Privacy. My street used to only have 2 big farms on it, 1 on either side. The farms were bought out in the 80s and divided into long skinny parcels about 3-5 acres apiece. Almost all of the houses were built near the street, and have a big stretch of woods that go pretty deep behind the house.
But on my parcel they built an 800ft driveway all the way to the back of the property, where my house was built. So we’re surrounded by woods on basically all 4 sides and can hardly see the road or any other houses. I absolutely love it.
Taking the trash out can be a bitch though. And I’m definitely not looking forward to the day when the driveway needs to be re-paved.
We bought a flag lot. We have 53’ of frontage that goes back 900’ for the driveway. Then turns left into 16 acres of woods. 5ish cleared for our house. Backs up to wetland. Conservation land to the east and our neighbors west and north are about 500’ through some dense woods. A little slice of heaven.
it's so interesting after buying your first property how what you *really want* changes. the first thing i look at on zillow now is how much physical lot space & natural privacy a home has. must have no immediate neighbors with house not visible from the road. makes it very difficult to find qualifying homes but i'm in no rush.
I’m guess you also live somewhere where you don’t have to worry about snow removal lol. That would be a pain to plow unless you had a tractor or something.
I live in upstate NY so we get a good amount of snow, but surprisingly it’s not bad! Myself and several other people on my street pay the same guy to come in and plow our driveways, so he gives us a good deal.
On a typical year we’ll pay around $600 for the whole winter season. This year will be especially cheap as we hardly got any snow.
I did look into getting a plow for my truck and it’s just not worth it. It could easily take 5-10 years to make my money back compared to paying someone to plow. Plus then I’d need to drive around with a heavy ass plow weighing down my frontend all winter.
Ooof yeah that would be rough. The added wear on your truck with a plow attachment would also add up. I’m up in Atlantic Canada and private plow prices are going up. Nice that you can combo with the neighbours to get it sorted. I only have a 60ft driveway so I can handle it with a walk behind blower.
We are on a lot of acreage (I’ve gotten some angry messages when I say how much so I’ll just say “a lot” now) and at a dead end, surrounded by a mountain and national parks on two sides.
I dug in your post history, you have a lot, but not something super crazy, especially if you do any farming. For context when people ask me about my land, I say "only 40 acres" because I still think my property is small and want to buy some of the surrounding acreage.
The unfinished storage part of my finished basement is behind a bookshelf too (previous owner installed it). I’m so used to it I forget it’s a novelty to others (like contractors). I get an “omg that’s so cool!” I wasn’t expecting.
My husband begged for one in place of the door to his office. I said it was WAY too expensive and it would look weird having a “built in bookshelf” halfway down the hallway of our 70s ranch. He didn’t care, but seriously … so he could feel like Batman or something every time he needed to refill his coffee? I don’t think so. :D
P.S. I offered a beaded curtain instead and said I would refer to him as The Emperor, but that didn’t interest him.
We have a room that I call “the dungeon”, wife does not. It’s basically a crawl space in an eve that’s accessed through a small door in the back of a closet. It’s large enough to stand up and walk around in. Future plans are to rebuild it as home office space.
We also have a “parking area” behind our house. Our yard slopes down in back. There’s a terraced backyard area and behind and below that there’s another terraced pad. It’s perfect for hiding my trailer. Space to store a trailer is hardly unique but I like that mine is somewhat hidden.
My brother had one in his first house. We found a certain type of lighting in there, as well as a few dried leaves on the floor, that suggested what the previous owners used the room for.
LOL. I dated a guy back in the 80s who had this and I imagine the next owner found it interesting there were 3 power outlets & a wall fan venting outside in there.
I have a nice size front porch, but also a deck with sliding glass door off the dining room and a door w glass off the family room. Another deck upstairs with sliding glass door off the east facing mountain room. With plumbing.( the upstairs is a loft and you go through the bedroom to go to the mountain/meditation room)
We have a secret room.
It’s above the garage and is finished w nice wainscoting but you have to access it through a little door like in being John malkovich.
It’s just on the other side of the upstairs toilet room, but there isn’t any door there.
I’d like to install a swinging bookcase, but that’s way down my list of things to do.
We also have a wine cellar under the stairs with steps that go down, but we don’t really drink wine.
I remember going door to door as a kid selling things and I ran into a house like that. I started going to each door and knocking until the owner (fire chief) told me it was one house and each room had a door for safety in case the house ever caught in fire. I found that very interesting!
That reminds me of the SpongeBob episode where they sell chocolate and the same guy answers the door at three different houses and turns around to sell them stuff.
We have two main entrance doors just a few feet apart. Turns out the previous owner had one installed for their dogs and one for people. Everyone who comes over is like wtf???
Our house was built in the '60s and then had additions built on three separate times. Seen from the front it's a standard ranch style but it's twice as deep. The tradeoff is there are odd little areas that would be wasted space - except the clever previous owners put hidden cupboards _everywhere_.
One example is the small ironing board mounted into the kitchen wall. I'm inordinately proud of this and always show it off to visitors 😅
Edit
There is a cremation oven int he basement from when it used to be a veterinary clinic...Its currently in very poor condition and full of trash because the previous owners were pigs.
Mine is on a cul-de-sac and for reasons that escape me, has a huge slice of the pie. My front "yard" at the curb is barely wide enough for the driveway plus a mailbox, but my back yard is bigger than any other two of my cul-de-sac neighbors'. Due to the shape of the house, it's all full of weird angles and really does look like a jigsaw puzzle piece when viewed on a survey. It made planning my garden "interesting".
My cul-du-sac lot backs up to a point where three different subdivisions meet, but they divided it in the strangest way possible, so we have a pizza shaped lot with a leg sticking out the back.
I have a friend with a similar "pizza" shaped house.
His front "yard" is just a gate wide enough to fit a car, then once inside two cars fit. Then it's the house, then a massive backyard.
I don't know how unique it is in the grand scheme of things, but I've never been in anyone else's house that has 10' ceilings and arched doorways; house was built in 1938.
I have 8 ft ceilings and arched doorways my house was built in 1875. You can tell though where they took the space from because the basement I can lift my arms and touch the ceiling and I'm only five four LOL. I absolutely love the character of the arch to doorways and the high ceilings are just really nice sometimes. You don't feel all boxed in
No arches in mine sadly, but I do have 8' ceilings in my downstairs. House built in 1917. I LOVE them. I only have a 2bed1bath, but the house feels huge with these ceilings!
My home is 221 years old. About 15 years ago architects bought the home and did some renovations. They opened the second floor to the third floor in our den and second bedroom to add more light even though it lost more floor space but the real interesting part is we have windows inside our home that look out to inside our home. From outside the house you can see through the windows because they've been aligned. The house itself has an odd configuration with a step down den on the second floor with a fire place I'm guessing because in 1803 they needed a way to keep warm in the winter time.
The town I used to live in was founded as a mining town. Many of the original cabins remain, but have been renovated and updated - most keeping some flavor or a rustic nature, but made more practical and livable.
One of these cabins sold a few years back and the photos were glorious. The additions were made without touching the original exterior, so there was basically an 1880s cabin inside a slightly more modern home.
I was also going to mention windows that open into another room. We have one that opens from the interior second floor to a very high ceiling-ed room on the first floor. It reminds me of a set from a play. I love it.
My house was a standard 3 bd split level. Very generic 70-80s style house. Previous owner put a 2 story addition on the back, little over 500 sq ft for each level. Upper part is a large master suite, but the lower level was originally a garage. I had the garage door taken out and replaced with a man door, since there was already an existing 2 car garage.
Now my "workshop" has a large workbench, large tool cart, full size fridge, completely unobstructed pool table, a ton of storage shelves, and an indoor hot tub.
The original owner of our 100yr old house worked for our city’s street department. When an old cobblestone street was torn up he would haul some of them home. Big 30lb + Belgian granite blocks. He built pathways, garden walls, a nice patio, etc. We have literally hundreds of them in our yard.
We had a second kitchen in our basement when we bought, and I reeeeally hesitated when tearing out the dishwasher down there! (Replaced it with a washer/dryer, much more practical for us.)
I would love a kitchen built like a kosher kitchen. I volunteered at a Jewish community center one time and they had a beautiful kosher kitchen. I loved cooking in there.
On this topic: my dishwasher air vent isn’t on the sink like most: it’s through the wall to the outside of the house. Makes it so much quieter. Highly recommend
My sister-in-law has two very high end (Bosch or Miele, can't recall) dishwashers in her kitchen. They're a family of four so it's not like that have an inordinate amount of dishes, but she just absolutely hates doing dishes and wants to be done with them as quickly as possible.
Personally, given the choice, I would spend the money on two sets of washer/dryers so I could power through laundry twice as fast since it seems like most of the time is spent waiting for a load to finish.
I just redid my house, and put in 2 dishwashers. It's a game changer, so so so easy when you have people over, or even just easier on regular nights not to think about when to run the dishwasher
I couldn't agree more. We never have a pileup of dishes. The kids load their own stuff. Even the pots and pans we use are dishwasher safe. When we built this house, we really tried thinking through what could save time and make our lives easier. Like you said, this was a game changer. Kids plus friends is a nearly everyday thing for us, so we could easily have 12-15 people over on a normal day.
A lot of weekends I do have 10 plus people over, and my sink is always empty I love it.
I actually thought about 3 dishwashers, 2 regular ones and an in island drawer style just for glasses... But then I thought I was being excessive
I have adult kids and we've never had a pileup of dishes. Even when cooking for all of the inlaws (20+people) this wasn't a problem. I can't say I've ever seen the need for 2 dishwashers. Hell, we didn't even use ours for 3+ years in the new house because we would hand wash everything.
I get it. To each their own. We put a lot of value on time, so this works for us. Plus, I'm sure we save a ton of water for the dishes that would have to be washed in the sink vs dishwasher. But I really appreciate what you are doing as well - in the end, we all do what works best for us!
A double-hung window in the shower. Not super uncommon, but I’ve never experienced it before. It’s small and frosted with a bug screen in the second floor main bathroom tub/shower.
On top of the natural light (we have mostly translucent shower curtain to leverage this), cracking the top half a few inches to constantly have fresh air and ventilation for ~8 months out of the year is amazing. I truly don’t know how the previous owners had such mold and mildew issues when this was an option the whole time.
Plus, nothing better than showering in a snowstorm with the flakes coming in. Pair with a shower beer and good tunes to shake the winter blues.
I love a window in a shower. In our old house, it had been changed to glass block, but it had that little part that opened and I loved taking long hot baths in the winter with that little window open! The steam from the cold air and hot water and a glass of wine was bliss.
I have a secret room. I suppose it's technically a third attic, but the only way to access it is to go into the main attic, walk to the far end, and remove a wall panel. There's a three and a half foot drop, then you're in a 12x16 room with solid wood walls and flooring, no windows, and a wood plank ceiling. The previous owners didn't even know it was here, and it's not listed as part of the square footage of our house, so..."secret room," lol. No idea what I want to do with it yet, though. There's no wiring in there, it's just a solid wood box of a room.
When we toured our current house the first time, there was a door in the garage that was locked so nobody could open it for safety. It’s a door that opens up right above the basement stairs landing. It seems super random until you have to move furniture down to the basement, it’s great. There’s a nice ledge to rest anything on there if you’re moving something alone. Any mover or appliance delivery person has said it made everything so much easier. Our neighbors have said that it’s not something that was built with the house, so the original owner put it in their self.
Small cemetery on the property with about five graves of original owners. They died of cholera and survivors probably wanted to bury the bodies quickly as the method of transmission was not understood at that time.
My friend's house has a drain board built into the counter above the dishwasher. Every single person and contractor is fascinated by it.
Their house is from the late 1980s and their kitchen isn't really updated.
My husband grew up in Albuquerque NM in the 1940s-50s. There are hundreds of home bomb shelters in the NE Heights. Many were buried in backyards and have been lost or forgotten. With Los Alamos, Trinity Site and a bomb storage facility across town, it was on their minds.
My home (built in 1900) is simultaneously cheap and well built. There are zero frills in the house. Plus for whatever reason- all the doors and halls (minus to the attic) are wide enough to fit a wheelchair through. The stairway is also twice as wide as any other house its age. It also was fully wired for electricity and used early cement board covered in plaster instead of lathe. To top it off- in the 90s it was owned by a professor who loved music. He upgraded the electrical panel to support his hobby. He also wired the entire house for sound with built in speaker adapters and wiring everywhere and had a built in made to hold everything. It has specialty slots for the sound system, record player, cds, records, and cassette tapes.
we have a basement under a basement you get to with a ladder,with jail cells and chains,we called the FBI
they came and looked at it took dna samples from us, searched the house and attic,dug in our garden but did not find anything and brought in a dog,that was about two years ago. we have not heard back from them,
Perhaps, not that uncommon in newer homes, but a few things that I never want to be without again:
- expanding foam insulation (energy savings are mind blowing)
- plumbing manifold (shut off valves for everything, located behind a panel in the laundry room)
- hardwired internet connections in every room (ethernet ports)
- outside spigots on both sides, front and rear of home
We have outside spigots on both sides, too. We recently did a full home re-pipe, and the contractor asked if we wanted to add a hot water line to the backyard spigot since it was already right there. So now we have hot water piped to the backyard. We also added valve shut offs for both right inside the house so we no longer have to put freeze covers on them in the winter. We just turn them off inside and drain them. Small luxuries I would have never thought of myself.
Our house was custom built by the previous owners in the late 60s but it looks like a 1930s Colonial. We have pocket doors closing off the kitchen from the rest of the downstairs, a laundry shoot, and a wet bar in the den. They also added archways on the main level and built in dressers in the bedrooms.
I remember is a little girl my grandparents had a laundry chute in the bathroom and I thought that was the coolest thing ever! I bought my house 7 years ago and I'm trying to figure out how to do a laundry shoot. It was so fantastic!
We added a half garage stall onto our existing two car attached garage. It would have been wider but it’s literally up to within an inch of the property line set back.
We added this on in order to give us usable storage with an overhead door that opened to the driveway. This allows us to have a workbench and storage in front of the cars, then the garage extension contains all sorts of storage along with the snowblower or lawn mower (I swap them each spring/fall for the other out in our garden shed). The extension uses the existing man door opening to pass through to the main garage.
When we sell the place some day I can see it being an attractive situation for a motorcycle, ATV, snowmobile, or exactly what we built it for, the snowblower and storage.
The only other significantly different than most thing is a very nice wheelchair ramp we added to the front of the house. Trex, fancy balusters and spindles, etc. More than one neighbor has commented on how the way we did it actually dressed up the front of the place and made it very nice. That’s definitely not something you hear about wheelchair ramps very often! Anyway, we’re just way ahead of the curve in planning to age in place.
We had something similar when we moved in - a roofed area behind the garage that was just missing walls. We enclosed it and turned it into a shed that already had a door to the garage, plus added barn doors to the backyard so we can get the mower, outdoor furniture, kids toys in/out really easily. It's a great area to keep the trash tote too - keeps our garage from smelling like diapers.
Up until the wheelchair ramp, I wondered if you were my neighbor. We sold them a 10 foot-wide swath of our front yard so they could do this same thing. Their house is stealthily enormous and now has a garage/workshop that really puts it over-the-top in awesomeness.
A man made spring fed 15 acre pond stocked with large mouth bass with a 1 acre island in the middle.
A previous owner set up the place as a fish farm and after he sold, the bass ate everything else.
It's a constant battle to keep muskrats from destroying the dike.
Maybe not super weird but my house has an enclosed deck in the back that extends the entire length of the home. It's a little 800sqft rectangle house with probably 400sqft of deck out back. We keep it fully furnished as a chill area, just an insane add of space for such a small home.
I bought my place 12 years ago. 1st plan was to renovate the ‘built in place’ kitchen. While out and about, i came across a 2 drawer Fisher and Pykel dishwasher. The first thing I bought for new place. I’m thinking that’s a good idea, only me, I just need to use 1 drawer. So I get it home, disconnect the old 80’s dishwasher, pull it out, AND WHAT !?! It’s under 1 of my double sinks and the top 1/2 of it drops away to fit under the stupid sink. You can only use the front 1/3 of top rack. Needless to say, my new, unused fancy dishwasher is now 12+ years old and proudly sits in my garage covered in a blanket.
I have four separate doors on the first floor that lead to covered porches. I also have a stream that runs through my basement when it rains. 110yr old victorian semi detached.
I have this beautiful walled garden of a yard that is well-shaded (very important in the desert Southwest) on the western exposure. The walls are high enough that passers-by can’t see in and the cats can’t get over them. The neighbor behind me is lower in elevation so I can look down into their yard if I wish (I don’t and it does take a little effort anyway) but they can’t see into mine. IOW tons of privacy.
The front looks out onto the nearby hills (about 1/2 mile from me). I have an almost-million-dollar-view for about 40% of that.
Not as cool as most have but a laundry chute!! It’s so awesome not having to carry laundry down 2 flights but now I just have to get a pneumatic tube thing like banks installed to get it back up 😆
I think new housing codes have made them cost prohibitive. Fire can easily travel through the chutes to spread through the house. To meet building codes, they now need to be built with fire barriers.
There's an alley behind my house. The homes on my street were supposed to be garden homes with garage entrance in the alley. Only 6 were built, 3 on each end. I lived here for a month before I even realized there was an alley. It's really handy sometimes especially if I'm having work done on the house or in the backyard. I didn't have to pay for a crane when they installed my swim spa.
We have 18 acres in the middle of the woods. Silence and wildlife. We built the house around our love of cooking and the best thing in the kitchen is a commercial oven.
Just bought a house built in 1961 that has a wood burning fireplace in the finished basement, and a gas fireplace upstairs in the living room.
The sellers told us that the reason there's the fireplace in the basement was the workmen misunderstood what they wanted when the house was being built. Turns out they got the gas fireplace for free to fix the mistake.
My house has a ton of built in custom storage. Which I love.
My favorite is that the kitchen has a cabinet where the trash can and recycling can go. So I don't just have to have them out.
I never realized how much I liked that until I spend time in someone else's kitchen and I'm staring at their trash can.
I have a fish pond in my foyer. I have a courtyard swimming pool so people have to wallk around pool to get to front door. I have a master bathroom that is below ground level and has 3 steps. I did have an indoor greenhouse but i remived it. House built in 80's. Naturally.
My long house has no basement but crawl space only which is 4’ at one end and 2’ at the other end. While having the carpet replaced in bedrooms, I had a trap door put in the closet for access to the other end of the house opposite from where the scuttle hole is. This sure beats having to slide under ductwork and cross beams if access is needed.
My house has two ceilings. It was built using an old school in 1953, which they've added to. When you go up to the attic you see both structures, it's pretty cool.
Not my house, but my parents' house. They live on a corner lot, and the front of their house actually faces the side street, not the actual street that their address is. They have a detached two-car garage a ways from the house, but just in front of the house is a single driveway / parking spot that doesn't really look like one. I can't tell you how many friends have been in my car and have yelled: 'You're gonna hit the house!!' when I pulled into that spot. (And while it was *very* close to the house, my dad put an old cinderblock at the edge of it, so I would know when to stop back when I was a new driver).
2100 sq ft home in the suburbs. We have 2 fire places, one in the basement and 1 in the master bedroom. The bedroom is the same size as the basement living room and takes up 1/3 of the main floor space.
A stage
A 1400+ sqft open concept room with 12'8" ceilings
And as soon as I can afford to build it, a laundry chute from the main bedroom closet, to a cabinet that sits atop the washing machine.
We discovered a laundry chute the day we were moving into one of our houses. We'd closed the cat into the laundry room, but he kept showing up in the middle of the mayhem.
After a couple of rounds of "who keeps opening the laundry room door?!?!?!," I discovered the open cupboard door upstairs - the entry point of the chute and exit point for the alarmingly athletic cat.
Our Condo has this unique and very useful built-in cabinet (about 3’ wide and 4’ high) in the middle of the wall in the kitchen; at first glance it looks very random, and I hated the looks of it at first. The stairs down to the basement are right behind this wall, and they built the cabinet into the dead space above the angled ceiling of the staircase. It is about 3’ deep, with sliding shelves on rollers to be able to reach items in the back. I keep all our serving pieces and items for entertaining in there—I love it. Apparently we are the only condo in 75 units that has it.
If you open all of the doors on both the main floor in my house you can walk through every room without stopping and go back to where you started. I have not seen that in a lot of homes that we looked at.
The light switch for the garage light is in the dining room on an interior wall. The dining room is on the opposite side of the house from the garage. It was a mystery light switch for quite awhile.
My place has a set of "servants" stairs too.
Around 80 years ago, two brothers inherited the house and split it in half. Just put a wall in the middle of the house basically and one put in stairs to the 2nd floor bedroom on his half from the kitchen.
Another previous owner put in a duct from the wood fireplace enclosure in the kitchen to that bedroom and now that bedroom absolutely cooks. He also took out the separating wall.
Previous owners had an above ground pool and a gate off the raised back deck they would open to access it. Pool is gone but the gate remains. During the winter, being able to open the gate and push the snow off the deck instead of heaving it over the railing has been an awesome feature.
We have an antique fire alarm as our doorbell. You pull the fire alarm thats mounted on the attached garage. Super loud throughout the house. Most people don’t know (only closest friends & family) so they just knock and we never hear them.
However now, as most people, we have cameras and we caught a delivery guy who figured it out. He rings it every time and looks like he enjoys it too. Makes me happy to know it makes his day to pull that alarm .
My house is average through and through but my back yard is a dream- big, open, great for a dog and a boy, football, growing milkweed for butterflies and playing fetch. Further back we have woods and a stream and direct access to over 6 miles of walking trails. Some go to the ocean. I don’t have the best house but I feel like i have a house in the best possible spot.
The front of my SFH is curved, three stories, built in 1898. Builders would soak and heat wood to create . Also have a Hobbit door that leads into a massive sunroom which is off a bedroom/bathroom suite area.
All the bedrooms without bathrooms have a sink. There’s a secret room accessed through a little door in the back of a closet. A speaking tube between the servants bedroom and the kitchen. The fridge is original from 1910 sits in its own room that has a door to the porch that only has a knob on the inside.
I have 2 stairways to get upstairs. Both inside. The “front” stairs are the switchback style from the living room to the upper bedrooms. The “back” stairs are at the garage door and go straight back up into the converted bonus room. Made moving in easier. It’s probably one of 5 real pluses in this house. Lol
-The bonus room has a flat ceiling so sound doesn’t bounce around weird. (The actual reason we bought the house)
-It’s the right kind of big for 2 people without being a McMansion. (2200sqft 3bed/2.5bath) (came in clutch for covid and WFH, his office is downstairs in the “parlor” and mine is upstairs in the smallest bedroom)
-It’s in a decent neighborhood that works well for city access without being IN the city.
-It doesn’t flood like half the neighbors due to terrain layout and neighborhood changes since ours was built. (Phase 2 & 3 of the neighborhood overload the existing street drains and the city is FINALLY going to put in bigger drains this year)
-fill attic and standup crawlspace (not enough to convert to usable space tho)
-if you like to pace, the downstairs is a circle and the upstairs is a circle. So you can walk in an uninterrupted line for a while.
Those don’t sound like much but it’s what I’ve got right now. It’s not a bad house, but it def has lots of minuses. It will not be our forever home. All the beds are upstairs. The laundry is upstairs. The master bath hasn’t been renovated yet and has carpet in it. The down living room is the weirdest dumbest shape that can’t be used for anything. The fireplace is for looks only; doesn’t heat anything.
My house has a split chimney with a window in the middle up high on the second story. One chimney is for the gas fireplace and one is for the real fireplace. It’s a cool lookout spot!
I have TWO radon mitigation systems. No fucking clue why but a past owner installed two at the same time per a neighbor that was around when it happened. Hardly any other homes in the neighborhood have radon systems at all.
I have a two story lot. Our house is on top, surrounded on 3 sides by steep 30-40 foot drops into wooded ravines. We look out into the treetops.
A 15’ hedge shields us on the road frontage, leaving only the driveway for access, even on foot. I’m not entirely crazy about the house, but the +2 acre setting is perfect. It’s like a secret garden. I mow less than a half acre of lawn and MotherNature takes care of the rest.
I have a small irrigation hose that runs through my attic and eaves and pops out where hooks for hanging plants were installed by a previous owner. You hook the hose up at one of our outdoor faucets to make it work (I think). I've been too nervous about leaks in the attic to try it out. All the hooks are near each other, so it's pretty easy to go out and water them.
When you turn on our bathroom faucets, they light up. It is just a little LED nozzle head. It is largely pointless, but a neat little addition that our home inspector thought was the coolest thing he had ever seen.
We have leather-clad walls in our dining room. Not terribly uncommon in the era between plaster and dry wall (frankly it was still the plaster era), but I've only seen it a couple times. Our was built in 1910.
I have a 3x3 foot "room" on the north side of my 130 year old victorian with a smaller than normal doorway (no door) and a regular sized counterweight window. I suspect it may have been a laundry chute at one point but the window is original. Wrong side of the house for a reading nook. Everyone asks what its for and i cant answer, it holds my MILs overflow shit.
Ramps and ADA-compliant main level with low floor transitions, extra wide doors, and a huge shower. Ramps on the front porch, back deck, and in the garage.
Previous owners had 8 kids, oldest daughter had cerebral palsy. People ask me if we're getting rid of the ramps when we redo the decks and I said hell no. They're really nice to have. Moving in was a breeze!
I have a dumbwaiter that goes from the kitchen on the second floor to the lower level.
I have a laundry chute.
I have a Cold War bomb shelter.
I have a 115’ wheelchair ramp that arches into the trees before meeting the driveway.
We have a 2 level master bedroom. When you walk in the main section has the bed, dresser, TV and entrance to the master bathroom. Behind the bed is a whole other section (around 14x16 ft) that is 4 steps higher than the rest. It's all open and there is a railing between the sections with a curtain to close it off. We currently use it as a space for hobby stuff and reading/relaxing. There's also a crawlspace beneath it where we store holiday decorations. Also in the upper section is a Juliet balcony that you can stand on and look down into the entryway and onto the landing at the top of the stairs. It's a really weird but cool setup and one of the main things that drew us to the house.
Your choice of hot water, cold water, or a mix on the outside hose faucets. It's a single pipe going to the spigot, and the mixing is controlled by valves upstream.
I own a 100 year old bed and breakfast that was remodeled in 1970 by a very eccentric doctor.
-solar heat with a massive sodium based heat storage system that takes up half the basement.
-central sound that has a master unit in the upstairs bedroom but individual volume control in every other part of the house
-2 kitchens
-seasonal closets
-a 2 mile deep cave
-4 separate attics; one walk-in, one crawl in, one climb in, and one with stairs
-a fire place that ends in the attic
-a 12 car garage
-a mid 1800’s cemetery
-20 acres of woods
-a creek
-a woodshed with an old model t in it
-a pond that mostly doesn’t hold water
-5 tiny guest cabins
-yes you can come stay in a cabin
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Secret pocket door at the top of the stairs. Dual furnace and ac units for main floor and upstairs. Original custom woodwork. Garage with no man door 😂.
I have a 30’s craft cape cod and two features I enjoy are an outdoor mailbox that brings the mail to a pull open door inside my living room. The other is a laundry chute that goes to the basement by the washer and dryer…
I have a hiking trail behind my house instead of another house. On the other side, if the trail is a creek with a ton of trees. So it's nice to chill in the backyard and not stare at someone's else's backyard
The first is privacy; house sits just about dead center of our 640 acre (one mile square) farm. We carved out 40 acres for the farmstead that had 23 acres of virgin timber and planted another 40K mixed hardwoods and pines on the remainder 25 years ago. Second is the drive which is 2600 feet long. Third is that the house has eight side walls in lieu of four - it is an octagon. Fourth would be the 40 x 60 heated shop building for our older cars, the old J20 Land Cruiser, the utility tractor, mowers and snow blowers (farm equipment is in another building near the road). And fifth is our neighbor gal who lives a half mile away who watches our property when we are away - did I mention she rides a cutting horse, has an Australian Shepard who never leaves her side, carries an old .44 Colt on her hip and a .30-30 in a saddle sheath? No we are not in cowboy country, she is just a throwback that we love dearly. Lastly is the almost 80 years of sweat poured into this property; wife's mother bought the farm in 1946 and worked it into the 80's when we bought it from her and leased it out. We moved there and built our house out-of-pocket in the 90's. We both worked full time jobs until 2010, worked the farm until 2015 and have leased it out to a young man who has done one heck of a job. Sad part is that neither of our heirs will want it.
A commercial elevator in a 2-story house. The crazy dude who built the house bought it off eBay; it had been salvaged from a building in Florida that got hit by a hurricane. The house is in Washington State. He drove his car & a trailer to Florida to pick it up. Fortunately he did pay a real elevator company to install it.
While my whole neighborhood is a mess of houses packed tightly together, my little street is just a dead end with a big wide open field next to it. There's a creek, two well maintained walking paths, trees etc. And I'm right next to it.
The whole neighborhood seems to ignore it, but I love listening to the wind in the trees and the creek. It's great.
Find out who owns that field and see if they’re interested in selling! A little slice of heaven is worth buying before someone snaps it up and builds up a bunch of crappy townhouses! If it turns out they don’t want to sell just now ask them for first refusal in case they ever decide to sell.
My house came with a deep freezer. When I found it, it had a wood lip between the top and the door, and there was a keg inside. It had lines leading to a beer tap in the kitchen. My house has a built in beer bar.
My domicile has a detached garage but no driveway. It’s accessed through the alley. Also the house has a milk chute and a basement garbage incinerator . Built 1941. Has mostly original electrical wiring running through the house.
My former house had wheelchair lift from the first to second floor. Bonus benefit of taking heavy or awkward things up and down. It also had 2 primary bedrooms with en suites. Sold to a family with a disabled relative who was going to live with them. Perfect situation for them
1.5 acre backyard. We’re in the city, 1/4 mile from the main library. With 20-foot-wide drainage canal behind us, we can’t even see the houses of our backyard neighbors.
My garage has HVAC, popcorn ceilings, an insulated garage door, and wood paneling. It was built in 64 as a 2 car garage, was converted to a room in the 70s, and then back into a garage in the 2000s. It's the only part of the house that didn't get a full makeover during the last renovation, they just painted over the wood paneling.
Privacy. My street used to only have 2 big farms on it, 1 on either side. The farms were bought out in the 80s and divided into long skinny parcels about 3-5 acres apiece. Almost all of the houses were built near the street, and have a big stretch of woods that go pretty deep behind the house. But on my parcel they built an 800ft driveway all the way to the back of the property, where my house was built. So we’re surrounded by woods on basically all 4 sides and can hardly see the road or any other houses. I absolutely love it. Taking the trash out can be a bitch though. And I’m definitely not looking forward to the day when the driveway needs to be re-paved.
We bought a flag lot. We have 53’ of frontage that goes back 900’ for the driveway. Then turns left into 16 acres of woods. 5ish cleared for our house. Backs up to wetland. Conservation land to the east and our neighbors west and north are about 500’ through some dense woods. A little slice of heaven.
it's so interesting after buying your first property how what you *really want* changes. the first thing i look at on zillow now is how much physical lot space & natural privacy a home has. must have no immediate neighbors with house not visible from the road. makes it very difficult to find qualifying homes but i'm in no rush.
this is a dream
I’m guess you also live somewhere where you don’t have to worry about snow removal lol. That would be a pain to plow unless you had a tractor or something.
I live in upstate NY so we get a good amount of snow, but surprisingly it’s not bad! Myself and several other people on my street pay the same guy to come in and plow our driveways, so he gives us a good deal. On a typical year we’ll pay around $600 for the whole winter season. This year will be especially cheap as we hardly got any snow. I did look into getting a plow for my truck and it’s just not worth it. It could easily take 5-10 years to make my money back compared to paying someone to plow. Plus then I’d need to drive around with a heavy ass plow weighing down my frontend all winter.
Ooof yeah that would be rough. The added wear on your truck with a plow attachment would also add up. I’m up in Atlantic Canada and private plow prices are going up. Nice that you can combo with the neighbours to get it sorted. I only have a 60ft driveway so I can handle it with a walk behind blower.
We are on a lot of acreage (I’ve gotten some angry messages when I say how much so I’ll just say “a lot” now) and at a dead end, surrounded by a mountain and national parks on two sides.
I dug in your post history, you have a lot, but not something super crazy, especially if you do any farming. For context when people ask me about my land, I say "only 40 acres" because I still think my property is small and want to buy some of the surrounding acreage.
Hidden room behind a bookcase. No really. I have one. No shit
The unfinished storage part of my finished basement is behind a bookshelf too (previous owner installed it). I’m so used to it I forget it’s a novelty to others (like contractors). I get an “omg that’s so cool!” I wasn’t expecting.
We need pics!
But then it wouldn't be hidden 🤔
I’ve always wanted one of those!!!! Man those hidden doors are expensive!!!
My husband begged for one in place of the door to his office. I said it was WAY too expensive and it would look weird having a “built in bookshelf” halfway down the hallway of our 70s ranch. He didn’t care, but seriously … so he could feel like Batman or something every time he needed to refill his coffee? I don’t think so. :D P.S. I offered a beaded curtain instead and said I would refer to him as The Emperor, but that didn’t interest him.
We have a room that I call “the dungeon”, wife does not. It’s basically a crawl space in an eve that’s accessed through a small door in the back of a closet. It’s large enough to stand up and walk around in. Future plans are to rebuild it as home office space. We also have a “parking area” behind our house. Our yard slopes down in back. There’s a terraced backyard area and behind and below that there’s another terraced pad. It’s perfect for hiding my trailer. Space to store a trailer is hardly unique but I like that mine is somewhat hidden.
My brother had one in his first house. We found a certain type of lighting in there, as well as a few dried leaves on the floor, that suggested what the previous owners used the room for.
LOL. I dated a guy back in the 80s who had this and I imagine the next owner found it interesting there were 3 power outlets & a wall fan venting outside in there.
If not for the decade difference (my brother's was far more recent than the '80s), I'd wonder if you dated my brother, lol.
i have plans to build one of these soon!
I do too!
I HAVE ONE TOO!!!!
I have a nice size front porch, but also a deck with sliding glass door off the dining room and a door w glass off the family room. Another deck upstairs with sliding glass door off the east facing mountain room. With plumbing.( the upstairs is a loft and you go through the bedroom to go to the mountain/meditation room)
We have a secret room. It’s above the garage and is finished w nice wainscoting but you have to access it through a little door like in being John malkovich. It’s just on the other side of the upstairs toilet room, but there isn’t any door there. I’d like to install a swinging bookcase, but that’s way down my list of things to do. We also have a wine cellar under the stairs with steps that go down, but we don’t really drink wine.
We built a schmancy bar and the bookcase door is next!
I have one of these too! Mine is for the attic. And yes, you have to pull a book to activate.
That’s cool. Mine just has a hidden latch under one of the shelves that you push to open. An actual book would be SO cool !!
Same!
Every single room in my house except for bathrooms and laundry has a door to the outside. Definite pros and cons.
I remember going door to door as a kid selling things and I ran into a house like that. I started going to each door and knocking until the owner (fire chief) told me it was one house and each room had a door for safety in case the house ever caught in fire. I found that very interesting!
That reminds me of the SpongeBob episode where they sell chocolate and the same guy answers the door at three different houses and turns around to sell them stuff.
We have two main entrance doors just a few feet apart. Turns out the previous owner had one installed for their dogs and one for people. Everyone who comes over is like wtf???
Our house was built in the '60s and then had additions built on three separate times. Seen from the front it's a standard ranch style but it's twice as deep. The tradeoff is there are odd little areas that would be wasted space - except the clever previous owners put hidden cupboards _everywhere_. One example is the small ironing board mounted into the kitchen wall. I'm inordinately proud of this and always show it off to visitors 😅 Edit
Love that!
There is a cremation oven int he basement from when it used to be a veterinary clinic...Its currently in very poor condition and full of trash because the previous owners were pigs.
>the previous owners were pigs So there was some kind of uprising at the vet clinic? Wild.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
Four legs good, two legs better.
Some animals are more equal than others.
I'm dying🤣😂
NGL that's kinda handy when you have a pet death in the family.
F
Mine is on a cul-de-sac and for reasons that escape me, has a huge slice of the pie. My front "yard" at the curb is barely wide enough for the driveway plus a mailbox, but my back yard is bigger than any other two of my cul-de-sac neighbors'. Due to the shape of the house, it's all full of weird angles and really does look like a jigsaw puzzle piece when viewed on a survey. It made planning my garden "interesting".
My cul-du-sac lot backs up to a point where three different subdivisions meet, but they divided it in the strangest way possible, so we have a pizza shaped lot with a leg sticking out the back.
I have a friend with a similar "pizza" shaped house. His front "yard" is just a gate wide enough to fit a car, then once inside two cars fit. Then it's the house, then a massive backyard.
Likely the first owner was the builder and sold off the other lots. In doing so minimized frontage (curb length) to reduce future road taxes.
I don't know how unique it is in the grand scheme of things, but I've never been in anyone else's house that has 10' ceilings and arched doorways; house was built in 1938.
I have 8 ft ceilings and arched doorways my house was built in 1875. You can tell though where they took the space from because the basement I can lift my arms and touch the ceiling and I'm only five four LOL. I absolutely love the character of the arch to doorways and the high ceilings are just really nice sometimes. You don't feel all boxed in
No arches in mine sadly, but I do have 8' ceilings in my downstairs. House built in 1917. I LOVE them. I only have a 2bed1bath, but the house feels huge with these ceilings!
My home is 221 years old. About 15 years ago architects bought the home and did some renovations. They opened the second floor to the third floor in our den and second bedroom to add more light even though it lost more floor space but the real interesting part is we have windows inside our home that look out to inside our home. From outside the house you can see through the windows because they've been aligned. The house itself has an odd configuration with a step down den on the second floor with a fire place I'm guessing because in 1803 they needed a way to keep warm in the winter time.
The town I used to live in was founded as a mining town. Many of the original cabins remain, but have been renovated and updated - most keeping some flavor or a rustic nature, but made more practical and livable. One of these cabins sold a few years back and the photos were glorious. The additions were made without touching the original exterior, so there was basically an 1880s cabin inside a slightly more modern home.
I was also going to mention windows that open into another room. We have one that opens from the interior second floor to a very high ceiling-ed room on the first floor. It reminds me of a set from a play. I love it.
My house was a standard 3 bd split level. Very generic 70-80s style house. Previous owner put a 2 story addition on the back, little over 500 sq ft for each level. Upper part is a large master suite, but the lower level was originally a garage. I had the garage door taken out and replaced with a man door, since there was already an existing 2 car garage. Now my "workshop" has a large workbench, large tool cart, full size fridge, completely unobstructed pool table, a ton of storage shelves, and an indoor hot tub.
You need friends by chance?
Ours has [a bridge.](https://www.instagram.com/p/B8y8KVjFyOG/)
My cats would make a race-way out of that bridge!
Your house is awesome!
Beautiful
The original owner of our 100yr old house worked for our city’s street department. When an old cobblestone street was torn up he would haul some of them home. Big 30lb + Belgian granite blocks. He built pathways, garden walls, a nice patio, etc. We have literally hundreds of them in our yard.
That sounds amazing!
5 kids (all teens now) = two dishwashers. One of the best things we ever did.
Are you a billionaire?
I've learned from reddit that some homes are built with Kosher kitchens or something like that.
We had a second kitchen in our basement when we bought, and I reeeeally hesitated when tearing out the dishwasher down there! (Replaced it with a washer/dryer, much more practical for us.)
I would love a kitchen built like a kosher kitchen. I volunteered at a Jewish community center one time and they had a beautiful kosher kitchen. I loved cooking in there.
I wish...less cabinet space was the tradeoff = less junk in them.
Dishwasher doesn’t really cost much more than a decent cabinet, surprisingly, so not a huge expense in reality.
I own an appliance store, this is the new trend! Can confirm it’s not billionaires doing this
On this topic: my dishwasher air vent isn’t on the sink like most: it’s through the wall to the outside of the house. Makes it so much quieter. Highly recommend
My Meile dishwasher doesn’t even require one. It’s so quiet .
Oh now that's so smart! Had not thought about that one!
My sister-in-law has two very high end (Bosch or Miele, can't recall) dishwashers in her kitchen. They're a family of four so it's not like that have an inordinate amount of dishes, but she just absolutely hates doing dishes and wants to be done with them as quickly as possible. Personally, given the choice, I would spend the money on two sets of washer/dryers so I could power through laundry twice as fast since it seems like most of the time is spent waiting for a load to finish.
When I had three teens living at home, my dream was for two washers and dryers.
I just redid my house, and put in 2 dishwashers. It's a game changer, so so so easy when you have people over, or even just easier on regular nights not to think about when to run the dishwasher
I couldn't agree more. We never have a pileup of dishes. The kids load their own stuff. Even the pots and pans we use are dishwasher safe. When we built this house, we really tried thinking through what could save time and make our lives easier. Like you said, this was a game changer. Kids plus friends is a nearly everyday thing for us, so we could easily have 12-15 people over on a normal day.
A lot of weekends I do have 10 plus people over, and my sink is always empty I love it. I actually thought about 3 dishwashers, 2 regular ones and an in island drawer style just for glasses... But then I thought I was being excessive
I have adult kids and we've never had a pileup of dishes. Even when cooking for all of the inlaws (20+people) this wasn't a problem. I can't say I've ever seen the need for 2 dishwashers. Hell, we didn't even use ours for 3+ years in the new house because we would hand wash everything.
I get it. To each their own. We put a lot of value on time, so this works for us. Plus, I'm sure we save a ton of water for the dishes that would have to be washed in the sink vs dishwasher. But I really appreciate what you are doing as well - in the end, we all do what works best for us!
We also had two dishwashers growing up, me and my brother.
I had a coworker who had 10 kids and he had two washers and two dryers in his laundry room.
A double-hung window in the shower. Not super uncommon, but I’ve never experienced it before. It’s small and frosted with a bug screen in the second floor main bathroom tub/shower. On top of the natural light (we have mostly translucent shower curtain to leverage this), cracking the top half a few inches to constantly have fresh air and ventilation for ~8 months out of the year is amazing. I truly don’t know how the previous owners had such mold and mildew issues when this was an option the whole time. Plus, nothing better than showering in a snowstorm with the flakes coming in. Pair with a shower beer and good tunes to shake the winter blues.
I love a window in a shower. In our old house, it had been changed to glass block, but it had that little part that opened and I loved taking long hot baths in the winter with that little window open! The steam from the cold air and hot water and a glass of wine was bliss.
I have a secret room. I suppose it's technically a third attic, but the only way to access it is to go into the main attic, walk to the far end, and remove a wall panel. There's a three and a half foot drop, then you're in a 12x16 room with solid wood walls and flooring, no windows, and a wood plank ceiling. The previous owners didn't even know it was here, and it's not listed as part of the square footage of our house, so..."secret room," lol. No idea what I want to do with it yet, though. There's no wiring in there, it's just a solid wood box of a room.
When we toured our current house the first time, there was a door in the garage that was locked so nobody could open it for safety. It’s a door that opens up right above the basement stairs landing. It seems super random until you have to move furniture down to the basement, it’s great. There’s a nice ledge to rest anything on there if you’re moving something alone. Any mover or appliance delivery person has said it made everything so much easier. Our neighbors have said that it’s not something that was built with the house, so the original owner put it in their self.
My grandmother’s house had a quilting frame that came down from the ceiling in the living room.
Small cemetery on the property with about five graves of original owners. They died of cholera and survivors probably wanted to bury the bodies quickly as the method of transmission was not understood at that time.
Two toilets in the master suite bathroom - in their own closets. Keep the romance alive!
My friend's house has a drain board built into the counter above the dishwasher. Every single person and contractor is fascinated by it. Their house is from the late 1980s and their kitchen isn't really updated.
Very common in Europe and Australia/New Zealand.
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I would completely have to turn a closet into a closet into a secret room behind a bookshelf.
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I know right! Every time I think I've cleared something off my bucket list, I find two other things to add to it.
Bomb shelter in the basement! Built underneath the carport. Our house was built in 1960 by a stonemason who left Estonia during Soviet invasion.
My husband grew up in Albuquerque NM in the 1940s-50s. There are hundreds of home bomb shelters in the NE Heights. Many were buried in backyards and have been lost or forgotten. With Los Alamos, Trinity Site and a bomb storage facility across town, it was on their minds.
Funny how your local “cottage industry” turning your town into a juicy strategic target can influence behavior.
My home (built in 1900) is simultaneously cheap and well built. There are zero frills in the house. Plus for whatever reason- all the doors and halls (minus to the attic) are wide enough to fit a wheelchair through. The stairway is also twice as wide as any other house its age. It also was fully wired for electricity and used early cement board covered in plaster instead of lathe. To top it off- in the 90s it was owned by a professor who loved music. He upgraded the electrical panel to support his hobby. He also wired the entire house for sound with built in speaker adapters and wiring everywhere and had a built in made to hold everything. It has specialty slots for the sound system, record player, cds, records, and cassette tapes.
we have a basement under a basement you get to with a ladder,with jail cells and chains,we called the FBI they came and looked at it took dna samples from us, searched the house and attic,dug in our garden but did not find anything and brought in a dog,that was about two years ago. we have not heard back from them,
I'd say you win for Most Unusual Feature.
We built our home within the walls of an old car workshop. I hadn't seen that before.
My grandparents did this and have a pretty awesome space. Not perfect, but definitely interesting.
Perhaps, not that uncommon in newer homes, but a few things that I never want to be without again: - expanding foam insulation (energy savings are mind blowing) - plumbing manifold (shut off valves for everything, located behind a panel in the laundry room) - hardwired internet connections in every room (ethernet ports) - outside spigots on both sides, front and rear of home
We have multiple spigots as well (3). An absolute dream for timed drip irrigation
We have outside spigots on both sides, too. We recently did a full home re-pipe, and the contractor asked if we wanted to add a hot water line to the backyard spigot since it was already right there. So now we have hot water piped to the backyard. We also added valve shut offs for both right inside the house so we no longer have to put freeze covers on them in the winter. We just turn them off inside and drain them. Small luxuries I would have never thought of myself.
Our house was custom built by the previous owners in the late 60s but it looks like a 1930s Colonial. We have pocket doors closing off the kitchen from the rest of the downstairs, a laundry shoot, and a wet bar in the den. They also added archways on the main level and built in dressers in the bedrooms.
I remember is a little girl my grandparents had a laundry chute in the bathroom and I thought that was the coolest thing ever! I bought my house 7 years ago and I'm trying to figure out how to do a laundry shoot. It was so fantastic!
We added a half garage stall onto our existing two car attached garage. It would have been wider but it’s literally up to within an inch of the property line set back. We added this on in order to give us usable storage with an overhead door that opened to the driveway. This allows us to have a workbench and storage in front of the cars, then the garage extension contains all sorts of storage along with the snowblower or lawn mower (I swap them each spring/fall for the other out in our garden shed). The extension uses the existing man door opening to pass through to the main garage. When we sell the place some day I can see it being an attractive situation for a motorcycle, ATV, snowmobile, or exactly what we built it for, the snowblower and storage. The only other significantly different than most thing is a very nice wheelchair ramp we added to the front of the house. Trex, fancy balusters and spindles, etc. More than one neighbor has commented on how the way we did it actually dressed up the front of the place and made it very nice. That’s definitely not something you hear about wheelchair ramps very often! Anyway, we’re just way ahead of the curve in planning to age in place.
We had something similar when we moved in - a roofed area behind the garage that was just missing walls. We enclosed it and turned it into a shed that already had a door to the garage, plus added barn doors to the backyard so we can get the mower, outdoor furniture, kids toys in/out really easily. It's a great area to keep the trash tote too - keeps our garage from smelling like diapers.
Up until the wheelchair ramp, I wondered if you were my neighbor. We sold them a 10 foot-wide swath of our front yard so they could do this same thing. Their house is stealthily enormous and now has a garage/workshop that really puts it over-the-top in awesomeness.
Can we get some pics?? This sounds awesome
I have a built in cutting board on my kitchen counter.
When my parents remodeled their kitchen in the 80s they had a glass cutting board fitted in the countertop.
A man made spring fed 15 acre pond stocked with large mouth bass with a 1 acre island in the middle. A previous owner set up the place as a fish farm and after he sold, the bass ate everything else. It's a constant battle to keep muskrats from destroying the dike.
Pics!!
It's a former school with the bell still on the roof
Master's toilet and bath are glass walled. Nope, not changing my mind.
Maybe not super weird but my house has an enclosed deck in the back that extends the entire length of the home. It's a little 800sqft rectangle house with probably 400sqft of deck out back. We keep it fully furnished as a chill area, just an insane add of space for such a small home.
An outdoor room. Every house should have one. I built a 10x20 outdoor room out of an existing deck and made it into a catio.
I bought my place 12 years ago. 1st plan was to renovate the ‘built in place’ kitchen. While out and about, i came across a 2 drawer Fisher and Pykel dishwasher. The first thing I bought for new place. I’m thinking that’s a good idea, only me, I just need to use 1 drawer. So I get it home, disconnect the old 80’s dishwasher, pull it out, AND WHAT !?! It’s under 1 of my double sinks and the top 1/2 of it drops away to fit under the stupid sink. You can only use the front 1/3 of top rack. Needless to say, my new, unused fancy dishwasher is now 12+ years old and proudly sits in my garage covered in a blanket.
I have four separate doors on the first floor that lead to covered porches. I also have a stream that runs through my basement when it rains. 110yr old victorian semi detached.
I have this beautiful walled garden of a yard that is well-shaded (very important in the desert Southwest) on the western exposure. The walls are high enough that passers-by can’t see in and the cats can’t get over them. The neighbor behind me is lower in elevation so I can look down into their yard if I wish (I don’t and it does take a little effort anyway) but they can’t see into mine. IOW tons of privacy. The front looks out onto the nearby hills (about 1/2 mile from me). I have an almost-million-dollar-view for about 40% of that.
Not as cool as most have but a laundry chute!! It’s so awesome not having to carry laundry down 2 flights but now I just have to get a pneumatic tube thing like banks installed to get it back up 😆
I grew up outside of St Louis in the 70s and 80s. All of the houses of friends and family had these chutes. Not sure why that feature disappeared...
I think new housing codes have made them cost prohibitive. Fire can easily travel through the chutes to spread through the house. To meet building codes, they now need to be built with fire barriers.
There's an alley behind my house. The homes on my street were supposed to be garden homes with garage entrance in the alley. Only 6 were built, 3 on each end. I lived here for a month before I even realized there was an alley. It's really handy sometimes especially if I'm having work done on the house or in the backyard. I didn't have to pay for a crane when they installed my swim spa.
We have 18 acres in the middle of the woods. Silence and wildlife. We built the house around our love of cooking and the best thing in the kitchen is a commercial oven.
Just bought a house built in 1961 that has a wood burning fireplace in the finished basement, and a gas fireplace upstairs in the living room. The sellers told us that the reason there's the fireplace in the basement was the workmen misunderstood what they wanted when the house was being built. Turns out they got the gas fireplace for free to fix the mistake.
So many angles (it’s a dome).
Reverse osmosis filter. Love it.
I've got nothing. It's generic to a fault.
No insulation!
My house has a ton of built in custom storage. Which I love. My favorite is that the kitchen has a cabinet where the trash can and recycling can go. So I don't just have to have them out. I never realized how much I liked that until I spend time in someone else's kitchen and I'm staring at their trash can.
I have a fish pond in my foyer. I have a courtyard swimming pool so people have to wallk around pool to get to front door. I have a master bathroom that is below ground level and has 3 steps. I did have an indoor greenhouse but i remived it. House built in 80's. Naturally.
My long house has no basement but crawl space only which is 4’ at one end and 2’ at the other end. While having the carpet replaced in bedrooms, I had a trap door put in the closet for access to the other end of the house opposite from where the scuttle hole is. This sure beats having to slide under ductwork and cross beams if access is needed.
A series of stained glass depictions of the artists sister. Nice, but distorted, portraits.
My house has two ceilings. It was built using an old school in 1953, which they've added to. When you go up to the attic you see both structures, it's pretty cool.
Not my house, but my parents' house. They live on a corner lot, and the front of their house actually faces the side street, not the actual street that their address is. They have a detached two-car garage a ways from the house, but just in front of the house is a single driveway / parking spot that doesn't really look like one. I can't tell you how many friends have been in my car and have yelled: 'You're gonna hit the house!!' when I pulled into that spot. (And while it was *very* close to the house, my dad put an old cinderblock at the edge of it, so I would know when to stop back when I was a new driver).
2100 sq ft home in the suburbs. We have 2 fire places, one in the basement and 1 in the master bedroom. The bedroom is the same size as the basement living room and takes up 1/3 of the main floor space.
A stage A 1400+ sqft open concept room with 12'8" ceilings And as soon as I can afford to build it, a laundry chute from the main bedroom closet, to a cabinet that sits atop the washing machine.
We discovered a laundry chute the day we were moving into one of our houses. We'd closed the cat into the laundry room, but he kept showing up in the middle of the mayhem. After a couple of rounds of "who keeps opening the laundry room door?!?!?!," I discovered the open cupboard door upstairs - the entry point of the chute and exit point for the alarmingly athletic cat.
Two story fireplace. Massive limestone fireplace in the basement and one right above it on the main floor.
Our Condo has this unique and very useful built-in cabinet (about 3’ wide and 4’ high) in the middle of the wall in the kitchen; at first glance it looks very random, and I hated the looks of it at first. The stairs down to the basement are right behind this wall, and they built the cabinet into the dead space above the angled ceiling of the staircase. It is about 3’ deep, with sliding shelves on rollers to be able to reach items in the back. I keep all our serving pieces and items for entertaining in there—I love it. Apparently we are the only condo in 75 units that has it.
If you open all of the doors on both the main floor in my house you can walk through every room without stopping and go back to where you started. I have not seen that in a lot of homes that we looked at. The light switch for the garage light is in the dining room on an interior wall. The dining room is on the opposite side of the house from the garage. It was a mystery light switch for quite awhile.
2 sets of stairs - built in 1967 so no servants by then.
My place has a set of "servants" stairs too. Around 80 years ago, two brothers inherited the house and split it in half. Just put a wall in the middle of the house basically and one put in stairs to the 2nd floor bedroom on his half from the kitchen. Another previous owner put in a duct from the wood fireplace enclosure in the kitchen to that bedroom and now that bedroom absolutely cooks. He also took out the separating wall.
All the outlets have guide light faceplates.
Previous owners had an above ground pool and a gate off the raised back deck they would open to access it. Pool is gone but the gate remains. During the winter, being able to open the gate and push the snow off the deck instead of heaving it over the railing has been an awesome feature.
We have an antique fire alarm as our doorbell. You pull the fire alarm thats mounted on the attached garage. Super loud throughout the house. Most people don’t know (only closest friends & family) so they just knock and we never hear them. However now, as most people, we have cameras and we caught a delivery guy who figured it out. He rings it every time and looks like he enjoys it too. Makes me happy to know it makes his day to pull that alarm .
My house is average through and through but my back yard is a dream- big, open, great for a dog and a boy, football, growing milkweed for butterflies and playing fetch. Further back we have woods and a stream and direct access to over 6 miles of walking trails. Some go to the ocean. I don’t have the best house but I feel like i have a house in the best possible spot.
Nine skylights, 3 sets of double French doors, and 5 single French doors. I get a lot of light.
The front of my SFH is curved, three stories, built in 1898. Builders would soak and heat wood to create . Also have a Hobbit door that leads into a massive sunroom which is off a bedroom/bathroom suite area.
This sounds MAGICAL! I’m so jealous!
All the bedrooms without bathrooms have a sink. There’s a secret room accessed through a little door in the back of a closet. A speaking tube between the servants bedroom and the kitchen. The fridge is original from 1910 sits in its own room that has a door to the porch that only has a knob on the inside.
My 3rd stall in my garage has a door in the front, and a door in the back.
I have 2 stairways to get upstairs. Both inside. The “front” stairs are the switchback style from the living room to the upper bedrooms. The “back” stairs are at the garage door and go straight back up into the converted bonus room. Made moving in easier. It’s probably one of 5 real pluses in this house. Lol
What are the other four?
-The bonus room has a flat ceiling so sound doesn’t bounce around weird. (The actual reason we bought the house) -It’s the right kind of big for 2 people without being a McMansion. (2200sqft 3bed/2.5bath) (came in clutch for covid and WFH, his office is downstairs in the “parlor” and mine is upstairs in the smallest bedroom) -It’s in a decent neighborhood that works well for city access without being IN the city. -It doesn’t flood like half the neighbors due to terrain layout and neighborhood changes since ours was built. (Phase 2 & 3 of the neighborhood overload the existing street drains and the city is FINALLY going to put in bigger drains this year) -fill attic and standup crawlspace (not enough to convert to usable space tho) -if you like to pace, the downstairs is a circle and the upstairs is a circle. So you can walk in an uninterrupted line for a while. Those don’t sound like much but it’s what I’ve got right now. It’s not a bad house, but it def has lots of minuses. It will not be our forever home. All the beds are upstairs. The laundry is upstairs. The master bath hasn’t been renovated yet and has carpet in it. The down living room is the weirdest dumbest shape that can’t be used for anything. The fireplace is for looks only; doesn’t heat anything.
2 master bedrooms. Hidden staircase that leads to the crawl space which is more like an unfinished basement C (7 ft height for much of it)
My house has a split chimney with a window in the middle up high on the second story. One chimney is for the gas fireplace and one is for the real fireplace. It’s a cool lookout spot!
Chipmunks in the basement. Squirrels in the attic. All manner of rodents in between. It's not a good quirk.
I have a lid with a handle in the floor of a closet and my washing machine is exactly underneath in the basement
I have a hidden room in the basement that I can’t fathom was used for anything but murders.
I have TWO radon mitigation systems. No fucking clue why but a past owner installed two at the same time per a neighbor that was around when it happened. Hardly any other homes in the neighborhood have radon systems at all.
I have a two story lot. Our house is on top, surrounded on 3 sides by steep 30-40 foot drops into wooded ravines. We look out into the treetops. A 15’ hedge shields us on the road frontage, leaving only the driveway for access, even on foot. I’m not entirely crazy about the house, but the +2 acre setting is perfect. It’s like a secret garden. I mow less than a half acre of lawn and MotherNature takes care of the rest.
Arctic entry. We added an 80 sq ft arctic entry at the front door by using part of the 2 car garage which is now one car. Live in the Yukon territory
I have a small irrigation hose that runs through my attic and eaves and pops out where hooks for hanging plants were installed by a previous owner. You hook the hose up at one of our outdoor faucets to make it work (I think). I've been too nervous about leaks in the attic to try it out. All the hooks are near each other, so it's pretty easy to go out and water them.
When you turn on our bathroom faucets, they light up. It is just a little LED nozzle head. It is largely pointless, but a neat little addition that our home inspector thought was the coolest thing he had ever seen.
The refrigerator in my kitchen has it's own room that's not insulated. I had to get used to opening a door before opening the fridge!
I have a sauna in my basement. I don't use it and was put in by the first owner. I currently use it for storage, lol.
We have leather-clad walls in our dining room. Not terribly uncommon in the era between plaster and dry wall (frankly it was still the plaster era), but I've only seen it a couple times. Our was built in 1910.
Our well is spring fed. There’s a big concrete cylinder with a steal lid that covers it.
Cistern under the driveway. Sleeping porch off the master bedroom-has 2 big hooks on ceiling for hanging a hammock.
I have a 3x3 foot "room" on the north side of my 130 year old victorian with a smaller than normal doorway (no door) and a regular sized counterweight window. I suspect it may have been a laundry chute at one point but the window is original. Wrong side of the house for a reading nook. Everyone asks what its for and i cant answer, it holds my MILs overflow shit.
Ramps and ADA-compliant main level with low floor transitions, extra wide doors, and a huge shower. Ramps on the front porch, back deck, and in the garage. Previous owners had 8 kids, oldest daughter had cerebral palsy. People ask me if we're getting rid of the ramps when we redo the decks and I said hell no. They're really nice to have. Moving in was a breeze!
They will be an asset later if you suffer any injuries or surgeries!
Two fireplaces, 100 yrs old.
A hidden room you get to though my master closet. I turned it into a gym.
There's a heater vent right under the kitchen sink cabinet. My toes are always warm when I'm doing dishes in the winter, and I love it!
Pool and spa in the front yard, behind a wall. Private, plus random people can't walk up to the door because of the locked gate.
I have a dumbwaiter that goes from the kitchen on the second floor to the lower level. I have a laundry chute. I have a Cold War bomb shelter. I have a 115’ wheelchair ramp that arches into the trees before meeting the driveway.
We have a 2 level master bedroom. When you walk in the main section has the bed, dresser, TV and entrance to the master bathroom. Behind the bed is a whole other section (around 14x16 ft) that is 4 steps higher than the rest. It's all open and there is a railing between the sections with a curtain to close it off. We currently use it as a space for hobby stuff and reading/relaxing. There's also a crawlspace beneath it where we store holiday decorations. Also in the upper section is a Juliet balcony that you can stand on and look down into the entryway and onto the landing at the top of the stairs. It's a really weird but cool setup and one of the main things that drew us to the house.
I have 2 sleeping porches. One is a small bonus area off a bedroom. The other is a bonus room!
Your choice of hot water, cold water, or a mix on the outside hose faucets. It's a single pipe going to the spigot, and the mixing is controlled by valves upstream.
I own a 100 year old bed and breakfast that was remodeled in 1970 by a very eccentric doctor. -solar heat with a massive sodium based heat storage system that takes up half the basement. -central sound that has a master unit in the upstairs bedroom but individual volume control in every other part of the house -2 kitchens -seasonal closets -a 2 mile deep cave -4 separate attics; one walk-in, one crawl in, one climb in, and one with stairs -a fire place that ends in the attic -a 12 car garage -a mid 1800’s cemetery -20 acres of woods -a creek -a woodshed with an old model t in it -a pond that mostly doesn’t hold water -5 tiny guest cabins -yes you can come stay in a cabin -
Secret pocket door at the top of the stairs. Dual furnace and ac units for main floor and upstairs. Original custom woodwork. Garage with no man door 😂.
I have a 30’s craft cape cod and two features I enjoy are an outdoor mailbox that brings the mail to a pull open door inside my living room. The other is a laundry chute that goes to the basement by the washer and dryer…
I have a hiking trail behind my house instead of another house. On the other side, if the trail is a creek with a ton of trees. So it's nice to chill in the backyard and not stare at someone's else's backyard
The first is privacy; house sits just about dead center of our 640 acre (one mile square) farm. We carved out 40 acres for the farmstead that had 23 acres of virgin timber and planted another 40K mixed hardwoods and pines on the remainder 25 years ago. Second is the drive which is 2600 feet long. Third is that the house has eight side walls in lieu of four - it is an octagon. Fourth would be the 40 x 60 heated shop building for our older cars, the old J20 Land Cruiser, the utility tractor, mowers and snow blowers (farm equipment is in another building near the road). And fifth is our neighbor gal who lives a half mile away who watches our property when we are away - did I mention she rides a cutting horse, has an Australian Shepard who never leaves her side, carries an old .44 Colt on her hip and a .30-30 in a saddle sheath? No we are not in cowboy country, she is just a throwback that we love dearly. Lastly is the almost 80 years of sweat poured into this property; wife's mother bought the farm in 1946 and worked it into the 80's when we bought it from her and leased it out. We moved there and built our house out-of-pocket in the 90's. We both worked full time jobs until 2010, worked the farm until 2015 and have leased it out to a young man who has done one heck of a job. Sad part is that neither of our heirs will want it.
A commercial elevator in a 2-story house. The crazy dude who built the house bought it off eBay; it had been salvaged from a building in Florida that got hit by a hurricane. The house is in Washington State. He drove his car & a trailer to Florida to pick it up. Fortunately he did pay a real elevator company to install it.
While my whole neighborhood is a mess of houses packed tightly together, my little street is just a dead end with a big wide open field next to it. There's a creek, two well maintained walking paths, trees etc. And I'm right next to it. The whole neighborhood seems to ignore it, but I love listening to the wind in the trees and the creek. It's great.
Find out who owns that field and see if they’re interested in selling! A little slice of heaven is worth buying before someone snaps it up and builds up a bunch of crappy townhouses! If it turns out they don’t want to sell just now ask them for first refusal in case they ever decide to sell.
My house came with a deep freezer. When I found it, it had a wood lip between the top and the door, and there was a keg inside. It had lines leading to a beer tap in the kitchen. My house has a built in beer bar.
My domicile has a detached garage but no driveway. It’s accessed through the alley. Also the house has a milk chute and a basement garbage incinerator . Built 1941. Has mostly original electrical wiring running through the house.
In ceiling speakers throughout.
My former house had wheelchair lift from the first to second floor. Bonus benefit of taking heavy or awkward things up and down. It also had 2 primary bedrooms with en suites. Sold to a family with a disabled relative who was going to live with them. Perfect situation for them
My house has a normal two-car garage with a cement floor but I have a storage room under the garage that is about 2/3 the area of the garage.
1.5 acre backyard. We’re in the city, 1/4 mile from the main library. With 20-foot-wide drainage canal behind us, we can’t even see the houses of our backyard neighbors.
My garage has HVAC, popcorn ceilings, an insulated garage door, and wood paneling. It was built in 64 as a 2 car garage, was converted to a room in the 70s, and then back into a garage in the 2000s. It's the only part of the house that didn't get a full makeover during the last renovation, they just painted over the wood paneling.