Weird features spotted while house hunting

[Marisol]

We found a house where the master bedroom had lovely cathedral ceilings with a big window at the top...that opened up into the kitchen...that did not have a glass panel separating the two rooms.  This room had no windows otherwise. 

Also saw a house with a large man made of pottery sitting in the garden and another with a dining table in the oversized hallway.  Either the house had no hallway, or it had no dining room.

[Hmmmmm]

One house was beautifully decorated everywhere except the kitchen.  There was red and green plaid wallpaper on the walls, yellow and pink polka dot wallpaper on the celining, and fruit wall paper on the cabinent doors that "color" coordinated with the other 2 wall papers.  It's been 15 years, but I can till see that kitchen.

In another house, the homeowner was a hobbiest carpenter.  He built custom murphy beds into all of the bed rooms and little loft areas with a desk below and ladder leading up to the little lofts.  While fun when the kids were little, once they hit 12 or so, they wouldn't fit up there anymore.  They'd extended the house in the back creating a new master suite.  The old master bedroom had been converted to a "spa" area.  It had a hot tub you'd normally see outdoors, a sauna, and a little exercise area with full mirrors.  You had to walk through this unbelievably humid room to get to the master.   

[#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

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Honestly, of all the crazy things people have posted in this thread, a leather toilet seat strikes me as the most bizarre...and gross. #1aunt for the win.

It was definitely unique.  Part of the leather had peeled back from the underside of the lid, revealing the staples holding the leather on.  I didn't lift the seat to see what condition it was in....   

The walls were also bright Harley Davidson orange.  The master bedroom matched. 

[Elfqueen13]

The first house we bought had poppy wallpaper in the bathroom.  Kind of like this:

only the poppies were acid pink, about 4 inches across.  We couldn't paint over it, because it was a very slick, almost plastic feel to it.  Paint just peeled right off.  But the wallpaper didn't.    They must have put it up with white glue, right over the wallboard.  We managed to get it off, but had to replace it with more wallpaper, since the wallboard was too damaged to paint.

I liked that wallpaper!

[Elfqueen13]

Our recent house hunt brought us some very bizarre elements. Like the house where the kitchen had been relocated to the 2nd floor.  That one also had stairs going nowhere and a random toilet in the basement. 

There was the house with red velvet flocked wallpaper and matching red carpet.

The house with the unlisted room.  Listing said living room/dining room/kitchen on first floor. There was also a parlor that had been painted dark purple with a 4' Ravens (football team) emblem on one wall.

There were a lot more; the link in my signature goes to my house-hunt journal entries.  We actually didn't buy a house in the City and are about to start house-hunting again in another area.  More fun!

[LazyDaisy]

Our recent house hunt brought us some very bizarre elements. Like the house where the kitchen had been relocated to the 2nd floor.  That one also had stairs going nowhere and a random toilet in the basement. 

There was the house with red velvet flocked wallpaper and matching red carpet.

The house with the unlisted room.  Listing said living room/dining room/kitchen on first floor. There was also a parlor that had been painted dark purple with a 4' Ravens (football team) emblem on one wall.

There were a lot more; the link in my signature goes to my house-hunt journal entries.  We actually didn't buy a house in the City and are about to start house-hunting again in another area.  More fun!

Maybe the previous owners were inspired by the Winchester Mystery House. They were trying to confuse the ghosts. 

[Marisol]

I was allowed to paint whatever I wanted on my bedroom walls as a child/teenager. One wall I painted with a celestial themed mural. The sun in one corner, the moon in another, with clouds and stars all around. Another wall had dragons and random sketches drawn/painted on it. I painted my window and door frames with multi-colored tribal type patterns. Eventually I painted over everything with regular old pale lilac paint, when I was about 20.

I think my mom tricked me.  She said I could paint a mural on one wall of my room when we got some time to move the furniture and get the proper paints.  My plan was to paint a rainbow and a unicorn, my favorite things!  However, we never moved my furniture and I guess I was content to keep waiting.  So it never happened.  I really think mom didn't want me to paint the wall.

[Tierrainney]

The stairs to nowhere reminds me, I lived in a house with a door to no where.

The house had been built some time in the 1890s and had lovely old wood everywhere. The original kitchen was reported to be very small, dark and difficult to use. The previous owners had converted a downstairs bedroom and added to make a big, light and nice modern kitchen. But the door into the bedroom was left behind, as it was original wood and matched the entry. The door did not open and the knob did not turn. People would ask us where that door went and we started calling it "The Door to Nowhere". I wish I had taken pictures.

[Marisol]

My dream house would have hidden rooms and stairs and possibly stairs and doors to nowhere.  I've always wanted a house like that.

I do have a plan to get a window to nowhere in my current house.  The sunroom is an add on and they put up a cheap flimsy paneled wall on the side of the dining room that formerly was the back of the house.  I think there is a window behind that wall.  If I can pull down the panel maybe I can get to the old wall and window.  The plan is to put a light in the window and a stained glass piece. 

Good idea?  Crazy?

[gramma dishes]

My dream house would have hidden rooms and stairs and possibly stairs and doors to nowhere.  I've always wanted a house like that.

I do have a plan to get a window to nowhere in my current house.  The sunroom is an add on and they put up a cheap flimsy paneled wall on the side of the dining room that formerly was the back of the house.  I think there is a window behind that wall.  If I can pull down the panel maybe I can get to the old wall and window.  The plan is to put a light in the window and a stained glass piece. 

Good idea?  Crazy?

I think it sounds awesome. 

Another possibility is that if it's a really big window, you could have French doors put in there for an additional entrance into the sun room and you could also open them to expand your dining room in case of lots of company! 

[RainhaDoTexugo]

I say go for it!  When we finish our attic, I really really want to put in a secret passage, maybe hidden stairs.

I totally forgot about a weird feature to our house.  There's no way to access our basement from inside the house.  It was converted to an apartment, and the put in an exterior door and closed off the interior door.  It makes the space very hard to use - I really don't want to have to get dressed and go outside every time I want to grab a bottle of wine from the basement fridge.

There's also no backyard access directly from the house.  When previous owners built an addition onto the back, the back door got moved, and the gate is now about 8 feet from the door.  That's high on my list of  things to fix, it would make letting the dog out much easier.

[Marisol]

My dream house would have hidden rooms and stairs and possibly stairs and doors to nowhere.  I've always wanted a house like that.

I do have a plan to get a window to nowhere in my current house.  The sunroom is an add on and they put up a cheap flimsy paneled wall on the side of the dining room that formerly was the back of the house.  I think there is a window behind that wall.  If I can pull down the panel maybe I can get to the old wall and window.  The plan is to put a light in the window and a stained glass piece. 

Good idea?  Crazy?

I think it sounds awesome. 

Another possibility is that if it's a really big window, you could have French doors put in there for an additional entrance into the sun room and you could also open them to expand your dining room in case of lots of company!

Not a bad idea at all!  I had also thought about opening the window all the way into the sunroom and then putting the stained glass in so you could see it from both sides and I wouldn't need a back-light.  However, right now the sun room has bookshelves on that wall, so I would have to find a spot for the books.  Our house is pretty small at only 1200 square feet with no storage areas or basement, so it is a challenge to find places for everything.  Although the family who lived in it before us had 5 kids and managed.

I say go for it!  When we finish our attic, I really really want to put in a secret passage, maybe hidden stairs.

My aunt has an old crumbling painted lady house which has three fun hidden things.  Under the stairs near the 1st floor there is a bench that you can open up and crawl into the space under the stairs.  Then there is a hidden stair case that goes from the kitchen hall closet up to the middle turning point of the stairs where there is another closet.  We used to play on those stairs.  Last, there is a stairway in the basement that goes up into one of the rooms.  I've never seen it but she told us about it.

The disappointing thing is that my aunt never uses any of these anymore.  The hall stairs have been closed off completely and turned into linen storage.  The area under the stairs is ignored, and I have no idea if she can even get to the basement to bedroom stairs.  Auntie is a bit of a hoarder and the bedrooms are packed to the top. 

[2littlemonkeys]

We have hook/eye latches on our bedroom doors too but it's to keep the kids OUT, not in.  When they were smaller, we used a tension gate to keep them from wandering around (the door stayed open but they couldn't leave unless we helped them).  We still use it to keep the cat out of the room (he can't jump it) but it's not locked in anymore.  They can just pick it up and move it out of the way.


When my former roommate and I were looking for an apartment, we toured an...interesting...place.  It was a 3 bedroom, 2nd floor walk up.  When you walked in through the door, the room to the right was a pretty large living room and it was bright and sunny.  It was also about the only thing this place had going for it.  Directly opposite the front door, there was a door for a teensy room.  You'd be lucky if you could get a twin bed and a chest of drawers in it.  No closet.  A bit further down the hall, there was another room just like it.  Then there was a teeny bathroom (which is pretty par for the course). 

Then it got worse.  The "3rd bedroom" was where the one closet in the whole place used to be.  You couldn't even get a bed in there.  The person currently renting was sleeping on an air mattress that barely fit.  No room for a dresser.  Then we discovered that the owner had turned the original kitchen into a small dining room and the small pantry into the kitchen.  No sink.  Just a stove and refrigerator crammed together.  The stove was blocking the legal second exit to the apartment.  My roommate pointed that out and the owner just shrugged and suggested she just move the stove if she needed to use the door.

We thanked the owner for showing us around but said it really didn't suit our needs.  He got mad because we "wasted his time." 

I have to admit, I don't think I'd mind living next to a cemetery.  I think it would be really interesting. 

[faithlessone]

Not my househunting - but my gran lived in a house with a "secret" room. It was really bizarre. On the first floor, there was a room at the back of the house, that you could only get to through a small door (around 3 feet high) in the corner of the spare bedroom. It was a decent sized room, but it didn't have any normal sized doors.

She did consider enlarging the door, but luckily for us grandkids, she decided to turn it into a play room! We referred to it as Narnia, obviously.

[Wonderflonium]

Living by a cemetary wouldn't bother me, but I'm guessing it's because I grew up across the street from a church. I'm just used to being around cemetaries.