- My own house has a door that opens to the neighbor's fence.
The manufactured home was installed turned around so a door leads to the deck.
So the original intended front door goes nowhere.
- A door in an Indiana University building was walled over on one side.
The other side still has the door, but it does not open. A sign on it says
"THIS IS NOT A DOOR".
- A door with two doorframes, so it shuts and latches when swung either way.
- Two doors in a house I used to own were made of 2x4s and paneling. They looked like part of the wall when shut.
- Several houses in Bloomington Indiana have doors on upper floors that open to a drop
straight down.
I think fire escapes were removed.
- One house I saw when house hunting had a door 4 feet above the ground. A porch had been removed.
- My grandmother had a restaurant door between the kitchen and dining room that swung both ways and closed itself in the middle.
- In a house I used to own, stairs in the basement went up to a ceiling with no opening.
That passage was replaced with a stairway going up to an attic.
- A stairway in an IU building was similarly closed to make more room in a library space above.
In each case, the stairs had been left there even though the opening in the floor above was gone.
- In a house I looked at, a section of a stairway going up folded out of the way to access another stairway going down.
- A door opens onto a curved stairway with no landing at the door (Harrison House, Vincennes Indiana).
- Several staircases with steep stairs with treads only 6 inches long in a farmhouse and barn.
- The staircase accesses one of two dormers in a house.
But to get to the other dormer, a bridge hinges down from a door in the first dormer
to a door in the other dormer
about two feet above and across the stairs.
The bridge must be swung up to use the stairs.
- The second dormer in the case above.
- A house that I looked at had a candelabra ceiling light in a room visible above the top of a
shorter wall in another room.
But I could never find that room with the candelabra light in that house.
None of the doors went into it. The realtor was baffled.
- A bedroom was only 4 feet high because it was in an attic space.
- A bedroom that required going through another bedroom to get to it.
- A bedroom that required going through the kitchen to get to it.
- A bedroom that required going through the back porch to get to it.
- A bedroom with a window that opened onto a hallway.
- The attic entrance was high on the garage wall. A stairway went up to it, but you still needed a short ladder or a stool to actually enter it.
- The entrance to a full height basement was through a window with a 3-foot drop.
- The house originally had a half basement and a crawl space under the rest. Someone dug full-height rooms and passages in that dirt.
- For a handicapped person, I built (in a house I owned) a ramp with 4 landings like a question-mark-shaped traffic interchange ramp.
- There was a live tree growing in the middle of the house that the house had been built around.
- The house had a fitting on the ceiling to hang a Christmas tree upside down.
- The house had a working firehouse pole from an upper bedroom to a small room containing the stairs.
- There was a swimming pool in the middle of the house. You had to walk along the pool deck to get to the rest of the house.
- A room in a finished basement had a stage with stage lighting and a sound system.
- Exterior wall attic space studs were sideways, with the long edge facing toward the outside.
- An entire deck failed because the nails were not weatherproof and rusted off between the boards.
- The attachment of the electric service was under the gutters, but someone put a carport roof right under it (not enough clearance).
- Whoever finished an attic used a piece of 12-2 Romex with ground and used the bare ground wire for one of the travelers of a 3-way switch.
- A house I owned was advertised as "completely rewired".
I found knob-and-tube wiring in the ceilings.
One of the original circuits failed and I could not find where the break was
(all the boxes were OK)
- A dishwasher was found connected to the drain inlet for a washing machine (not sanitary).
- The cold air returns for the heating system in my house work even though there are no
cold air ducts.
Each interior door has a 2-inch gap under it.
- One house is heated by a wood stove, and has registers connecting the top floor to the ceiling underneath.
- The city had an easement and a sewage lift station in the basement of a house I looked at.
- The entire concrete basement wall was painted fire-engine red.