Any secret rooms in your house?

[Equinox Moon]

I have an older home and the most exciting thing we found was old news papers dated back to 1940's.


This clip shows some secret discoveries, so I thought to start a thread and ask DUers.
Do you have any secrets or surprises in your house?

[True Dough]

1. Secret rooms?

Hell, I can't even get five minutes of privacy in the bathroom!

[Equinox Moon]

3. Maybe you could build a secret room?

[True Dough]

5. Plumbing required

That's the deal breaker. I guess I'll have to keep wondering a few blocks to the local Subway for my daily constitutional. Quieter there!

[pnwest]

2. Well, yeah - but if I tell ya, then...

...you know the rest....

[Equinox Moon]

4. Ha!

[Solly Mack]

6. I could use a dungeon.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. Not in my current house, but I did have one

that had a little room that could be accessed by crawling through the lower part of a built-in buffet. There was an area large enough to stand up in; it was under the stairs and was about 6' x 3'. My ex still lives there (in the house, not the room). We talked about getting a skeleton somehow, like from the medical school, dressing it in raggedy clothes and leaving it in that little room, then selling the house. If he ever decides to sell the place I hope he does that.

[OriginalGeek]

9. lol

I like the way y'all think.

[Equinox Moon]

15. Ha!

Good one.

[MosheFeingold]

35. My son

half-buried a ceramic (not real) skeleton in the cement under a new porch addition. It's sticking out like it was buried alive in he concrete.

When the wood rots in 50 years, the workers will have quite the surprise.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

38. OMG! Brilliant!

[fleur-de-lisa]

8. I frequently have dreams about finding hidden rooms in my house.

I do not have any hidden rooms (that I know of) in my home or in any house in which I have lived.

But I often dream about finding them. It's not always the same house, and I have never dreamed about the house I currrently own.

I wonder what this means? Any psychiatrists handy?

[Runningdawg]

10. Not a psychiatrist but I will take a shot...

The house is your mind. Subconsciously you are looking for lost or repressed memories. It could be something as simple as forgetting to pay a bill.

[flibbitygiblets]

43. I frequently have similar dreams

so I have a minor obsession with building a secret room in my dream home.

I have had this dream since I was very young. I also love taking tours of old famous mansions, and it drives me nuts when some of the floors are cordoned off to the public. I am dying to know what's up there.

[Ptah]

11. I don't know.

[TheSmarterDog]

12. I have a bedroom on the 2nd floor gable end of my house.

The attic is in the front & the bedroom is in the back, with the staircase from the 1st floor in between.

On either side, there are pretty large crawlspaces from the attic that run the entire length of the house, from the front to the back on one side, behind the wall in the bedroom, but only up to the staircase on the other. So, there's the back-end of that crawlspace behind the other wall in the bedroom on the staircase side.

[Equinox Moon]

16. That's curious

I wonder if some of these mystery/secret rooms happened in old houses because of poor architect drafts? Hmmm....

[Kaleva]

13. Found 2 large wall paper sample books dated 1917 in one closed off room.

[Equinox Moon]

17. That's fun

[Kaleva]

22. That motivated me to rip into another walled in space.

Where I only found dust and created another job for me to do.

[Equinox Moon]

23. Ha!

[OilemFirchen]

14. Rather than secret, we have a "mystery" room.

Our house is a side-by-side late 19th century double. The kitchens at the rear are the second addition. The bathrooms on the second floor are at the back of the first addition. The back walls of the bathrooms each featured a window and an access panel.

Opening the access panels revealed a 30' X 15' room, above the kitchens, with a tongue-and-groove floor that dropped a foot from the bathrooms. The interior walls were finished with exterior siding. A full wall (also sided) divided the space, with the exception of a two foot gap at the end, where we discovered toilet waste flanges. The ceiling was wainscoting. Newspapers from 1919 were found, consistent with ones discovered in the kitchens.

Having done an extensive amount of restoration work over the years, I was puzzled. We consulted friends, including structural engineers and other old-house aficionados. They were similarly left scratching their heads. We had entertained the idea that it may have been a back entrance, with stairs leading up from the yard, but there's absolutely no evidence in the framing that there were ever any doors to the outside or the inside. There were, however, windows on the back wall, since covered with siding.

So it was a divided room accessible only through the bathroom back walls, and with a substantial drop (and no steps). The original gabled roof apparently included wells for the "interior" windows (at the back of the baths). A later roof actually cuts across those windows, but the wells remain and are lined with tin.

I spent this past winter gutting the room and we're temporarily using it for storage. Our long-term goal is to convert into the master bath for the owner's side.

[Equinox Moon]

18. Indeed, you have one!

You could film it and put it on YouTube as well.

Nice you are finding some use for it. Thanks for sharing.

[Generic Brad]

19. I have a panic room

That would be any room I currently occupy.

[Doc_Technical]

20. No secret rooms in the house,

but I have a hidden cubbyhole in the garage
where I keep my old "artistic anatomy" magazines.

[Iggo]

21. How should I know?

Nobody tells me anything!

[malthaussen]

24. These days, when I walk into most rooms...

... it's a mystery why I'm there. Does that count?

-- Mal

[blogslut]

25. My child lived in an aprtment complex that still had Milk Doors

They were sealed shut. I found them fascinating.

[Equinox Moon]

30. I would too.

[woodsprite]

26. In my old house, I guess a previous owner didn't like

a powder room being located off the dining room/kitchen area, so they walled it in. It was my FIL who found it because there was space he couldn't account for. When we went into the basement, there was plumbing going up to that area. We opened it up and it was a pristine powder room with all the fixtures clean and working - just maybe 30 or more years old. We ended up removing it all and turning it into a walk-in closet because there was no storage for coats, boots, vacuum, etc. on the 1st floor.

Other strange finds: a shower stall in the bathroom on the 2nd floor that had been walled over. Bonus there was some antique Playboy magazine. When we started ripping out the back of the house, we found original gaslight lines (not the fixtures), and in the eaves and under floorboards, we found a deck of old playing cards, some old bottles, a box of old Kellogs cornflakes, an old Weekly Reader that had the original pledge on it, and a late 18-early 19 hundreds "Ladies douche kit" (bulb and bag were rotted, but the brass fittings were still good. It was in a wooden box with instructions on the lid.

[Equinox Moon]

31. Indeed an old house with surprises.

A working bathroom turned into a closet? Hmmmm.... I would keep the bathroom and get rid of the extra stuff that needed a room.

[woodsprite]

36. Before we sold it, we did add a powder room back into the kitchen area as well as a real pantry.

So we were good It was the only place to stash guests coats, etc. on the first floor.

Thinking back makes me miss those days when I was young, healthy, and energetic -- and took it for granted
The Christmas my father died, I decided I didn't want to celebrate by going all out with decorations, so we took a sledgehammer to our living room fireplace. Ripped the whole thing out all the way through the roof, brick by brick. It would have needed rebuilding to come up to code, so we decided to remove it.

[randr]

27. Once had a neighbor who built a dooms day shelter

Clinton was President and he was sure the world was going to end. Built a hole filled it with food and ammo.
Sorta popped his bubble when I told him that if the world goes to hell the last thing I will do is park my car on his escape hatch.

[Equinox Moon]

32. Why would you do that?

I don't get it.

[randr]

34. He was an asshole that shot my dog

and I just wanted to see the look on his face.
I do not give any credence to end of worlders so the likelihood of this occurring never enters my reality

[MissB]

28. I found a secret space when we moved in.

Inside was a silver serving set. I called the realtor and had him connect me with the other folks realtor. I could’ve kept it of course - the house and anything in it was ours at that point but it belonged to the former owner’s estate imo.

The space isn’t a secret room obviously - just a small space. But pretty cool.

[Equinox Moon]

33. What a fun find for both you and the former owners.

I can well imagine they were thrilled you contacted them, unless it belonged to the people before them.

[MissB]

42. The set went to the former owner's granddaughter

The elderly woman had passed away in the house and we bought the house for a lot less than asking, so it didn’t seem right to hold on to what may or may not have been a valuable set. I’m hoping the granddaughter enjoyed the set!

[doc03]

29. Not a room but I found a nice collection of 1970's Playboys

under my bathtub when I replaced it.

[Leith]

37. Those Old Newspaper Ads Are Hilarious

Many years ago, my mother and I were going through old boxes my grandmother left behind. They were full of things wrapped in newspapers from the late 1940s.

The best was an ad for Woolworth's where you could get a dress for 50 cents - layaway available.

[edbermac]

44. I'm not telling.

If I did it wouldn’t be secret.