Weird features spotted while house hunting

[Kimblee]

A friend of mine bought a house with an...interesting...paint scheme.

The downstairs bathroom was done in weathered-wood "barn board" on three sides. The door was in vertical, black and white stripes.
Apparently, it was like being in a old west jail.

The main room downstairs was white.
With red splatters.
Kind of an 'abattoir' effect.

She painted. A lot.

I would have totally kept this.

But then again, I'm the one who when asked what i wanted from my first house, told the asker that i wanted a "horror movie" bathroom. Rust stained walls and floor, chipped antique tub, cracked sink, etc.

When she pointed out that most people fix that before selling a house I shrugged and decided I'd just have to do the decorating myself.

[Kimblee]

A house I lived in for 1 year in grade school.  The upstairs bathroom had 2 doors, one to the master bedroom and 1 to my brothers' bedroom.  To get to that bathroom I had to walk through my brothers' room. 

Another house I lived in as a kid had a window over the kitchen sink that looked into the family room.  The family room had been added after the house was built and they didn't bother to remove that window.

A house where the owner proudly pointed out that the masterbedroom had an overlook into the living room.  In fact the overlook was only about 6 inches wide - too narrow to see anything, but wide enough that noise and light from the night owl downstairs would disturb someone trying to sleep upstairs.

A house with a cathedral celling in the living room.  The upstairs master bedroom had a window looking into that space.  It let the parents check up on young children without getting out of bed, but for an older couple it would be weird.

A house where the laundry room had doors to both the interior of the house and to outside.  That makes it a great mud room.  But there was a toilet in the room with no walls surrounding it.  Maybe usefull but definitely odd. 

House with an attached garage but no door between the house and garage.

There was a house like that in the little town i used to live in. the owners hung shower curtains around it. Because that solves everything!

[Rohanna]

A fully functioning toilet in the middle of a completely unfinished basement. Just off of the attic bedroom of the same house, another bathroom with nothing but a 1/2 size "saloon" swinging door on it. We still call it the "peeping tom special" house.

[KenveeB]

One of the rooms in my house was hot pink below the chair rail, white and apple green stripes above.  They proudly told me about painting the red wall in the boy's bedroom before listing, WHY wouldn't they paint the garden room too?

[RainhaDoTexugo]

Strange bathrooms seem to be a theme.  We saw one that had a normal bathroom, and right next to it, a very small room with a toilet.  Just a toilet.  There was a toilet in the normal bathroom, too.  You'd think they could have fit a teeny tiny sink in there to make it a proper half bath!

The basement toilet that's barely concealed seems to be a theme.  My brother's house has one that's up against the wall of the house, and just has walls around two other sides, so the front is open (also no sink).  We also saw one that was in the middle of a basement, with little walls around it.  It reminded me of a phone booth.  I suppose it would be handy in a house with only one full bath, if you just really both had to go...

[jaxsue]

When I was a kid I had some friends who owned a farm in the country as a second piece of property. The house was your typical late 19th c. midwestern farmhouse, kind of in bad shape but safe enough to explore. We had a lot of fun in there.

In a little room off the kitchen was an outhouse type of bathroom (no plumbing). There were 2 side-by-side holes in a wooden bench there. I can't imagine using the bathroom with someone sitting right there doing it, too! 

[Zilla]

My dad bought a house.  The previous owner apparently loved the color white.  Her entire living room was white - walls, carpet, furniture.  It was very creepy. But, that wasn't the odd part.  The "public" bathroom had pepto-pink tiles and cartoony frog and lily pad wall paper.  It was bizarre especially given the vanilla ice cream theme of the living room.  My dad ripped out the carpets (had awesome hardwood floors through out) and painted the rooms light colors.  But we kept the frog bathroom.

My grandfather and an ex stepmother both had white houses.  The entire house had white carpet with white walls and white shiny lucite furniture etc.  I remember growing up having to take off my shoes before entering the house and only allowed to have water. LOL  My kids had the same rules.


It wasn't creepy but nuts to me. 

[twiggy]

DH and I were househunting out of state, and we saw some awesome places.

1. The Story Book subdivision. All the streets were named after famous Disney characters. The house we looked at was on Cinderella Dr. So, in keeping with that theme, the popcorn ceiling had glitter mixed in with it. It was sparkly.

2. We looked at a gorgeous house with a finished MIL suite in the basement, granite countertops, brand new hardwood floors and appliances. It was so nice. There was a lovely, big shade tree in the front yard, the lawn was a decent size, and it was on a very quiet street. The drawback was that it backed up to a cemetery. The backyard was fenced in with 4' high chain link fencing, and there was a headstone less than 25' from the fence. When I saw the backyard I shrieked, and DH later told me that he would never live next to a cemetery. His reasoning is hilarious. Mind you, he knows that zombies aren't real, but just in case the dead emerge from their graves, he doesn't want to be the first one eaten.

3. One house had such an interesting color scheme. The living room was robin's egg blue, the kitchen was pepto pink, the bathroom was orange. There was another kitchen, bigger than the living room, in the basement, and it was painted canary yellow. But my favorite room in that house was the "red room". It was a teeny tiny bedroom (like 8x10) with vaulted celings, blood red shag carpet, red and black patterned wall paper halfway up, a black chair rail, and the rest of the wall was white with red "accents". It looked like someone had seen the DIY shows where you do textured painting in a paint a slightly different shade than the base paint, and you use a sponge, or wrap a t-shirt around the roller. The top half of the walls in this room looked like they were covered in blood spatter. We saw this house right before the cemetery house.

4. the house where the master bathroom had a huge window as one wall of the shower. That window opened to the unfenced side yard.

5. another house had a really akward 1/2 bath. The room was basically "C-shaped" with the door opening up at the bottom right of the C. There was a sink and a mirror, and at first glance it looked like that was it. There was a long hallway that was not immediately noticeable, and at the end of that hallway, there was a toilet in the top of the "C"

I know I have more, let me think about it. That was our out of state search. We ended up buying our house here in HomeTown almost a year ago. Luckily I know a realtor here, and he was able to sift through the listings so we didn't see as much "interesting" stuff.

[SisJackson]

When DH and I were househunting we only saw one home that had a strange feature - the CHiPs room.  Does anyone else remember Ponch and Jon's far-out bachelor pad in Malibu?  Well, this place had a room with a fully-carpeted (shag) sunken pit with a conical fireplace in it and a corner bar.  It was funkadelic.  We actually thought it would be hilarious to own it but determined it was better to spend our money more practically.

I also went househunting with friends who were moving to the area, and one of the homes they looked at had been wallpapered to death.  Every room had two walls done in one pattern, and then a coordinating stripe was put up on the other two walls.  And the ceiling.  And inside each closet.  And then each light switch plate and outlet cover had wallpaper on it to match so that it was "hidden" in the wallpaper pattern.

This was in almost every room.  All the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the kitchen, living room, etc.  The only room that was different was the formal dining room, which had three white walls, one wall of damask flocked gold wallpaper, and a glittery popcorn ceiling.  The house was from the late 70s and I'm pretty sure it looked just like that when it was new.

(ETA: I thought we might still have a photo of the CHiPs sunken room - I know we sent one to a realtor friend in another state.  I will bug DH and see if he has it on his hard drive.)

[lipli]

My dad bought a house.  The previous owner apparently loved the color white.  Her entire living room was white - walls, carpet, furniture.  It was very creepy. But, that wasn't the odd part.  The "public" bathroom had pepto-pink tiles and cartoony frog and lily pad wall paper.  It was bizarre especially given the vanilla ice cream theme of the living room.  My dad ripped out the carpets (had awesome hardwood floors through out) and painted the rooms light colors.  But we kept the frog bathroom.

My grandfather and an ex stepmother both had white houses.  The entire house had white carpet with white walls and white shiny lucite furniture etc.  I remember growing up having to take off my shoes before entering the house and only allowed to have water. LOL  My kids had the same rules.


It wasn't creepy but nuts to me. 

It was just blindingly white because that room had 2 normal sized windows and 1 huge picture window.  It was like being in a ice cream carton.    She even had a little white dog to match.  I asked my dad to ask for the dog in a counter offer.  He declined. 

[#1aunt]

I've been in my new house for about five months now.  I saw several odd houses while hunting.

• root cellar, complete with a 3-foot long carrot
• bathroom that appeared to have black trim... until I realized that I was having difficulty breathing because of the mold
• a single boot in a dilapidated shed
• Harley Davidston themed bathroom, complete with homemade leather toilet seat

The previous owners of the house I bought liked color.  Every room is a different color- the bathroom is lime green, BR1 blue, BR2 white above chair rail, brown below, BR3 purple, living room purple, kitchen greenish-yellow.

My dryer is in my kitchen next to my fridge.  The washer is about 12 feet away in the hallway.

And there is a stripper pole in the basement.

[Outdoor Girl]

2. We looked at a gorgeous house with a finished MIL suite in the basement, granite countertops, brand new hardwood floors and appliances. It was so nice. There was a lovely, big shade tree in the front yard, the lawn was a decent size, and it was on a very quiet street. The drawback was that it backed up to a cemetery. The backyard was fenced in with 4' high chain link fencing, and there was a headstone less than 25' from the fence. When I saw the backyard I shrieked, and DH later told me that he would never live next to a cemetery. His reasoning is hilarious. Mind you, he knows that zombies aren't real, but just in case the dead emerge from their graves, he doesn't want to be the first one eaten.

As long as the house wasn't serviced by a shallow well, I'd love to have a place that backed onto a cemetary!  At least you know the neighbour's will be quiet.  Plus, it's lots of greenspace!  I'm one of those in favour of using cemetaries as parkland - going for walks, even picnicing as long as there are no services going on and one is respectful of the gravesites.

[jaxsue]

I had a mid-60s lakefront house in FL. It had a built-in cutting board in the kitchen with the zodiac signs on it. Weird but kind of cool at the same time.

Ohh!!! My current house has one of those! 

It used to strike me as odd, but after 11 years, it seems normal.

Does it make you want to check your horoscope every day? 

[jaxsue]

http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/08/19/unreal-estate-800-year-old-skeleton-lives-in-swedish-house/

A cemetery in the backyard is enough to keep some people away, but how about a skeleton in the house....and in full view?

[wolfie]

2. We looked at a gorgeous house with a finished MIL suite in the basement, granite countertops, brand new hardwood floors and appliances. It was so nice. There was a lovely, big shade tree in the front yard, the lawn was a decent size, and it was on a very quiet street. The drawback was that it backed up to a cemetery. The backyard was fenced in with 4' high chain link fencing, and there was a headstone less than 25' from the fence. When I saw the backyard I shrieked, and DH later told me that he would never live next to a cemetery. His reasoning is hilarious. Mind you, he knows that zombies aren't real, but just in case the dead emerge from their graves, he doesn't want to be the first one eaten.

As long as the house wasn't serviced by a shallow well, I'd love to have a place that backed onto a cemetary!  At least you know the neighbour's will be quiet.  Plus, it's lots of greenspace!  I'm one of those in favour of using cemetaries as parkland - going for walks, even picnicing as long as there are no services going on and one is respectful of the gravesites.

Where I grew up there is a house who has one wall part of the cemetery fence. I assume it used to be the caretaker's house. I can't remember if there is a door on that wall or not - it could have been removed - but there was a window and I once looked into it and saw that the room was empty. I guess if i lived in that house I wouldn't use that room for anything either.