pattern and if you don't have certain doors open you can get a build up of mold in the outer rooms.

Our 1948 house has only one closet, because the designer was a minimalist and believe that people should not own much. No porches for security reasons. And no garages because people should walk and use buses.

My cousin had a place like that.  He had a small place and it worked wonderfully. 

I think gas logs sound like a nice idea.  I hope you try it.

Great post! I love, love, love interesting tidbits about houses.

The house I lived in from toddler to preteen wasn't all that interesting except it had all crank open windows that barely let in any fresh air. I hated that. It also had a little wooden door behind my bedroom door that, as a child, I imagined was for all sorts of things. It was really just a way to get to the bathroom tub plumbing, but to me, it was a magic mystery door.

The house my parents moved to next was a bit of a strange one. The original owners lost it before ever moving into it and we bought it from the bank. It had been sitting there, not lived in, for quite a while. It was a tri-level house. It was basically like a large two-story home, with one side having two stories and the other side was a single level with the main living areas halfway between the two floors of the two-story side. The bedrooms up on the top floor, the kitchen, dining, pantry, and living room on the second floor and the first floor had the strangest room of all. It was a long room with no windows in it and no exit to the back yard. It was the only room on that floor, so it was quite large. There was also a bathroom to the side of that room.

There were electric outlets all along the top of the walls, just below the ceiling. I'm talking about 20 outlets up there. Also multiple phone outlets. There were a few normal ones at the bottom of the walls as well. We know the owner lost the house gambling in Vegas before they ever moved into it. We surmised that he had some sort of illegal operations going on and was planning something special for that room. We guessed he might have been a bookie. I mean, no windows at all and no access to the back of the house on that whole floor? And what was being plugged into all those outlets? My parents added a glass sliding door to the back yard and a window.

The neighbors said they were very strange people and they never talked with anyone when they came to see the house. Since they lost it before ever moving into it, the neighbors never really got to know the family at all. The husband came back to try to sell us some stuff for the house. I was the one that answered the door and the guy was nervous and twitchy. My parent's hated his taste and were in the process of remodeling the areas for which he brought the matching lamps and things. I remember him carrying in a blue and green lamp that matched the gag worthy flooring in the entryway. His taste was very very Vegas. The entryway had blue and green tile flooring with big glitter embedded in it. The wall that you saw immediately upon opening the front double doors was a rock-covered wall that formed the base of the curved staircase. It looked so Vegas lounge like and cheap. He was quite irritated that he couldn't get any money out of my parents for the custom pieces.

The house did have an intercom system, which was fun, and a door at the top of the stairs that led into the totally unfinished 'attic' space that occurred above the second floor on that half of the house.

The only other strange part was a false wall in my parent's bedroom. There was a closet that faced the bedroom and then a wall behind the closet. From the bathroom side, if you opened one of the normal looking cupboard doors, you found a pocket door at the back of the cupboard that led into that empty space behind the clothes cupboard. It wasn't very wide, but it ran the length of the closet wall. No lights or anything in there, just studs from the closet wall. I suppose it could have been a special storage area for valuables or weapons that you want to keep from your children, but it was just weird. My parents just ignored it.

My current home has nothing exciting. My husband did add a wood-burning fireplace to the family room and put a metal trap door in the bottom of the firebox leading to a clean out for the ashes on the back side of the fireplace. I think those were pretty common for fireplaces in this area and the metal thing was definitely made for that purpose. I don't have a laundry chute, but that would be very nice!

We have a small sauna

Our neighborhood is mostly three-story houses with a few four-story houses thrown in too. The four-story houses all have fire sprinkler systems, which I had never heard of in residential construction before I moved here. Lots of the houses have elevators too. We will probably add one eventually because we're not ever planning to move from here. It will be handy when we get older. We'll have to add on a little bump-out on the wall beside the front door I guess because there's nowhere else to put it.