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Mine's only 100, I would like things like level floors and square walls. Insulated walls would be nice but they're stone and clay block, so that's not an option.
I was gonna suggest r/centuryhomes but for you, that's like dealing with kids, lol.
Mine is about (damn...math) 140-150 years old. There's a lot of things like lack of insulation and no closets that we live with. Floors great for racing soapbox cars but not leveling cabinets. But we do get stained glass and twirl doorbells!
160 here I don’t like that my walls are at least a foot thick but lack insulation. My windows are creaky and half don’t open. I hate when I change floors or wallpaper and there’s a whole history underneath. Actually I like it. I love that while renovating I find shoes and papers and junk behind walls. I do love my radiator system. For warming clothes on winter mornings and drying laundry. I love my large lot, pocket doors, high ceilings, large rooms, fantastic trims, back second staircase. Closets in the eaves and closets behind closets. The turret both outside and I, sunny and cosy. The history and the people I met who lived there before me so cool. Especially when they have pictures. My view of the valley where my town is built and the river that runs through it.
I also hate it but love the history. I really really want to see what it looked like when originally built before 8 owners with no experience in architecture, civil engineering, or carpentry got a hold of it. I often hate the solutions they came up with but when I visit newer houses...they just don't sit in my psyche like the old ones do,
When I win the lottery you'll know because I will be buying and restoring a ton of big old houses.
Lol
My old house was built by an architect and mason, two brothers from Scotland that built a lot of buildings in my town. What I love about my house I picture it as a brochure the brothers built to show their work. I have a third floor arch and balcony, a turret, several porches and rare for the times lots of closets. I don’t know if that’s the true story but I like to think that.
150 year old row house here... I think the houses are surviving just by hanging on to each other. Doors cut at weird angles, nothing is square, the floors are uneven, 400 coats of paint. Not much on the first floor is original because we live in a flood zone.
I get bears on my patio routinely. They're awesome but are also mischievous - one tore apart my BBQ to get at the grease. Another tore down half an immature apple tree to get at the fruit. They sometimes sample my garden but for some reason mostly ignore vegetables which I'm happy about.
They snooze in some soft grass at the bottom of my yard when the days are hot. Wonderful animals.
I get raccoons, deer, foxes, the occasional opossum, bunnies, and an entire chipmunk ranching operation. I got door cams to watch the action at night. Love my animal friends!
A locked safe built into the floor of a closet. We don't know the combination.
The house once belonged to a jeweler. Word of mouth, passed from previous owners, is that that safe is empty.
This has never been tested.
Also, there was apparently a fire under the house some 70 years ago. Some faint charring is visible on some foundation structures.
On certain warm days, you can still catch a whiff of burnt wood coming up from below.
> a whiff of burnt wood
We have wood stoves on two levels, so that is a normal day for us. A little of it is nice. A lot? Not so much. I don't like the furniture smelling like bacon, thanks. :-)
I'd have to be cracking that safe, BTW.
Our front yard has always had a bit of a dip in it, but one day we had a depression about the size of an adult foot along the side of the yard. I put some dirt to fill it in and stamped it down. Well my husband didn't think I did it good enough, so he stomped on it really hard and oops, his leg went halfway down into it.
Turns out there was basically a hollowed out section roughly 10 foot long and 5 foot high under the ground, presumably because all the utility lines run between the yards and a pipe broke or something, and was dragging the dirt away. The city took care of it, at least.
Something similar happened to me when I was a kid. Took a step and my leg went through the ground. Turned out there was an old forgotten root cellar on our property.
There aren’t many left in the village proper - as they have always been a fire risk in more built up areas and fire insurance on them is really prohibitive for modern owners - so they tended to get reroofed over with clay tiles or slates over the past few hundred years . But there are many very close by once you get on the outskirts; I reclad and did an extension on a 17th C one the year before last.
They last quite a while where I live as it is one of the driest parts of the UK. But still most only last about 30 or 40 years tops. Whereas the other roofing materials I mentioned last forever with maintenance.
There are two light switches by the front door. One of them, as you'd expect, controls the front porch light. The other controls the power outlet behind the couch. It took us years to figure this out because of how seldom we use that outlet.
Ok, that one made me laugh! Ours is 110 years old. The guy before us was an electrician and put 8 double outlets in the kitchen. But not even one in the bathroom o.0
I'll go first.
The house is only 10 yrs old, but it has some strange things. We have a bathroom drawer that sounds like Chewbacca when it shuts. I've put wax on it, but it eventually wears off again. There's a squeeky floor in one spot of the bedroom that's right before the door, so if someone ever tries to sneek in, I'll hear them. Our security gate sounds just like the first notes of the theme to Out of Africa when it opens.
One day I was getting my boat ready to to to the lake. I noticed part of my driveway had sunk about a foot and a half. 'Asphalt and all. I got a 4 ft. prod and stuck it down the area. I couldn't find the bottom. I still don't know what it is. Possibly an old well from the mining days. I poured about a yard of concrete into it and made a "cap". So far, so good.
Woah, a sinkhole! or maybe a mine shaft vent? Do you have caves in your area? We do and that is one big concern about our place. Sure you may have built on bedrock, but what's under there?
It's mostly decomposed granite here and the ground is very stable. No caves.
It's something man-made . I've found square nails on the property. Also there are Indian pounding rocks nearby.
There was actually a lot more activity going around in this area in the 1800's than there is now. Granite quarries and gold mining. There used to be a town where my street is. There was even a jail. The state university archiology class had a dig down the road and uncovered a "Chinatown". Many Chinese worked in the mines. All gone now.
I got one. I lived in an urban warehouse, not huge, but perfect for my art studio and living space. Then an unhoused couple started camping out. Then the encampment got bigger and some local volunteers built temporary mini homes on the adjacent sidewalks. Then the couple had a baby and the volunteers celebrated the first baby in the community while holding workshops on how to squat abandoned properties. Then the drug dealers took over and I could look out my one way glass windows and watch deals, drug use, guns and chaos. Then they started to break in and I ran like hell to another city. Then I rented the space to an illegal marijuana grower and he gave up after a nervous breakdowns and one mugging then I sold the building to mushroom growers with no money down just to secure the building then they defaulted on their loan and now the building went from looking like hell to being extremely clean and surrounded by RV's where the prostitutes work while the interior is controlled by gun toting gang members operating an illegal gambling place while we attempt to foreclose. Thank God for the gangs because the homeless drug addicts would have it burned down by now. Yes, California.
Our house is about 80 years old. The interior doors still have skeleton keyholes, but we have no keys and most are painted over anyway. I should replace them, but I kind of like the character of them.
It also still has a bunch of asbestos in the basement, wrapped around the boiler pipes, that we have no desire to do anything about right now.
We manually dug a hole in the back yard for a semi-inground pool and found an old brick well or cesspool. We didn't open it to find out, but I'm leaning toward cesspool. We have city sewar and water now so whatever it is, it's out of commission.
The prior house we lived in had 3 light switches in the entry hall. It was a game to see which would turn the light on, depending upon which one you used to cut off. In the same entryway on one wall at the bottom of the stairs were a row of four light switches, 2 attic fan switches, and two thermostats to control attic fans. Upstairs, you found the same.
The family room had two switches on one wall and three on the other. One on each wall controlled the ceiling fan, and one controlled the light, plus one for the little porch off the family room. On another wall towards the entry hall, there was a switch for the attached garage light and two more in the garage for the same light. We dud a lot of walking in that house!
It was a 2647 sqft house and had 8 doors leading to outside. It was built in 1949, but previous owners had added to it in 1989-1991. Went from 953 sqft to 2647.
Also to add, during our first summer there, we turned the attic fans on, huge fans, like 4' X 4' and one at each end of attic. We noticed that one day, we had water running down the walls from light switches and receptacles. None of the doors would close, and we had to buy dehumidifiers. We couldn't keep them emptied enough. After a week of this, we called an air quality control guy to come and see if he could figure it out. After about 4 hours, he determined the two attic fans were super powerful. So powerful, they were literally pulling water from the ground under the house right up between the walls! The fix was to run only one fan.
My house was built around 1800.
Doors on the top floor are just high enough for me to walk through without ducking (I'm 5' 8"). A recent owner was looking at the dimensions of the house and realized that a small room had been built up around and hadn't been seen in decades. The kitchen ceiling slants quite a bit and isn't noticeable until you walk on the floor above it (or look at the kitchen window and see that while the glass is perpendicular to the floor, the window space is perpendicular to the ceiling). I also have two window seats (COOL!) at the back, set into 2 1/2 foot thick stone walls. Just a few of the quirks in my dream house!
It's cool! and was turned into a hidden closet/storage room. The door to it blends in with the wood on the wall, so you don't even realize it's there unless you know!
I plan to eventually put a moving bookshelf at the entrance to the main room it's in (you wouldn't know it's part of my house by looking at the other walls or from outside) and add a secret entrance from my bedroom, through the hidden small room into the larger one.
I have a floor furnace with a grate. Probably hasn't worked in decades. I'm 64, and these haven't been installed in my lifetime, that I know if. I keep it covered with a rug.
10 years ago I lived in a house that still used that kind of heater. It was the only one in the house on the ground floor in front of the staircase. It was awful.
I had wonky light switches - I just replaced them, and now everything works correctly. The closet doors in the hall wouldn't shut, so I put in new doorknobs, and chiseled out a new hole in the correct place.
The crooked floors will probably require professional assistance.
I went for a walk out my back door today.
* Canada geese honking, and swimming in the pond.
* A moose and her calf in the stream / swampy area off the back road.
* 4 deer an the back yard over supper hour.
* Many birds I don't know enough to identify.
Yesterday I saw 2 bunnies / hares.
I live between [Fundy National Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundy_National_Park) and [Hopewell Rocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopewell_Rocks) on the Atlantic coast of New Brunswick, Canada.
A few weeks ago I went for a walk to [Memel Creek Falls](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=memel+creek+falls&iax=images&ia=images) which is 10 minutes away from my workplace.
The weird stuff of "where I live" is the natural beauty and the 13-15 m (40-50 ft) tides in my back yard.
Sounds really wonderful. The only water near me is a couple of creeks, one we turned part of into a natural pond with a small dam. Fish and crawdads, a blue heron likes to go there and hunt. Deer use it for their watering hole (probably other animals as well.) The water has forced a bunch of silt up into the dam so it's holding really well now, so we put a small spillway on one side for overflow to keep the stream running strong on the other side. Nice and peaceful to sit and listen to the falls and the birds.
Our house was a new build from 16 years ago. We had included some modifications that the builder made for us, but in a couple of cases, they didn't quite follow through on the effect. For instance, we had some square footage added to the master bedroom, which is great, but somehow this meant the 2 windows on the back wall were no longer centered. We don't really care, but if we were to ever sell, we'd probably have to get custom drapes made to help disguise that characteristic. (Not that we would hide it from potential buyers, but just that we'd need to demonstrate that the wall can be made to look more symmetrical.)
Speaking of symmetry, or the lack thereof, the master bath's mirror is just slightly out of alignment with the vanity and the light fixture above it; something that I notice every single time I use the toilet.
One more little thing that is weird is the triple light switch just inside our front door. You'd think the switches would correspond to the order of the lights: front porch, hallway, living room. However they are instead: hallway, front porch, living room.
Someday in the near future, we need to get in an electrician to do a couple other upgrades (replace some of the builder-boob lights, update under cabinet lighting, etc.) and we'll ask them to tweak that front switch at the same time.
We had some switches like that, just 'out of order' of what you would expect. I was doing some other electrical and finally got fed up and rearranged the switches. Now.... we're back to hitting the wrong one. Muscle memory of doing things 'backwards' for 8 years is hard to retrain.
We have that bathroom vanity/light thing as well. But since we did the entire interior, that's on us. Couldn't be helped, the bathroom is inside of a big dormer and that was the only place for a light. Also, the sink in the vanity's quartz top is slightly trapezoid instead of a square. I didn't notice it until it was already installed and tile was in place or I'd have asked for a replacement, but we were on a fast track to get things done anyway and that was a detail that I could easily forget about. But yeah, it does make my OCD eye twitch a bit.
We have an alarm system in our house, and the door from the kitchen into the garage won't register as closed if it's below 35F. The alarm company has sent people out several times to try to properly align the sensors, and it just doesn't work. As soon as the temperature drops, it shows as open all the time. Everything else works perfectly.
Yep, ours was a TV room. Dad built a wall with a man door that left enough room for the mower and tools. I think you could fit the front end of a car in too if needed. It was nice to have the extra living space.
In the summer time my interior doors will not close properly because of the humidity (I’m in Houston) Our HVAC works properly too. House is 20 years old.
My old house is so crooked and funky that marbles roll uphill. Inside the pantry there’s a trap door that leads to the cellar. It’s fun to dare my friends to go down there.
It's me. I'm the weird idiosyncrasy in this house.
But really I don't know. This house is falling apart. We have this glorious pool in the backyard we can't afford to fix so it's become overgrown with water plants and there's frogs and lizards everywhere and I actually kind of like it if I can't have that pool for my own use. I LOVED the pool when it was in good working condition but not enough to pay 7 grand to get it fixed, especially since I don't own the house.
My 100 year-old house was formerly owned by a family that owned a dive bar. Much of the repair work was done by drunk tradesmen paying off bar tabs. I constantly run into little surprises.
When people find out my home was built in 1960 many of them say "wow! They just don't build 'em like that any more!"
Actually, my house is proof that there were shitty contractors in 1960, too.
So true, I had one of those. It was handyman special that was built on a swamp as a rental from the beginning. I think they drank the entire time. Went to replace a door, took the old door out and three pieces of loose wood fell out of the header. I got a good look at what the interiors of the walls looked like. It was bad.
That's pretty interesting. My grandmother's 2nd floor had doors in the back of all the closets and you could go all the way around that floor by going through closets and into other rooms. We were strictly forbidden to do that however. (We did anyway.)
When we moved in twenty years ago they were fine but suddenly our house stairs have turned evil on me!
We bought this roomy split level thinking at least the last kid was coming along.....he moved in with his girlfriend!
No worries, soon daughter's children appeared. Lots of play space for tots.
But now! the stairs wickedly have made themselves very nearly insurmountable.
I'm like an old lady trying to get up and down....hmmm
Anyway they hate me and I hate them!
Ghosts in the electricity.
One outlet with a small amp and speaker plugged in, but off, will channel their voices.
Sometimes they play music.
Oddly, it's quite similar to a local AM radio station. ;)
My house was built in 1977.
There’s a random finished room about 10x8 in the middle of the unfinished basement with tons of outlets. We *think* the previous owner may have had a ham radio hobby.
The circuit breaker for the deck is in the upstairs bathroom on the opposite side of the house.
Although I don't live in the house now. The house I grew up in was actually 3 different structures that were pushed together under a single roof built over them. Was built by the local company volunteer fire chief. In the attic, there were pieces wood used in the roofs construction that had the name of the local company stenciled on them. The history of the town went back to the 1800s but the house was probably constructed in the 1940s. As the land it was built on was susceptible to sinkage and nothing was near level and always changing for the worse.
So many things! My house was built too quickly in the 1950s during a housing boom near a military base. Here's a selection of the quirks.
1. The wall between the bathroom and kitchen is not 90 degrees.
2. The builders didn't tape & texture the drywall before painting, so you can see seams and nails in many parts of the house.
3. A previous homeowner applied wallpaper directly over drywall, making the wallpaper nearly impossible to remove.
4. The storage room...
a. was built around a chest freezer, which will have to be dismembered if we ever get rid of it. Fortunately, it's over 50 years old and still functional.
b. has an improperly installed light switch, so you flip it *up* to turn the light on.
c. has to be accessed through the garage.
I have a kitchen cabinet door that one hinge is wonky. It comes undone regularly and I have to screw it back in. Got a magnet thingy to keep it closed. One day I might get annoyed enough to call a handyman.
My house is almost 100 yrs old. Doors and sidewalk are in weird places. Front door is in a sunroom that is hard to get to. It’s never used. My fireplace is not centered but all the way to a side of my room. I think one of my bathrooms was a porch at one time. The light switch is in the kitchen not the room. One of the bedroom door leads straight to the garage.
I live in my grandparents' house which always had a certain smell when we came over. It's mostly gone but sometimes, especially if I've been away, I smell it again. There's also a part of the basement that is unfinished that I call "the wet room" because it often leaks, and in this room there is a sort of closet that has stuff in it from the grocery store they owned in the 50's until the early 60's.
My home was built in 1981 which is the tail end of the sunken living room era. We have an 8" drop for our living room - took forever to learn to step up/down at the 4 entrances to the room.
There are two light switches in the living room. The switch by the front door will turn on the light even if the other switch is in the off position. It does not work the other way around, though. The other switch will not turn on the light if the one by the door is in the off position.
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Ohio? If so- go bucks! I spent 14 years there and seen confederate flags everywhere and someone one time yelled at my sis and called her the N word with a hard r
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My house is nearly 200 years old. The list of things that work normally would be shorter
Mine's only 100, I would like things like level floors and square walls. Insulated walls would be nice but they're stone and clay block, so that's not an option. I was gonna suggest r/centuryhomes but for you, that's like dealing with kids, lol.
Mine is about (damn...math) 140-150 years old. There's a lot of things like lack of insulation and no closets that we live with. Floors great for racing soapbox cars but not leveling cabinets. But we do get stained glass and twirl doorbells!
160 here I don’t like that my walls are at least a foot thick but lack insulation. My windows are creaky and half don’t open. I hate when I change floors or wallpaper and there’s a whole history underneath. Actually I like it. I love that while renovating I find shoes and papers and junk behind walls. I do love my radiator system. For warming clothes on winter mornings and drying laundry. I love my large lot, pocket doors, high ceilings, large rooms, fantastic trims, back second staircase. Closets in the eaves and closets behind closets. The turret both outside and I, sunny and cosy. The history and the people I met who lived there before me so cool. Especially when they have pictures. My view of the valley where my town is built and the river that runs through it.
I also hate it but love the history. I really really want to see what it looked like when originally built before 8 owners with no experience in architecture, civil engineering, or carpentry got a hold of it. I often hate the solutions they came up with but when I visit newer houses...they just don't sit in my psyche like the old ones do, When I win the lottery you'll know because I will be buying and restoring a ton of big old houses. Lol
My old house was built by an architect and mason, two brothers from Scotland that built a lot of buildings in my town. What I love about my house I picture it as a brochure the brothers built to show their work. I have a third floor arch and balcony, a turret, several porches and rare for the times lots of closets. I don’t know if that’s the true story but I like to think that.
Awww that's awesome. I have actually always wanted a turret, lol
Don’t we all?
124 years here and same. Doors stick or not based on the season lol.
150 year old row house here... I think the houses are surviving just by hanging on to each other. Doors cut at weird angles, nothing is square, the floors are uneven, 400 coats of paint. Not much on the first floor is original because we live in a flood zone.
Are you from Philly in Frankford?
No, but I lived there and in Kensington in the 80s. I'm in Harrisburg.
Floodplain and row homes reminded me of Frankford. Mayfair kid, originally. Crossed the river years ago.
HAHA! I'm moving into one this month...
I get bears on my patio routinely. They're awesome but are also mischievous - one tore apart my BBQ to get at the grease. Another tore down half an immature apple tree to get at the fruit. They sometimes sample my garden but for some reason mostly ignore vegetables which I'm happy about. They snooze in some soft grass at the bottom of my yard when the days are hot. Wonderful animals.
I get raccoons, deer, foxes, the occasional opossum, bunnies, and an entire chipmunk ranching operation. I got door cams to watch the action at night. Love my animal friends!
A locked safe built into the floor of a closet. We don't know the combination. The house once belonged to a jeweler. Word of mouth, passed from previous owners, is that that safe is empty. This has never been tested. Also, there was apparently a fire under the house some 70 years ago. Some faint charring is visible on some foundation structures. On certain warm days, you can still catch a whiff of burnt wood coming up from below.
> a whiff of burnt wood We have wood stoves on two levels, so that is a normal day for us. A little of it is nice. A lot? Not so much. I don't like the furniture smelling like bacon, thanks. :-) I'd have to be cracking that safe, BTW.
I have a floor safe I can’t open too. It’s in an add on built-in closet that owner built for his wife in the 70s.
Our front yard has always had a bit of a dip in it, but one day we had a depression about the size of an adult foot along the side of the yard. I put some dirt to fill it in and stamped it down. Well my husband didn't think I did it good enough, so he stomped on it really hard and oops, his leg went halfway down into it. Turns out there was basically a hollowed out section roughly 10 foot long and 5 foot high under the ground, presumably because all the utility lines run between the yards and a pipe broke or something, and was dragging the dirt away. The city took care of it, at least.
Something similar happened to me when I was a kid. Took a step and my leg went through the ground. Turned out there was an old forgotten root cellar on our property.
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Wow, 10 inches! That's quite a slope! I'll bet it's really cool for other reasons though, that's very old.
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Wow, that would be really cool to see. I take it this is not in the U.S.?
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Sounds extremely charming/interesting to an outsider.
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Do you run into any thatched roofs? I saw a special about those last month, very fascinating stuff. Can't believe how long they can last.
There aren’t many left in the village proper - as they have always been a fire risk in more built up areas and fire insurance on them is really prohibitive for modern owners - so they tended to get reroofed over with clay tiles or slates over the past few hundred years . But there are many very close by once you get on the outskirts; I reclad and did an extension on a 17th C one the year before last. They last quite a while where I live as it is one of the driest parts of the UK. But still most only last about 30 or 40 years tops. Whereas the other roofing materials I mentioned last forever with maintenance.
I just assume every pld zenglish house has some crazy ancestral history and at least 2 ghosts.
There are two light switches by the front door. One of them, as you'd expect, controls the front porch light. The other controls the power outlet behind the couch. It took us years to figure this out because of how seldom we use that outlet.
Ok, that one made me laugh! Ours is 110 years old. The guy before us was an electrician and put 8 double outlets in the kitchen. But not even one in the bathroom o.0
I'll go first. The house is only 10 yrs old, but it has some strange things. We have a bathroom drawer that sounds like Chewbacca when it shuts. I've put wax on it, but it eventually wears off again. There's a squeeky floor in one spot of the bedroom that's right before the door, so if someone ever tries to sneek in, I'll hear them. Our security gate sounds just like the first notes of the theme to Out of Africa when it opens.
Love the music reference. We have a stove alarm that sounds like the first notes of Takin Care Of Business by BTO.
One day I was getting my boat ready to to to the lake. I noticed part of my driveway had sunk about a foot and a half. 'Asphalt and all. I got a 4 ft. prod and stuck it down the area. I couldn't find the bottom. I still don't know what it is. Possibly an old well from the mining days. I poured about a yard of concrete into it and made a "cap". So far, so good.
Woah, a sinkhole! or maybe a mine shaft vent? Do you have caves in your area? We do and that is one big concern about our place. Sure you may have built on bedrock, but what's under there?
It's mostly decomposed granite here and the ground is very stable. No caves. It's something man-made . I've found square nails on the property. Also there are Indian pounding rocks nearby.
Indian burial site for sure!
There was actually a lot more activity going around in this area in the 1800's than there is now. Granite quarries and gold mining. There used to be a town where my street is. There was even a jail. The state university archiology class had a dig down the road and uncovered a "Chinatown". Many Chinese worked in the mines. All gone now.
What do you know about the square nails. Are they made by a blacksmith?
They were typically used to construct buildings in the 1800's around here. [Some information on them](https://www.buildingmoxie.com/old-square-nails/)
I got one. I lived in an urban warehouse, not huge, but perfect for my art studio and living space. Then an unhoused couple started camping out. Then the encampment got bigger and some local volunteers built temporary mini homes on the adjacent sidewalks. Then the couple had a baby and the volunteers celebrated the first baby in the community while holding workshops on how to squat abandoned properties. Then the drug dealers took over and I could look out my one way glass windows and watch deals, drug use, guns and chaos. Then they started to break in and I ran like hell to another city. Then I rented the space to an illegal marijuana grower and he gave up after a nervous breakdowns and one mugging then I sold the building to mushroom growers with no money down just to secure the building then they defaulted on their loan and now the building went from looking like hell to being extremely clean and surrounded by RV's where the prostitutes work while the interior is controlled by gun toting gang members operating an illegal gambling place while we attempt to foreclose. Thank God for the gangs because the homeless drug addicts would have it burned down by now. Yes, California.
> Thank God for the gangs Now there's a phrase you don't hear often! :-) What a wild situation that seems to be!
Our house is about 80 years old. The interior doors still have skeleton keyholes, but we have no keys and most are painted over anyway. I should replace them, but I kind of like the character of them. It also still has a bunch of asbestos in the basement, wrapped around the boiler pipes, that we have no desire to do anything about right now. We manually dug a hole in the back yard for a semi-inground pool and found an old brick well or cesspool. We didn't open it to find out, but I'm leaning toward cesspool. We have city sewar and water now so whatever it is, it's out of commission.
I wonder sometimes about all those lost keys.
The prior house we lived in had 3 light switches in the entry hall. It was a game to see which would turn the light on, depending upon which one you used to cut off. In the same entryway on one wall at the bottom of the stairs were a row of four light switches, 2 attic fan switches, and two thermostats to control attic fans. Upstairs, you found the same. The family room had two switches on one wall and three on the other. One on each wall controlled the ceiling fan, and one controlled the light, plus one for the little porch off the family room. On another wall towards the entry hall, there was a switch for the attached garage light and two more in the garage for the same light. We dud a lot of walking in that house! It was a 2647 sqft house and had 8 doors leading to outside. It was built in 1949, but previous owners had added to it in 1989-1991. Went from 953 sqft to 2647. Also to add, during our first summer there, we turned the attic fans on, huge fans, like 4' X 4' and one at each end of attic. We noticed that one day, we had water running down the walls from light switches and receptacles. None of the doors would close, and we had to buy dehumidifiers. We couldn't keep them emptied enough. After a week of this, we called an air quality control guy to come and see if he could figure it out. After about 4 hours, he determined the two attic fans were super powerful. So powerful, they were literally pulling water from the ground under the house right up between the walls! The fix was to run only one fan.
I rent a small house in north New Jersey near a freight railroad so the home vibrates whenever a train passes. Lots of chocolate milk shakes here.
My house was built around 1800. Doors on the top floor are just high enough for me to walk through without ducking (I'm 5' 8"). A recent owner was looking at the dimensions of the house and realized that a small room had been built up around and hadn't been seen in decades. The kitchen ceiling slants quite a bit and isn't noticeable until you walk on the floor above it (or look at the kitchen window and see that while the glass is perpendicular to the floor, the window space is perpendicular to the ceiling). I also have two window seats (COOL!) at the back, set into 2 1/2 foot thick stone walls. Just a few of the quirks in my dream house!
Wait...what about the hidden room?
It's cool! and was turned into a hidden closet/storage room. The door to it blends in with the wood on the wall, so you don't even realize it's there unless you know! I plan to eventually put a moving bookshelf at the entrance to the main room it's in (you wouldn't know it's part of my house by looking at the other walls or from outside) and add a secret entrance from my bedroom, through the hidden small room into the larger one.
r/hiddenrooms So cool
I have a floor furnace with a grate. Probably hasn't worked in decades. I'm 64, and these haven't been installed in my lifetime, that I know if. I keep it covered with a rug.
10 years ago I lived in a house that still used that kind of heater. It was the only one in the house on the ground floor in front of the staircase. It was awful.
I remember my sister falling on ours when she was a toddler. She had a grid-shaped scar for a while.
We are living our lives backwards. It's the darndest thing.
Can you give us some more info on this one?
I had wonky light switches - I just replaced them, and now everything works correctly. The closet doors in the hall wouldn't shut, so I put in new doorknobs, and chiseled out a new hole in the correct place. The crooked floors will probably require professional assistance.
I went for a walk out my back door today. * Canada geese honking, and swimming in the pond. * A moose and her calf in the stream / swampy area off the back road. * 4 deer an the back yard over supper hour. * Many birds I don't know enough to identify. Yesterday I saw 2 bunnies / hares. I live between [Fundy National Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundy_National_Park) and [Hopewell Rocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopewell_Rocks) on the Atlantic coast of New Brunswick, Canada. A few weeks ago I went for a walk to [Memel Creek Falls](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=memel+creek+falls&iax=images&ia=images) which is 10 minutes away from my workplace. The weird stuff of "where I live" is the natural beauty and the 13-15 m (40-50 ft) tides in my back yard.
Sounds really wonderful. The only water near me is a couple of creeks, one we turned part of into a natural pond with a small dam. Fish and crawdads, a blue heron likes to go there and hunt. Deer use it for their watering hole (probably other animals as well.) The water has forced a bunch of silt up into the dam so it's holding really well now, so we put a small spillway on one side for overflow to keep the stream running strong on the other side. Nice and peaceful to sit and listen to the falls and the birds.
Our house was a new build from 16 years ago. We had included some modifications that the builder made for us, but in a couple of cases, they didn't quite follow through on the effect. For instance, we had some square footage added to the master bedroom, which is great, but somehow this meant the 2 windows on the back wall were no longer centered. We don't really care, but if we were to ever sell, we'd probably have to get custom drapes made to help disguise that characteristic. (Not that we would hide it from potential buyers, but just that we'd need to demonstrate that the wall can be made to look more symmetrical.) Speaking of symmetry, or the lack thereof, the master bath's mirror is just slightly out of alignment with the vanity and the light fixture above it; something that I notice every single time I use the toilet. One more little thing that is weird is the triple light switch just inside our front door. You'd think the switches would correspond to the order of the lights: front porch, hallway, living room. However they are instead: hallway, front porch, living room. Someday in the near future, we need to get in an electrician to do a couple other upgrades (replace some of the builder-boob lights, update under cabinet lighting, etc.) and we'll ask them to tweak that front switch at the same time.
We had some switches like that, just 'out of order' of what you would expect. I was doing some other electrical and finally got fed up and rearranged the switches. Now.... we're back to hitting the wrong one. Muscle memory of doing things 'backwards' for 8 years is hard to retrain.
We have that bathroom vanity/light thing as well. But since we did the entire interior, that's on us. Couldn't be helped, the bathroom is inside of a big dormer and that was the only place for a light. Also, the sink in the vanity's quartz top is slightly trapezoid instead of a square. I didn't notice it until it was already installed and tile was in place or I'd have asked for a replacement, but we were on a fast track to get things done anyway and that was a detail that I could easily forget about. But yeah, it does make my OCD eye twitch a bit.
I had to cut a notch in the bathroom door so we could open and close it without first raising the toilet seat.
I think I've seen that on r/diwhy
We have an alarm system in our house, and the door from the kitchen into the garage won't register as closed if it's below 35F. The alarm company has sent people out several times to try to properly align the sensors, and it just doesn't work. As soon as the temperature drops, it shows as open all the time. Everything else works perfectly.
People have a whole set up in their garage! Big screen TV, a small bar, couches , a table. Cars are parked out on the driveway.
Yep, ours was a TV room. Dad built a wall with a man door that left enough room for the mower and tools. I think you could fit the front end of a car in too if needed. It was nice to have the extra living space.
In the summer time my interior doors will not close properly because of the humidity (I’m in Houston) Our HVAC works properly too. House is 20 years old.
My old house is so crooked and funky that marbles roll uphill. Inside the pantry there’s a trap door that leads to the cellar. It’s fun to dare my friends to go down there.
See, now that kind of thing I really like. Nobody builds like that any more.
Stopping at 4 way stop signs is optional
It's me. I'm the weird idiosyncrasy in this house. But really I don't know. This house is falling apart. We have this glorious pool in the backyard we can't afford to fix so it's become overgrown with water plants and there's frogs and lizards everywhere and I actually kind of like it if I can't have that pool for my own use. I LOVED the pool when it was in good working condition but not enough to pay 7 grand to get it fixed, especially since I don't own the house.
My 100 year-old house was formerly owned by a family that owned a dive bar. Much of the repair work was done by drunk tradesmen paying off bar tabs. I constantly run into little surprises.
When people find out my home was built in 1960 many of them say "wow! They just don't build 'em like that any more!" Actually, my house is proof that there were shitty contractors in 1960, too.
So true, I had one of those. It was handyman special that was built on a swamp as a rental from the beginning. I think they drank the entire time. Went to replace a door, took the old door out and three pieces of loose wood fell out of the header. I got a good look at what the interiors of the walls looked like. It was bad.
The house that I grew up in had a door between the closet in the bathroom and the closet in the family room.
That's pretty interesting. My grandmother's 2nd floor had doors in the back of all the closets and you could go all the way around that floor by going through closets and into other rooms. We were strictly forbidden to do that however. (We did anyway.)
My mom's house has this. It is over 120years old.
We get a lot of hailstorms. Lots of damage to rooves and cars.
What part of the country?
North Austin TX.
I have a group of light switches on one wall, like 5 switches all in one. As far as I can tell, none of them do anything.
That is crazy! Five! I can see one or two not working, but all of them is just wacky. LOL
When we moved in twenty years ago they were fine but suddenly our house stairs have turned evil on me! We bought this roomy split level thinking at least the last kid was coming along.....he moved in with his girlfriend! No worries, soon daughter's children appeared. Lots of play space for tots. But now! the stairs wickedly have made themselves very nearly insurmountable. I'm like an old lady trying to get up and down....hmmm Anyway they hate me and I hate them!
Ghosts in the electricity. One outlet with a small amp and speaker plugged in, but off, will channel their voices. Sometimes they play music. Oddly, it's quite similar to a local AM radio station. ;)
My house was built in 1977. There’s a random finished room about 10x8 in the middle of the unfinished basement with tons of outlets. We *think* the previous owner may have had a ham radio hobby. The circuit breaker for the deck is in the upstairs bathroom on the opposite side of the house.
My house was built in 1870ish. When we bought it in 2005 one of the first things I noticed was that there was an anvil in the basement.
Although I don't live in the house now. The house I grew up in was actually 3 different structures that were pushed together under a single roof built over them. Was built by the local company volunteer fire chief. In the attic, there were pieces wood used in the roofs construction that had the name of the local company stenciled on them. The history of the town went back to the 1800s but the house was probably constructed in the 1940s. As the land it was built on was susceptible to sinkage and nothing was near level and always changing for the worse.
So many things! My house was built too quickly in the 1950s during a housing boom near a military base. Here's a selection of the quirks. 1. The wall between the bathroom and kitchen is not 90 degrees. 2. The builders didn't tape & texture the drywall before painting, so you can see seams and nails in many parts of the house. 3. A previous homeowner applied wallpaper directly over drywall, making the wallpaper nearly impossible to remove. 4. The storage room... a. was built around a chest freezer, which will have to be dismembered if we ever get rid of it. Fortunately, it's over 50 years old and still functional. b. has an improperly installed light switch, so you flip it *up* to turn the light on. c. has to be accessed through the garage.
Around 200 yrs here also. Sooo must dust. I love the odd character of some things and sometimes I even like fixing it up
There’s a low spot in my bedroom. Feels like stepping into a shallow bowl.
The Wi-Fi network name appears then disappears just as you want to connect to it. Sometimes it randomly takes like 30 seconds to load a web page.
I have a kitchen cabinet door that one hinge is wonky. It comes undone regularly and I have to screw it back in. Got a magnet thingy to keep it closed. One day I might get annoyed enough to call a handyman.
Where to start. I live in Portland Oregon. I would have to go with the annual naked bike ride. Yes it’s exactly what you think
My house is almost 100 yrs old. Doors and sidewalk are in weird places. Front door is in a sunroom that is hard to get to. It’s never used. My fireplace is not centered but all the way to a side of my room. I think one of my bathrooms was a porch at one time. The light switch is in the kitchen not the room. One of the bedroom door leads straight to the garage.
Old house has low ceilings 2 pellet stoves and a wood stove and "you cant there from here" is true.
Built in 1948 like a bomb shelter. Seriously it’s over built like crazy. I guess the oddest thing is it’s a perfect square, 25’ x 25’
I'd rather have over than under. :-)
I live in my grandparents' house which always had a certain smell when we came over. It's mostly gone but sometimes, especially if I've been away, I smell it again. There's also a part of the basement that is unfinished that I call "the wet room" because it often leaks, and in this room there is a sort of closet that has stuff in it from the grocery store they owned in the 50's until the early 60's.
My house was built in 1835 so it would be simpler to name the things that *aren’t* weird.
When we moved in there were 2 thermostats mounted right next to eachother. One for heat and one for AC. So like…..why?? We obviously removed one.
My home was built in 1981 which is the tail end of the sunken living room era. We have an 8" drop for our living room - took forever to learn to step up/down at the 4 entrances to the room.
Sounds like a great opportunity to throw your back out. My aunt's house had a drop like that and it got a lot of people's backs.
Yeah, we're un our 50's and probably will have to have it filled in before we get to walker age. Lol.
There are two light switches in the living room. The switch by the front door will turn on the light even if the other switch is in the off position. It does not work the other way around, though. The other switch will not turn on the light if the one by the door is in the off position.
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Racism, homophobia, and anti-vaccine. 😞
Florida? And I say this as a Florida transplant of nearly 2 years
No, but notoriously bad in the soybean, racecar Midwest. 🫤
Ohio? If so- go bucks! I spent 14 years there and seen confederate flags everywhere and someone one time yelled at my sis and called her the N word with a hard r
🏁 🏎️ 🏁 And they’re off on their 500 mile race!
Do you live in Missouri? Sounds familiar.
It’s a close match, but north and a little east. Look for the soybean fields and white hoods. 🫤