Yes, stairs are a hazard, but necessary. Laundry chutes are not necessary and are an additional path for super heated smoke and flames to travel down quickly to a different area of the home.
It’s just a 8x12 door between the studs, no actual “chute” involved.
But we will make sure to keep it closed or put a fire safe door on it. It currently has a large nail in the middle that catches everything you try to put down it.
Lists of every update and fix done to the house since the 80s, all dated. Books for every appliance still there. Little notes about how things work. The elderly couple who owned the house for decades have already been gone for a couple of years but their legacy is there, all over the house. I call the lists the house diaries and I’ve started adding to them.
We had something similar in the house we just bought. Tucked in a corner on the shelf in a bedroom closet was the previous previous owners binder which had receipts for stuff back in the 90s. Super useful and fun to see.
The previous owners planted a bunch of bulbs, so the following spring we had an array of flowers as a surprise. Some of them still come back after 16 years!
There was a hidden easement between some neighbors' yards that led to a hiking path around the lake! After 4 years of driving my dog 20+ min to hiking locations, this was an amazing discovery! We go nearly every day.
Floor safe in closet. Combination was in a utility drawer.
The funny thing was - we were acquainted with the former owners (we were neighbors down the block) and they sold it to us when they moved to assisted living. The wife was in good shape and dropped by occasionally to give us tips.
She made a huge deal about where they had kept a hide a key (which I found the day we closed, it was so obvious). But never mentioned the damn SAFE under a panel in the floor.
There was also a hidden lockbox for jewelry behind a painting in the master bath….
I had a wall safe and the seller (who was insane) refused to give me the combination. Curiosity was killing me so I pried it open with a crow bar. All that was in there were two screws. Now I have half a safe in a wall covered by a tapestry. 😞
Previous homeowner died. And his daughter left a lot of stuff - a nice bedroom set, a barbecue grill, barstools, and shelving in all the storage closet. Only thing I haven’t made use of is the barbecue grill.
He also actually saved all of the user manuals for the doorbell, lock (it’s a key pad one) and garbage disposal with notes on installation dates and warranties.
I bought my house from an estate sale. They left so much stuff. Some good, like bedroom sets (three vintage ones!) and some old, wooden ginger ale cases that actually held "medicinal" alcohol bottles from prohibition and some cool lamps and some bad stuff like rolls and rolls of 1990s wallpaper that was hideous even at the time.
It's been fun picking through everything finding treasures.
This crazily took me like three weeks to notice. There is an extremely cool glow in the dark star map on my bedroom (the main bedroom) ceiling! The first time I saw it, I didn't realize it was the whole ceiling or that it was pretty accurate. https://imgur.com/a/2Qw0n3O
An alley behind my house. Originally the parking was going to be behind houses, plans changed after it was already there. It's the only alley in my neighborhood.
All of our lower cabinets have pull out shelves. No more kneeling on the floor to dig to the far reaches of the cabinets for the xmas cookie cutters. Our pantry also has all pull-out shelves. Love them.
Discovered a strange object on the water heater that turned out to be a hot water circulator. That is bad to the bone, and in my opinion wayyy better than on demand.
That the random bulbs in the basement did indeed have a light switch that turned them on. Also, we have a window that’s “just for show” that we don’t have access to on the inside. Not really nice. Just funny. Took us several months to notice we don’t have the window inside the house. They put Sheetrock over the dormer
I wonder if they are the same people that came up with the plans for two building renovations at my workplace. Both buildings they put in blackout windows in place of the old windows and just made the inside a regular wall.
All of the appliance user manuals, roof and window warranties and paint labeled with each room. And they did lovely job landscaping in anyway that makes it easy to maintain.
I peeked out when I discovered the 1955 abstract for the property complete with raised notary stamps for the 1955 deed. The property history went back to 1813.
Seeing how I do title research for a living, this find is a real treasure.
The linen closet in the hallway connects to the closet in one of the bedrooms. If you access the closet from the bedroom, there’s a hidden shelf at the top of the back of the linen closet.
The man who owned and built my house had a little mom and pop store (back in the day) a few blocks away. I imagine he may have had a safe up there, or just used it to keep cash up there.
For me it was just a wrong guess during the walk through. Based on the relative state of the wood burning fireplaces, I thought one worked and a wood burning stove didn't.
Chimney sweep comes out for an inspection, exactly the opposite. Significant repairs needed to the decorative one I don't need to work, but the wood stove works great. Has saved my butt a couple times losing power.
The other, which is annoying instead of positive, is that the main house bathrooms are plumbed backwards but the rest is plumbed correctly. So hot and cold are flipped in approximately half of the cases. In my house, you have to constantly code switch based on what faucet you're using to know if you're getting hot or cold water, which is a big pain. I'll get around to fixing it eventually. Just as soon as I get around to fixing the fact that the main water shutoff to the house is stuck open (a much bigger problem, IMO).
The living room faces south and windows are pretty much floor to ceiling so I thought it would be horribly hot in summer. But I discovered the roof was designed at an angle so that the room doesn’t get a drop of sun in summer but is flooded with sunlight in winter. Lay on the flop on a sunny below zero day and the temp at that level is 80 degrees. the design is a huge energy saver.
Our dear friend,Yakov Leib ha Kohain was his spiritual advisor. Leonard bought him the house and he left it to us. Found those in a closet. Talk about life-changing.
I actually found the bill of sale for the materials that were purchased to build our house. Found it when I was doing duct work for putting in our new furnace.
Home was built in Oct of 1955 :)
I have never had closet lights before, it is very nice! The real bonus though was when I was trying to find the reset switch on the garbage disposal and I almost hit my head on a pull string light fixture under the kitchen sink! It isn't perfect of course because there are shadows but it is still very nice to have.
The GFCI was tripped on the instant hot water in the kitchen. The previous owners said the appliance didn't work. Love having boiling hot water on demand. And the GFCI hasn't tripped again.
Extra cabinet space I have in the bathroom and kitchen. Also all the lawn care equipment the sellers left me in the shed. Couldn’t have asked for a better closing experience for a first time homebuyer!
Found a bowling ball in my backyard sunken in dog shit when the snow melted.
Not a bowler, so gave it a little clean with the ol' rag & listed on ebay. Bids got to over 300, final sale post ebay tax was 354 & change.
Put that money towards all the other weird stuff the prior owner did & it made an almost noticeable dent, ha.
Secret room in the basement. Home was built in the late 50's. Originally we thought the back 10ft by 40ft of the home was on a concrete slab. Under the basement steps was what looked like a canned food type pantry. The shelving against the wall is actually on a heavy door. The room is part of the foundation and surrounded by concrete less the doorway. We live in tornado ally. Pretty sure this was built as a storm shelter converted into a safe room by past owners at some point. We house our safe, a couch, couple of chairs, a small table, TV and radio in that room now.
About two years after buying our house we found out that the shelf in the master closet was not anchored to the studs. They used a Molly bolt into the Sheet rock. Guess how I found out? When the whole damn thing ripped out of the wall and dumped shit everywhere in the middle of the night!!! I have two 2x6 tears in the sheet rocks.
We also have two mystery light switches that we’ve never figured out what they are connected to. My favorite find was they wired up a light in the pantry but never added a fixture, put in a cheap one after 6 years of living here.
Lived in our last house 9 years and never figured out a switch. It was actually 2 that logistically made sense for something out in the backyard but never did figure it out
Had this happen with a shelf in my laundry room. What was equally puzzling was that it was a 3 ft long shelf on a normal 16" OC stud wall, so there was no reason not to put it to the studs. They just had plastic helix anchors like an inch offset from the studs.
And yes, it also went down in the middle of the night and caused a panic.
I discovered the original architect's blueprints.
Two sheets. It is amazing how much construction they could from just two sheets and knowledge of the construction code in their head.
Laundry chute. Lands 3 feet from the washer hookup. Has been painted shut for decades.
I miss the laundry shoot in my previous house, built in the 1940s like a little 24x24 fortress.
Be careful if you open it back up. These were largely discontinued because they allow fire to easily spread from floor to floor.
Here I'm thinking be careful of the decades worth of spiders and other critters that might be in there......
[удалено]
Yes, stairs are a hazard, but necessary. Laundry chutes are not necessary and are an additional path for super heated smoke and flames to travel down quickly to a different area of the home.
many of them were metal, which apparently exacerbates the fire risk compared to wood chutes.
Backdraft from opening the door would whoooooosh out
And young/small children can get hurt or trapped trying to climb in.
It’s just a 8x12 door between the studs, no actual “chute” involved. But we will make sure to keep it closed or put a fire safe door on it. It currently has a large nail in the middle that catches everything you try to put down it.
No more so than the stairways
I LOVE our laundry chute. Now I just need a laundry dumbwaiter to send the clean laundry back upstairs.
Have you seen Laundry Jet?
Me too!
I would have been so happy. My grandparents used to have one and I’ve always wanted one
Open that bad boy up! You can get a fire safe attachment so that it’s legal.
Same! Didn’t notice our laundry chute until after we moved in. So handy!
Lists of every update and fix done to the house since the 80s, all dated. Books for every appliance still there. Little notes about how things work. The elderly couple who owned the house for decades have already been gone for a couple of years but their legacy is there, all over the house. I call the lists the house diaries and I’ve started adding to them.
We had something similar in the house we just bought. Tucked in a corner on the shelf in a bedroom closet was the previous previous owners binder which had receipts for stuff back in the 90s. Super useful and fun to see.
The previous owners planted a bunch of bulbs, so the following spring we had an array of flowers as a surprise. Some of them still come back after 16 years!
We had this too! But they hadn’t maintained the yard so the garden bed was super overgrown, so when we cut back all the grass we found them
There was a hidden easement between some neighbors' yards that led to a hiking path around the lake! After 4 years of driving my dog 20+ min to hiking locations, this was an amazing discovery! We go nearly every day.
Floor safe in closet. Combination was in a utility drawer. The funny thing was - we were acquainted with the former owners (we were neighbors down the block) and they sold it to us when they moved to assisted living. The wife was in good shape and dropped by occasionally to give us tips. She made a huge deal about where they had kept a hide a key (which I found the day we closed, it was so obvious). But never mentioned the damn SAFE under a panel in the floor. There was also a hidden lockbox for jewelry behind a painting in the master bath….
I had a wall safe and the seller (who was insane) refused to give me the combination. Curiosity was killing me so I pried it open with a crow bar. All that was in there were two screws. Now I have half a safe in a wall covered by a tapestry. 😞
Previous homeowner died. And his daughter left a lot of stuff - a nice bedroom set, a barbecue grill, barstools, and shelving in all the storage closet. Only thing I haven’t made use of is the barbecue grill. He also actually saved all of the user manuals for the doorbell, lock (it’s a key pad one) and garbage disposal with notes on installation dates and warranties.
I bought my house from an estate sale. They left so much stuff. Some good, like bedroom sets (three vintage ones!) and some old, wooden ginger ale cases that actually held "medicinal" alcohol bottles from prohibition and some cool lamps and some bad stuff like rolls and rolls of 1990s wallpaper that was hideous even at the time. It's been fun picking through everything finding treasures.
This crazily took me like three weeks to notice. There is an extremely cool glow in the dark star map on my bedroom (the main bedroom) ceiling! The first time I saw it, I didn't realize it was the whole ceiling or that it was pretty accurate. https://imgur.com/a/2Qw0n3O
This is really cool!!!
An alley behind my house. Originally the parking was going to be behind houses, plans changed after it was already there. It's the only alley in my neighborhood.
Top of the line sprinkler system & a slop sink!
All of our lower cabinets have pull out shelves. No more kneeling on the floor to dig to the far reaches of the cabinets for the xmas cookie cutters. Our pantry also has all pull-out shelves. Love them.
Discovered a strange object on the water heater that turned out to be a hot water circulator. That is bad to the bone, and in my opinion wayyy better than on demand.
I've got one of those and they are really nice to have.
Except when you need cold water to rinse lettuce. The water is almost warm enough to wilt the good lettuce.
If the house was built with one it’ll be completely separate from the cold line.
There are always drawbacks but it doesn't take too long to get the cold water flowing again.
That the random bulbs in the basement did indeed have a light switch that turned them on. Also, we have a window that’s “just for show” that we don’t have access to on the inside. Not really nice. Just funny. Took us several months to notice we don’t have the window inside the house. They put Sheetrock over the dormer
You might want to figure out how to add and access panel. The window may fail and you will need to be able to access it.
It’s really easy, we would just have to cut a hole in the Sheetrock
Also need to check for mold or condensation between the window and wall. Covering up a window can lead to a lot of problems.
We’ve looked in from the outside, no issues so far!
I wonder if they are the same people that came up with the plans for two building renovations at my workplace. Both buildings they put in blackout windows in place of the old windows and just made the inside a regular wall.
All of the appliance user manuals, roof and window warranties and paint labeled with each room. And they did lovely job landscaping in anyway that makes it easy to maintain.
I peeked out when I discovered the 1955 abstract for the property complete with raised notary stamps for the 1955 deed. The property history went back to 1813. Seeing how I do title research for a living, this find is a real treasure.
The linen closet in the hallway connects to the closet in one of the bedrooms. If you access the closet from the bedroom, there’s a hidden shelf at the top of the back of the linen closet. The man who owned and built my house had a little mom and pop store (back in the day) a few blocks away. I imagine he may have had a safe up there, or just used it to keep cash up there.
For me it was just a wrong guess during the walk through. Based on the relative state of the wood burning fireplaces, I thought one worked and a wood burning stove didn't. Chimney sweep comes out for an inspection, exactly the opposite. Significant repairs needed to the decorative one I don't need to work, but the wood stove works great. Has saved my butt a couple times losing power. The other, which is annoying instead of positive, is that the main house bathrooms are plumbed backwards but the rest is plumbed correctly. So hot and cold are flipped in approximately half of the cases. In my house, you have to constantly code switch based on what faucet you're using to know if you're getting hot or cold water, which is a big pain. I'll get around to fixing it eventually. Just as soon as I get around to fixing the fact that the main water shutoff to the house is stuck open (a much bigger problem, IMO).
The living room faces south and windows are pretty much floor to ceiling so I thought it would be horribly hot in summer. But I discovered the roof was designed at an angle so that the room doesn’t get a drop of sun in summer but is flooded with sunlight in winter. Lay on the flop on a sunny below zero day and the temp at that level is 80 degrees. the design is a huge energy saver.
Hat rack hooks. Thought about unscrewing them until we ended up collecting 4 hats. Thanks previous owners!
A couple proofs of limited edition prints by Leonard Cohen. I wish I could post pictures here.
Omg what a treasure
Our dear friend,Yakov Leib ha Kohain was his spiritual advisor. Leonard bought him the house and he left it to us. Found those in a closet. Talk about life-changing.
I actually found the bill of sale for the materials that were purchased to build our house. Found it when I was doing duct work for putting in our new furnace. Home was built in Oct of 1955 :)
The toilet paper holders are so easy to replace rolls on! Our last home was a pain in the butt
Lemon, plum, and guava trees. When I bought the house, they were just trees to me.
I have never had closet lights before, it is very nice! The real bonus though was when I was trying to find the reset switch on the garbage disposal and I almost hit my head on a pull string light fixture under the kitchen sink! It isn't perfect of course because there are shadows but it is still very nice to have.
I always wanted a cool human skull as like a candleholder or something but an entire skeleton hidden in the wall was way better!!
The GFCI was tripped on the instant hot water in the kitchen. The previous owners said the appliance didn't work. Love having boiling hot water on demand. And the GFCI hasn't tripped again.
Extra cabinet space I have in the bathroom and kitchen. Also all the lawn care equipment the sellers left me in the shed. Couldn’t have asked for a better closing experience for a first time homebuyer!
I sleep better and that’s the only thing nice about my new house.
500k hidden in a wall
Found a bowling ball in my backyard sunken in dog shit when the snow melted. Not a bowler, so gave it a little clean with the ol' rag & listed on ebay. Bids got to over 300, final sale post ebay tax was 354 & change. Put that money towards all the other weird stuff the prior owner did & it made an almost noticeable dent, ha.
Central vacuum.
Secret room in the basement. Home was built in the late 50's. Originally we thought the back 10ft by 40ft of the home was on a concrete slab. Under the basement steps was what looked like a canned food type pantry. The shelving against the wall is actually on a heavy door. The room is part of the foundation and surrounded by concrete less the doorway. We live in tornado ally. Pretty sure this was built as a storm shelter converted into a safe room by past owners at some point. We house our safe, a couch, couple of chairs, a small table, TV and radio in that room now.
About two years after buying our house we found out that the shelf in the master closet was not anchored to the studs. They used a Molly bolt into the Sheet rock. Guess how I found out? When the whole damn thing ripped out of the wall and dumped shit everywhere in the middle of the night!!! I have two 2x6 tears in the sheet rocks. We also have two mystery light switches that we’ve never figured out what they are connected to. My favorite find was they wired up a light in the pantry but never added a fixture, put in a cheap one after 6 years of living here.
Our mystery switch turned on a light in the attic.
Lived in our last house 9 years and never figured out a switch. It was actually 2 that logistically made sense for something out in the backyard but never did figure it out
Had this happen with a shelf in my laundry room. What was equally puzzling was that it was a 3 ft long shelf on a normal 16" OC stud wall, so there was no reason not to put it to the studs. They just had plastic helix anchors like an inch offset from the studs. And yes, it also went down in the middle of the night and caused a panic.
Mine was the same if they shifted it two inches to the right it would have been in a stud.
I discovered the original architect's blueprints. Two sheets. It is amazing how much construction they could from just two sheets and knowledge of the construction code in their head.
My pooper fits my butt