Idle curiosity: weirdest part of your house?

amelisha

As I was reorganizing closets yesterday, I was thinking about how weird two of them are.

We have both a bizarre closet with three sliding doors running the entire length of our master bathroom, and the strangest pantry ever. It is about six feet wide but only six inches deep, and I have no idea who thought it was a good idea. You can see it below.

Anyone else have anything in your place that makes you wonder who the hell designed it?

sarawifenow

We have a separate vanity from out bathroom, so our toilet and tub are separate from our sink and mirror. The medicine cabinet opens towards the mirror and hits the light bulb. I can't tell you how many bulbs I have broken.

ShesSoCold

Our house is a big circle and the bathroom is like a "jack and jill style"- between the two bedrooms. But there's only the two bedrooms. Unless you count the one the people before us slapped in the unfinished for their second kid. The back corner of the old ass unfinished basement is walled off and has a raised floor.

There's also a random toilet in the middle of the basement with an old shower head at the top near the ceiling. 

novella1186

We live in a stupid little rental house we hate. Every room has multiple ways in and out. Like our bedroom has two doors that lead to two different hallways, the bathroom has two doors, etc. It's fun sometimes cuz I'll mess with FI when I know he's trying to find which room I'm in, and I'll just go out one door right when he comes in the other door, and run down one hall while he's on his way down the other hall. I'll just keep going around and around, and he can't find me no matter how fast he goes. Until I start laughing too hard to run and/or our big dog tackles me.

l9i

Our house had one main owner and a guy between us and her, but he only lived there for two years and didn't make hardly any changes.  When we were painting some of the rooms we noticed that when the room was painted previously they took the outlet covers off, but still painted over the outlets??  Also, they installed a lot of cheap looking plank shelves and then painted over them in an effort to make them look 'built in' (my guess).  So if we want to remove them we need to take them off, sand, and repaint... ugh.  Most things are not builder related, but previous owner related and when we discover this small things it just makes you think "WTH, Why????".

Simky906

The weirdest thing in our apartment is the phone jack in the bathroom. I don't know why you would need a phone jack in the bathroom and it's also in a weird place; on the wall across from the toilet and right next to the shower. So if you put a phone there, you couldn't reach it from the toilet.

mikenberger

Its not an oddly shaped room or "Why is that there?" type room, but our house was built in 1905 in the Midwest which means we have a coal room.

CREEPIEST. ROOM. EVER.

The previous owners left it as is, so it has a dirt floor and one doorway into it was covered by a poor attempt at a wall, then someone just hung a shower curtain in it. The other entrance is under the stairs and open, but there are shelves in the way. Our basement isn't finished, just houses the workshop area, laundry and various other things but man. Is it creepy. Its been nicknames The Gimp Room. Theres no light in there, dirt floor, broken bottles, newspapers... Nobody dare enter.

[Deleted User]

Our downstairs half bath has no electrical plugs... seriously, who doesn't put an outlet in a bathroom?

novella1186

mikenberger said:

Its not an oddly shaped room or "Why is that there?" type room, but our house was built in 1905 in the Midwest which means we have a coal room. CREEPIEST. ROOM. EVER. The previous owners left it as is, so it has a dirt floor and one doorway into it was covered by a poor attempt at a wall, then someone just hung a shower curtain in it. The other entrance is under the stairs and open, but there are shelves in the way. Our basement isn't finished, just houses the workshop area, laundry and various other things but man. Is it creepy. Its been nicknames The Gimp Room. Theres no light in there, dirt floor, broken bottles, newspapers... Nobody dare enter.

Are you at my mom's house?

beethery

Our house has a weird makeshift spiral staircase, and it has this mostly worthless platform about halfway up. I say mostly worthless, because the cats like to hang out on it. If they ignored it, it would be 100% worthless.

photokitty

I have since redone the bathroom but it was hands down my bathtub. 

There was no spigot! No one noticed until eh home inspector pointed it out, but I wasn't going to pullout over a spigot...but seriously - NO SPIGOT???

The shower head would swing down if you wanted to fill the tub. 

The shower head was only 5'10 tall. 

It was banana pants!

 

l9i

Also, I'm pretty sure every window in our house is a different size, it's crazy.  It's an older house and the windows need replaced but I fear an estimate because I expect a lot of custom sizing....

lacqueredlover

I live in an apartment buidling that was built in 1930.  It has a tiny stall shower and a separate large bathtub.  We have this huge bathroom and I can barely shave my legs in the shower because it's so tiny.

luckya23

I have a curtained toilet in my garage... looking directly at the electrical panel.

Simky906

Also, the house I grew up in (and where my mom still lives) has some interesting features. The medicine cabinet mirror in the master bath is at the perfect height for someone who is six feet tall; always interesting for my 5"5 mom. The archway that leads form the living room into the dining room is off center by a good two feet. The kitchen countertops are pink and the white backsplash tiles are edged with pink. And the previous owner installed a washer and dryer in a shed in the backyard. That my mom got moved indoors but the rest she is still living with.

themuffinman16

We live in an apartment. Whoever designed it made the heating source connect to two bedrooms.  When you open the heating vent to one room, it shuts the vent in the other room.  There is no way to solve this problem without landlord spending thousands of dollars to add and insulate existing pipe (includes knocking out the basement wall and extending it to keep pipe insulated.). We had the world's crappiest carpenter build an addition onto our house.  Our carpet freezes in the master bedroom in the winter.  We will have to move before we have a baby.

NowIamMrsKlein

No drawers or medicine cabinet in bathroom. There's a set of deep shelves on one side and this weird little useless cubby behind the door. I don't understand why they put in this half wall and cubby instead of extending the counter-top full length and have room for freaking drawers.

we had to buy a free standing over the toilet medicine cabinet for all the unmentionables that you dont want sitting out when you have guests. And then we have baskets on the shelves for makeup/deoderant/hairproducts etc.

Simky906

luckya23 said:

I have a curtained toilet in my garage... looking directly at the electrical panel.

I think you might win. That makes absolutely zero sense!

jenna8984

My house and my whole neighborhood was built in 1956. We all have a tiny one car garage that just barely fits my 2 door scion, and could possibly fit a civic. Makes absolutely no sense since the cars of 1956 were ginormous boats-Lincolns, Cadillacs. Not sure why they made all these houses with garages that couldn't fit their cars.

They also put the access to the attic in the ceiling above the basement stairs.....so yea we have to wedge a ladder over the stairwell...wtf.

You enter the kitchen from the front of the house, as you do in just about every house in the history of houses....so I can't stand that the light switch to the kitchen light is all the way at the back of the kitchen by the door that leads outside. It's not like that funky "side door" people use- it's straight up in the back and no one would ever enter from that direction.

levioosa

Not technically my house....but at my best friend's old house someone had illegally renovated it and made one of the corners to a room two doors that came together to make the corner.  It drove me batty.  

The layout of our kitchen now drives me a little crazy, but mostly because it's inconvenient, not because it's outright weird.  Although I don't really know why you would put the space for the refrigerator right in front of the garage door against a wall.  We can't open the freezer door the whole way and it's annoying.  

themuffinman16

Do 

Simky906 said:

luckya23 said:

I have a curtained toilet in my garage... looking directly at the electrical panel.

I think you might win. That makes absolutely zero sense!

Do you live in the south?

novella1186

My parents' house has a stairway that leads to nowhere in the basement. It used to lead to an exterior entrance to the basement but the previous owners covered it up.

FI's parents' house is super old too, like 1800s old. His dad was mowing the lawn one day (after they had been living there for about 15 years and he had mowed the grass a million times) and he fell through the ground into a 10-foot pit. Turns out, it was some kind of old cement water cistern. Luckily he didn't get seriously hurt when he fell that far, but he said it was this huge hollow cistern with just a thin layer of dirt and grass over the opening!

They also keep finding random brick foundations all over their yard every time they try to plant something. Oh, and their family room used to be the viewing room for a funeral home. So I'll be back with some ghost stories at some point!

climbingsingle

My H bought the house he grew up in when he was 21. After his parents divorced and MIL moved out, his dad spent years "decorating", making the house the ultimate woodsy cabin bachelor house. FYI - we live in the NYC suburbs. It ain't woodsy. 

Anyway, there are many things that make me say, WTF? I'm in the process of removing most of them, as we get ready to redo the entire house. We have a large log cabin type railing, which is totally out of place in a high ranch suburbia house. There are various fake stuffed animals. There are fake deer hooves that act as a gun holder. There are fake ram skulls. I can't even, guys. 

luckya23

 

luckya23 said:

I have a curtained toilet in my garage... looking directly at the electrical panel.

I think you might win. That makes absolutely zero sense!

Do you live in the south?

No, I live in NY.

amelisha

I am dying over those garage toilet photos. Absolutely baffled. Looks like something a kidnapper would rig up for the people he's locked up for the past 20 years.

loveislouder

Our house has a "master' bedroom with no windows. Pretty sure that's illegal.

jenna8984

AlisonM23 said:

Our downstairs half bath has no electrical plugs... seriously, who doesn't put an outlet in a bathroom?

@alisonm23 Is it pre-1960? All the houses here from the 50's (including my own) don't have outlets. I don't think they had things like blow dryers back then? But if it was built in like 2000 then that's fucking weird.

@photokitty I have the same bathroom, but mint green tiles! We just tore them off last weekend!

luckya23

photokitty said:

I have since redone the bathroom but it was hands down my bathtub. 

There was no spigot! No one noticed until eh home inspector pointed it out, but I wasn't going to pullout over a spigot...but seriously - NO SPIGOT???

The shower head would swing down if you wanted to fill the tub. 

The shower head was only 5'10 tall. 

It was banana pants!

 

Looks like my salmon tiles!

emmaaa

These are great!

We rent a house built in the 1950's and is a square cinder block house. ALL OF THE CLOSETS HAVE THE RUNNING DOORS (yes it was necessary to yell that). The doors don't stay on the tracks ever so we're actually going to replace them for our landlord. Also, there is an open space in the wall that was obviously built in after the wood stove was taken out to hide the chimney. It was origianlly meant for a TV. Cool idea except any flat screen TV over 32" won't fit in there.

beethery

luckya23 said:

photokitty said:

I have since redone the bathroom but it was hands down my bathtub. 

There was no spigot! No one noticed until eh home inspector pointed it out, but I wasn't going to pullout over a spigot...but seriously - NO SPIGOT???

The shower head would swing down if you wanted to fill the tub. 

The shower head was only 5'10 tall. 

It was banana pants!

 

Looks like my salmon tiles!

Oh shit, right there with you on odd tile choices!

Fucking weird ass bathroom wall tile type shit, the most hideous mauve color, and filthy gray grout that I can NOT make look clean.

luckya23

That looks slippery, @beethery!

Adorable puppy, though!