For fun - What made you go "that's clever" in your new home?

[Wallflower]

Flipping last week's post around, what did you find in your home (especially something you didn't notice before closing) that made you think, "Oh, that's nice!"

For me, the first is that the heating is divided into two zones, upstairs and downstairs. I love having control over the upstairs, keeping much cooler throughout the day and night. (It's a cape and not a lot of heat rises up the stairs, so this works really well.) I might have seen the two thermostats during the inspection, but I didn't know how much I'd like this flexibility.

Also, the previous owners converted 1) from oil to gas, and 2) from well to city water. In both cases, they kept the old system as a backup, so if my gas goes out, I have oil in a tank and instructions to switch over. In theory, I can water my yard using either well water or city water. (In reality, I have a break in the line coming from the well, so I have to use city water for now.)

[bcv513]

One of the cabinets in the bathroom vanity is actually a laundry chute. Best idea ever

[Susie]

Our house was 23 years old when we bought it, but I can't say there was a single interesting thing done with it.  They had replaced the functional stuff, like roof, furnace, and water heater, but almost everything else was original.  Lights, carpets, kitchen finishes, everything, was original 1985.  No additions, no nothing.  So it was exactly like builder basic 1985 without a single creative change.  

That is both good and bad.  It's bad because it was dated and basic.  It's good because there weren't any botched DIY jobs or overly unique customizations that I needed to undo.

[dr.girlfriend]

This is a 1950's house, so storage is an issue. They did a good job figuring some of that out for us in a way we never would have figured on our own. For example, there's shelving in the stairwell to the basement for food storage that basically serves as a pantry. They had a little cabinet at the top of the stairs for storage of stuff for the bathroom that would not fit in the microscopic bathroom itself, and I remember taking a picture of it when we saw the house to remind myself to put a piece of furniture there! Otherwise, they just had a totally different "style" from us...very "country" with like chintz curtains and wallpaper borders and that kind of stuff. I think the house looks very different now, above and beyond the renovations we made!

[mrsukyankee]

I didn't find anything new after buying it as we really went to town looking into everything. The nice things about the house that are unusual:
- having a deck off the top floor bedroom (which is currently what we're using). It's a serious sun trap and fabulous when the weather is nice.
- storage under the staircase that is using the space wisely (it's holding a lot of stuff).
- this heating system (it means that you can change the temperature by room/area using your phone)

[Deleted]

I don't know if it counts, but when we bought this house, I thought that the 12x24 shed was obscenely large. Like, who could possibly have that much stuff? As it turns out, we do LOL

I will say, we have electric baseboard heat, and as much as I don't love losing all of the wall space to the heaters, it is nice that every single room in my house has its own thermostat. And, because the rooms are on the smaller side, they heat up fast, so we are able to turn off the kids bedrooms when they aren't here and save money on electricity.

Other than that, it's a boring 1970's Colonial that still has the original kitchen, so there's that

[libbygrl109]

I wish I could say we found some nice things, but we have been the ones to make the improvements. The house was built in 1959. It still had the original kitchen cabinets, aluminum windows, cedar siding (that was attracting woodpeckers), and most of the original bath complete with pink toilet and tub and powder blue tiled walls.

I think the heat was updated. They added central air, which was one of the reasons we decided to buy it. Unfortunately, we had to replace the entire system because it completely stopped working within the first month we lived here - the tech told us it was the absolute cheapest and most problematic out there.

[icedcoffee]

I didn’t think there was anything, but then I found a letter from the original owner after I had lived here 6 years and he had a few things that made me go “ohh!”

Most notably we have a random cement block on a retaining wall and I had no idea wtf it was there but apparently it’s a footing for a wrap around deck to be built.


Otherwise our previous owners weren’t very clever.

[k3am]

Nothing.

We have split zone HVAC which is fabulous. At night, we only run upstairs. But we put that in, not the old owners who chose the cheap path in everything.

[dove]

Our house has a dumbwaiter. From the lowest floor where the garage is to the main floor where the kitchen is. It’s mighty convenient when unloading groceries.
I just wish it went up to the upper floor where the laundry room is.

[circa1978]

Nov 2, 2020 12:07:02 GMT -5 bcv513 said:

One of the cabinets in the bathroom vanity is actually a laundry chute. Best idea ever

I wish we could have one. They are against code here. 

One thing I guess that's great is that the builder finished the walk out basement and the staircase is open to the rest of the house. So while we have a pretty traditional, though modern (lots of skylights, an office looking out on the foyer) two story floor plan, we also have this completely open area leading down to another 1200 square feet on the bottom floor. I'm pretty sure, based on the listings, that the builder finished every basement in the subdivision and the houses are almost exclusively on walk-outs. It's more thoughtful than you find often now without major mark-ups (the house was built in 1981).

[lessel]

Our old house (1960s MCM style) had closets with the light “switch” built into the door frame. Kind of like a refrigerator. It’s a button that’s pressed when the door is closed and when you open the door it releases and turns on the light. So it’s effectively an automatic light when you open the door. I don’t know why that didn’t catch on as a feature because it makes total sense!

[sandandsea]

The house I lived in as a middle schooler was super cool in a 1950s mid century modern ranch kind of way. It had an indoor garden area about 6ft x 4ft right inside the front door with hanging globe lights, surrounded by floor to ceiling windows. We lived in the middle of nowhere Midwest on a farm so very out of place but cool.

[strawberry]

Hooks in nearly every room. Each bedroom has a set of 3-4 hooks on a board on the wall. Downstairs Entry/ utility room has a huge shelf with hooks all the across to hang coats. And another large coat hook set right by the front door. In the kitchen there is a cute little key holder hook set on the wall. Towel Hook set On a board in each bathroom. Literally hooks everywhere & they are so useful!

[Wallflower]

Nov 2, 2020 18:42:30 GMT -5 lessel said:

Our old house (1960s MCM style) had closets with the light “switch” built into the door frame. Kind of like a refrigerator. It’s a button that’s pressed when the door is closed and when you open the door it releases and turns on the light. So it’s effectively an automatic light when you open the door. I don’t know why that didn’t catch on as a feature because it makes total sense!

My pantry has this and I love it!! It totally confused my cousin when she came to visit, though. 😂😂😂

[redheadk]

The baseboards on our stairs have embedded lights so you can leave a dim light on all night, just enough to see the steps.

[simpsongal]

Some of the landscape choices were nice and clearly thought out.

Inside the house...can’t think of anything clever. Builder basic 1971.

[TR]

Nov 2, 2020 18:42:30 GMT -5 lessel said:

Our old house (1960s MCM style) had closets with the light “switch” built into the door frame. Kind of like a refrigerator. It’s a button that’s pressed when the door is closed and when you open the door it releases and turns on the light. So it’s effectively an automatic light when you open the door. I don’t know why that didn’t catch on as a feature because it makes total sense!

Our attic light has this! So when you pull down the stairs, it releases the button and the light comes on. And our house was built in the late 60's.

Speaking of our attic access, the stairs that go up there are, like, a full size ladder and super sturdy and easy to use which is awesome when we're moving Christmas stuff up and down.

[wildrice]

Definitely nothing! Our house is super basic, mass produced construction, and the previous owners really hadn't done much beyond extremely basic updates. It isn't in bad shape, but it needs a lot of tweaks.

The only thing (and this is really nothing, lol) is that they have a small shelf installed in the kitchen that is perfect for spices. It's kind of ugly, but it's so convenient that we're leaving it. I've always struggled with spice organization and this is the perfect size to fit everything we need without taking up cabinet space.

[bcv513]

Nov 2, 2020 18:33:54 GMT -5 circa1978 said:

Nov 2, 2020 12:07:02 GMT -5 bcv513 said:

One of the cabinets in the bathroom vanity is actually a laundry chute. Best idea ever

I wish we could have one. They are against code here. 
).

I’m pretty sure mine is against code. The inspector when we bought the house said it was a fire hazard

[circa1978]

Nov 3, 2020 18:39:57 GMT -5 bcv513 said:

Nov 2, 2020 18:33:54 GMT -5 circa1978 said:

I wish we could have one. They are against code here. 
).

I’m pretty sure mine is against code. The inspector when we bought the house said it was a fire hazard

My sister in law was allowed to do a passthrough from their master to the lr when they built but I didn't really get how that helped much.

[RockNVoll]

No real surprises here since we built the place, but there are a few nice features.

In our old house, our master closet was in a sort of eave space and it had a door in the very back that led into otherwise useless empty space. But it was fantastic for random storage like luggage and was a great hiding spot for presents, LOL. We liked it so much that we had the builders add similar doors in our his/hers closets in this house.

We made sure this house had a walk-up attic and that the access was in a hallway, not in a bedroom like our old house. We also have a walk-out basement rather than a bulkhead, which is great.

The builders made the master bedroom its own HVAC zone, which is great in the summer when we're running A/C and don't need to cool the entire second floor.

For some reason we are one of only a few houses in the neighborhood that has underground power lines, not ones running overhead from a pole. In snowy areas like ours, this is a huge plus.

[mrspez07]

Nov 2, 2020 18:42:30 GMT -5 lessel said:

Our old house (1960s MCM style) had closets with the light “switch” built into the door frame. Kind of like a refrigerator. It’s a button that’s pressed when the door is closed and when you open the door it releases and turns on the light. So it’s effectively an automatic light when you open the door. I don’t know why that didn’t catch on as a feature because it makes total sense!

My grandparents built their own house in 1957, and that was a feature of their coat closet. I loved it as a kid!
They also had a whole house vac they didn’t use as long as I could remember.

[bhnumbers]

I'm very envious of the laundry chute and dumbwaiter!! Also, I would love for my pantry and linen closet to have lights that come on when I open the door!

The only thing unusually clever about our house is that we have smart tint on the big windows and doors for privacy on the back of our house. It's a set of french doors with windows on either side that are as big as the doors themselves. I love all the light it lets in and didn't like the idea of have blinds or plantation shutters over them. So I started looking into other options and came across smart tint.

The only downside so far is that it works backwards from how you'd think--when it's off, it's opaque and when it's on, it's clear. So if the power goes out, we can't see through those windows Fortunately, we hardly ever lose power!

[TR]

Nov 10, 2020 13:21:55 GMT -5 bhnumbers said:

I'm very envious of the laundry chute and dumbwaiter!! Also, I would love for my pantry and linen closet to have lights that come on when I open the door!

The only thing unusually clever about our house is that we have smart tint on the big windows and doors for privacy on the back of our house. It's a set of french doors with windows on either side that are as big as the doors themselves. I love all the light it lets in and didn't like the idea of have blinds or plantation shutters over them. So I started looking into other options and came across smart tint.

The only downside so far is that it works backwards from how you'd think--when it's off, it's opaque and when it's on, it's clear. So if the power goes out, we can't see through those windows Fortunately, we hardly ever lose power!

Is yours Vario? I just did some Googling because we have a big picture window in our kitchen that overlooks our neighbor's driveway and this would be cool for that spot. But I have NO idea how much it costs. Like $500 or $50,000 have no idea haha.

[bhnumbers]

TR, no, the brand name is Smart Tint. We ordered 4 large panels and if I'm remembering right, it was right around $1000 for them. Our contractor installed them as a part of our whole renovation, so I have no idea how much the separate charge for installation would be. My best advice is to hire someone who really knows what they are doing and has done lots of them before. Our contractor was an idiot on many levels and made it sound like he definitely knew what he was doing, but we still have some air bubbles under the film that we can't get out.

Ours are hardwired in, but I believe there is an option for them to be plug in. I just didn't want cords. Let me know if you have any other questions. Even with the installation issue we had and the air bubbles, I love them and I'm really glad we did it.

[Accountingcat]

Nov 2, 2020 12:07:02 GMT -5 bcv513 said:

One of the cabinets in the bathroom vanity is actually a laundry chute. Best idea ever

This! I have two laundry chutes that go to the basement laundry room. One in my 2nd floor linen closet and one in the 1st floor coat closet. I will never live without a chute again. No idea if it meets code or not, but I guess it did in 1950!

[SusanBAnthony]

Our house was built in 1952. A neighbor told.us it was the model.home for the neighborhood which makes sense because it has lots of "upgrades" like various wired doorbells and phone jacks haha.

-laundry shoot, love it.
-upgraded kitchen cabinets that went all the way to the ceiling with no soffit which is unheard of in our neighborhood and which I LOVE.
-2 bathrooms lolol. Oh the luxury. Of course one isn't even a full bath.
-the electric was very well thought out, in a way you would expect today but seems way ahead of it's time for 1952
-lots of closets for 1952 (although none are walk ons of course, there are lots of normal closets, more than enough to keep all our stuff nicely stowed away)
-a pantry (again, not unusual now but for the time period it is unusual)

[5thofjuly]

These aren’t fancy, but:

Hardwired up lights on the house’s exterior
Short, tall, very high window in the shower
Unexpected convection oven
Slide-out drawers in every cabinet