Weird features spotted while house hunting

[KimberlyM]

And from house hunting:
In one house I looked at, the owner had "redone" the garage as a shrine to a local college football team. The walls were painted BRIGHT red. The floor was either painted, or had matching red carpet, I don't remember which. The side with the garage door was covered up, like the window in my old house, with the door itself still left on. It wasn't heated or air-conditioned, either.
But it gets weirder. The man's daughter had been helping show us around the place, and she'd had an unusual name. As I was driving away, I realized he'd also named his daughter after the football team...

I hope for the daughter's sake that the local team was the Robins.  (Crimson?  It could have been worse - the two local teams here are the Ducks and the Beavers.  Can anyone tell where I am?)

Oregon...waves from duck territory!

[Thipu1]

A relative's house has a weird but wonderful feature. 

It has an enclosed porch with a beautiful curved window.  It's a window from the back of an old railway observation car and was installed by a former owner.

[ShanghaiJill]

I once looked at a tiny house that had a dirt floor in one of the rooms.  Not the basement, one of the rooms.  How delightfully pioneer, I suppose.

Needless to say, I passed it by.  Years later, someone bought it and fixed it up.   They rented it out for an obscene amount of money.

Speaking of renting.  In that same town there was a house that was always in the "for rent" ads.  No matter when you looked at the classifieds, there it was.  Year in and year out.  Twenty years later, i recall it was on 35th street.

[Elfmama]

Was it haunted?

[Isometric]

This wasn't a feature of the house, but still weird. When we were househunting for our first home, we came across a pair of men's underwear in the bathroom basin. And a semi lewd large framed poster. He was a renter, not the owner, so I guess he didn't want to move.

He also refused to allow the air con to be turned on, despite it being 40 degrees C (104F). I guess he is paying for the electricity, but it seemed a little mean. We actually bought the house and did the negotiating with our faces dripping with sweat.

[scotcat60]

Re the nearness to cemetary posts. I read an article by a woman about all the tied cottages she and her farm worker husband had live in, and the hall way of one was paved with stone, one of which was an old headstone. Another cottage had an iron bar going form one side of the room to the other, fixed into the walls. they amnaged to get a bed beneath it. the bar was useful when her husband had back trouble, and he gripped it to get up out of bed.

[kitty_ev]

We're househunting at the moment and have seen some rather odd houses while browsing the internet. Most of the housing stock in our city in our price range is 1920s-1930s semi-detached housing built before downstairs toilets and kitchens large enough to swing a cat were considered necessary. In addition, most of the houses here had an upstairs toilet (no sink, just the toilet) in a separate room to the bath/shower and sink. Few had a garage originally, but many now have one. It's quite interesting seeing how people have modernised things.

One of them had managed to create 6 bedrooms, but had no downstairs toilet and only one tiny upstairs bathroom. 6>:1 person:toilet ratio didn't sound too good to us.

Several had a downstairs toilet.... but the room for it came directly off the kitchen. Eeeew!

One place had a bright red carpet along with zebra print walls and rug. It looked like someone had been experimenting with room decor in the Sims.

Another owner had more cushions that I have ever seen in one place in their living room. They had a large sort of sofa that extended out about twice as far as a normal sofa. It was covered in cushions. Black sofa, bright lime/slime green cushions. It was quite striking.

Another looked good. We looked at all the pictures and were favourably impressed until one caught our eye. The house was clearly inhabited by a family with multiple teenagers. Clearly bathroom space was an issue. Their solution? They installed a shower cubicle and toilet in the corner of the master bedroom! Not behind a screen or anything, just there next to the window in the room!

[kkl123]

The strangest house I was in while property hunting had a couple of strange things going on... it was an old hunting cabin that someone had decided to partition into a bedroom and living room arrangement.  The hall they made was 24" wide and about 8 ft long, so you had to sidle down the hall to get to the bedroom.  Once there, you'd have to crawl into the double bed from the foot of the bed.  I have no idea how you'd get a mattress back there and installed.  The other issue with the house was a lot more critical -- there was no weatherhead.  The power line fed from the pole through a hole in the house wall and directly to the circuit breaker box, which was covered in gypsum dust as the power line wallowed out a bigger hole in the wind -- it was about 8" in diameter when I saw it.

As we were looking for property with a "habitable for a couple of years but basically tear down worthy" house on it, I could have lived with the first problem (a couple of hours with a sledge hammer and crowbar would have taken that wall back out), but that electrical system was just plain tooooooo much.

The house is still there... has a "condemned" sign on it now, which somehow doesn't surprise me.

[WestAussieGirl]

In addition, most of the houses here had an upstairs toilet (no sink, just the toilet) in a separate room to the bath/shower and sink.

That's a standard arrangement here in West Oz.  Ensuites usually have the toilet in the same room as the shower etc but the family bathroom usually has the toilet in a separate room. You then go into the bathroom to wash your hands.

That's why when Americans say they are going to the bathroom it confuses us.  You won't find a toilet in there.   

[jmarvellous]

We're househunting at the moment and have seen some rather odd houses while browsing the internet. Most of the housing stock in our city in our price range is 1920s-1930s semi-detached housing built before downstairs toilets and kitchens large enough to swing a cat were considered necessary. In addition, most of the houses here had an upstairs toilet (no sink, just the toilet) in a separate room to the bath/shower and sink. Few had a garage originally, but many now have one. It's quite interesting seeing how people have modernised things.

One of them had managed to create 6 bedrooms, but had no downstairs toilet and only one tiny upstairs bathroom. 6>:1 person:toilet ratio didn't sound too good to us.

Several had a downstairs toilet.... but the room for it came directly off the kitchen. Eeeew!

One place had a bright red carpet along with zebra print walls and rug. It looked like someone had been experimenting with room decor in the Sims.

Another owner had more cushions that I have ever seen in one place in their living room. They had a large sort of sofa that extended out about twice as far as a normal sofa. It was covered in cushions. Black sofa, bright lime/slime green cushions. It was quite striking.

Another looked good. We looked at all the pictures and were favourably impressed until one caught our eye. The house was clearly inhabited by a family with multiple teenagers. Clearly bathroom space was an issue. Their solution? They installed a shower cubicle and toilet in the corner of the master bedroom! Not behind a screen or anything, just there next to the window in the room!

I don't understand why a bathroom near a kitchen is gross. Almost every house in my neighborhood growing up had an open downstairs plan (kitchen, dining room and several living spaces without doors between them) with the only enclosed room being the bathroom -- so it was 'off the kitchen' because everything was 'off' everything else.
People cooking or serving food need to go the bathroom just like anyone else.

[Luci45]

Several had a downstairs toilet.... but the room for it came directly off the kitchen. Eeeew!

That is what happened when old houses had plumbing installed and the pantry was made into the bathroom.

Bathroom noises, even through a closed door, are Ewww! when we are eating or preparing a meal.

[ladyknight1]

I always told DH that if I ever lived in Tornado Alley again, I was going to have a tornado-cellar if I had to go out in the back yard and dig one with a teaspoon!

And where have I come the nearest to a tornado?  Right here in Maryland, which is nowhere near Tornado Alley!  An F-1 about 15 years ago came through my back yard.  Minor damage, mostly to the neighbor's trees, which got their tops twisted off and thrown in my yard.  It also sucked the glass out of a storm window that was already cracked, and tore off the top of the bird feeder and filled just one of the two compartments with dirt.

I know this is a pretty old post, but any home I ever have a hand in building, anywhere in the world will have a storm shelter in it. Poured concrete floor, concrete walls, steel frame and door with a separate ventilation system. My parents house has no rooms that are windowless. My current town house is the same. I have lived through 6 major hurricanes, two tornadoes, and I never want to huddle in a bathroom during a storm again.

[magicdomino]

I know this is a pretty old post, but any home I ever have a hand in building, anywhere in the world will have a storm shelter in it. Poured concrete floor, concrete walls, steel frame and door with a separate ventilation system.

Plus you can store food and weapons in it in case of the Zombie Apocalypse.   

[AustenFan]

I love this thread and appreciate that it's been brought up again. Unfortunately I'm from an area where age+character =/= value, so have nothing to contribute. The closest thing we get to a "weird" feature is a dedicated wine cellar. 

[ladyknight1]

I have a few.

I live in central Florida, which has felt the housing bust quite strongly.
In a very nice area of town, an estate was selling the house of the person recently deceased. These houses were built between 1979 - 1981 and were rather unusual in design. You open the front door to see a very steep staircase leading up to the main level of the house. So you had to climb 15 stairs just after opening the door. Then you had the living room, dining area, and kitchen along with doors leading to a balcony looking over the backyard. On the left, from the top of the stairs, you could see another staircase on the left leading to the bedrooms and bathrooms. There was a large sub-level off the garage, like a basement, but not underground. Now, this house had the exact same furnishings from the day it was completed, including avocado green deep shag carpeting and tie-dye wallpaper. This wouldn't have been a problem, just a bit dated, if the carpet had been cleaned regularly. That was not the case here, the carpet had not been vacuumed in years. The floor was inches deep in flotsam and the house reeked of cats.

My family is vacationing together in the fall. We are looking to rent a home or cabin for a week. We will have 8 people in total. I can not believe the number of homes who advertise as suitable for 8+ people that only have one bathroom! We will have four men and four women, so one bathroom is a no-go.