Weird features spotted while house hunting

[flowersintheattic]

We didn't see too much stuff while house hunting other than the seemingly popular toilets in random places. The house we bought, in fact, has a full bathroom in a mostly unfinished basement. It's a toilet, sink, and shower, all in the middle of the room. No walls around them. We have a roommate that lives in a finished bedroom in the basement who uses that as his main bathroom.

But I don't think any weird feature tops the house that FH was renting before we moved in. It had a secret room behind a bar in the basement. It was a cut out in the wall that opened when you pushed a hidden button in a bookcase next to it. The secret room had cement floors and display cases lining the walls. Similar to this: http://www.dickblick.com/products/claridge-sliding-door-display-cases/  except they didn't have shelves, just pegboard in the back, and the sliding doors locked. I'm convinced it used to be the home of an international illegal arms dealer. I can't imagine what else that room could have been used for.

[Harriet Jones]

Just because someone might have had a lot of guns doesn't mean they're an illegal arms dealer.  It could be that they were in a 'secret' room to conceal them from potential thieves.

[wheeitsme]

Just because someone might have had a lot of guns doesn't mean they're an illegal arms dealer.  It could be that they were in a 'secret' room to conceal them from potential thieves.

But it's more fun to imagine the international arms dealer or the antiquities smuggler hiding their stash.  Much more fun than grandma's China.   

[VorFemme]

Or somebody who had a lot of trophies from when they were younger and that was their room to escape to and relive their "glory days".

A Susan Sugarbaker wanna-be a passle of rhinestone beauty crowns and possibly the old competition swimsuits and gowns...........

Some former jock with his trophies from age twelve to whenever he got too old to play and he goes in there wearing his old uniform (or warm up gear, in case he was a swimmer & it's too cold to run around in a Speedo competition suit in his fifties).................Evil says neither of these two can fit into their old clothes.............but they still look at the old photos while remembering............

An egg carver with a thousand carved eggs or a miniature maker with thousands of doll house furnishings complete down to tiny little containers of milk & eggs?  Snarky likes doll houses.

[Sirius]

That would make a great sewing room - pegs to hang things on, like the dress I took so long with that not only does it not fit it is no longer my style, but I love the fabric and am going to make scarves out of it. 

[flowersintheattic]

Just because someone might have had a lot of guns doesn't mean they're an illegal arms dealer.  It could be that they were in a 'secret' room to conceal them from potential thieves.

But it's more fun to imagine the international arms dealer or the antiquities smuggler hiding their stash.  Much more fun than grandma's China.   

Exactly!

And to be fair, the cases may not have even been for guns. They could have been for trophies like VorFemme suggested, or something else. We just had absolutely no idea, since their landlord (who had lived there before FH and his friends started renting it) had it completely empty. His friends asked the landlord if he had any ideas about it, as well, and he said that it was empty when they looked at the house to buy it, as well. So we had to use our imagination. And an inconspicuous ranch house in a nice neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska, is the perfect place for an international arms dealer to have his showroom.

[Elfmama]

I hope I'm not repeating myself from earlier in the thread!  There is a weird thing right in my own dining room.

It says it's a humidistat.  It's on the wall next to the thermostat, so at one time it was either active or was intended to be used. 

There is no whole-house humidifier.  There is no duct work for there to BE a humidifier!  The heat in the house is baseboard electric heaters, which of course don't need ductwork.  There is no place in the house where there used to be ducts, or a big humidifier.  So why is there a control for one hanging on my dining room wall?

[VorFemme]

Maybe it's really a camouflaged safe's combination dial?  I think it was an Agatha Christie story - a safe cost twice as much as it should (the bill was the only thing in the safe and a very valuable necklace was missing).  Turned out that the bill was a clue that the safe was a DOUBLE safe and the dial twisted open with a combination on the bill...............

Which is more fun to imagine than a humidifier that got disconnected decades ago.............

[Ms_Cellany]

We just made an offer on a foreclosed house to use as a rental property. It's very cheap - one reason being that the furnace was stolen.

[blue2000]

We just made an offer on a foreclosed house to use as a rental property. It's very cheap - one reason being that the furnace was stolen.

Wow. How would they get it out of the house? Wouldn't they have to dismantle it?

And why??

[Ms_Cellany]

We just made an offer on a foreclosed house to use as a rental property. It's very cheap - one reason being that the furnace was stolen.

Wow. How would they get it out of the house? Wouldn't they have to dismantle it?

And why??

Why?  "Hey, free furnace!"

ETA that I wonder if maybe the former owners took it with them in revenge for the foreclosure, or someone just broke in.

[mandycorn]

We just made an offer on a foreclosed house to use as a rental property. It's very cheap - one reason being that the furnace was stolen.

Wow. How would they get it out of the house? Wouldn't they have to dismantle it?

And why??

Why?  "Hey, free furnace!"

Along the same lines my parents looked at a home where someone had run off with the deck. All the photos the realtor had of the house showed a deck in the back yard but when they went to look at it, the back door opened out onto nothing and then 6 feet down, a cement pad where the deck had been.

[snowfire]

Some people will steal anything that isn't bolted down.  And if they can pry it up, it wasn't bolted down well enough.  Many years ago we drove up to our cabin and saw a truck peeling out at high speed.

When we got to the cabin, the front door had been jimmied open and the six foot long CAST IRON claw foot bathtub was in the kitchen.  Obviously the truck carried the folks who had been trying to do a five finger requisition on our tub.  That sucker was heavy and extra long as it had been custom made for the previous owner.  It took six guys to move it back into the bathroom.

[Isometric]

Bright, blood red carpet. Wha?? Nothing goes with that!

[Slartibartfast]

Bright, blood red carpet. Wha?? Nothing goes with that!

Sure it does!  The room that eventually became my nursery had blood-red shag carpeting and HOT PINK walls when my parents bought the house.  They repainted the walls, but a few of my earliest memories involve that carpet.  (That house had different primary color carpeting in every room of the house, apparently, and different neon-color walls in each room too.  My mom says it was the most hideous house she has ever seen and they got it for a steal because they were willing to paint!)