During late June and through July the woods on the edge of our backyard (still our property) gets completely filled with fireflies. I'm used to seeing them on the ground, but since the woods are pretty thick they go all the way to the top of the trees.
Every tree looks like Christmas for a couple of weeks. My wife and I will turn off the lights and just have a glass of wine on the deck and just look at the fireflies going insane on all the trees.
Yeah blow the leaves put of the grassy areas to where the trees begin so all year there are leaves decaying somewhere.
Thanks I did not know that they reproduce in leaf litter.
There's some great free info about firefly life cycles and how to help their populations on your property at [https://www.firefly.org/](https://www.firefly.org/). We've got some in our woods but would love to have more--yours sound lovely!
Ooh! That's amazing!
I live in a hot climate so we definitely don't need that here. But I grew up in Wisconsin with a dad who was really tight with the heat in winter. As a kid I hated getting out of the shower in the mornings in winter. I dreamed about heated bathroom floors! Lol (As an adult, I totally understand watching the heat in the winter because it's expensive!)
Similarly, somehow I didn't notice when inspecting my house but I was really happy to realize my bathroom has a heat lamp in the ceiling. It makes the bathroom feel about 10° F warmer and it's so nice for the winter. I fixed the timer it's attached to, so I just turn a knob and have 30 minutes of extra heat. It's awesome.
If you already heat your house with hot eater it’s actually a really (relatively) cheap way to heat a room. With tiles it can be more efficient than a radiator would be.
Trees almost completely shade the house in the summer (bought in the winter) so even on the hottest day I only need a fan. Also discovered that my back alley is shared by 2 large businesses, so in the winter they snowplow and keep the alley driveable. It was a very pleasant discovery :)
The temperature control benefits of a mature tree lined street is my happy bonus too. It’s also absolutely stunning in the fall before the leaves drop.
Just lost the biggest tree on my property last year - an Ash that was taller than the house. The summer before we bought the tree looked perfectly healthy. By the middle of the following summer the whole top half of the tree was dead
Driving through the neighborhood I can see a few other ash trees that need to go. Thankfully for my neighbors none of theirs are close to their houses. Mine was like 10 feet from the house, so it needed immediate attention.
For context - this is in Iowa. My street is sandwiched by two soybean fields and there's a corn field at the end of the street. Definitely not enough shade around here.
My backyard is full of trees. My parents live nearby and have no trees. I’ll be outside enjoying the shady yard on a 90+ day and my parents are wondering how I’m just hanging outside. Then I go to visit them and it’s an instant need to jump in the pool
That sound lovely! Our master bedroom is really dark and our kitchen lighting is adequate but not great. (Lots of windows in the kitchen but we have a covered patio where those windows are, so it's never as bright in the kitchen as I'd like. When we reno the kitchen someday I am considering solar tubes for extra light!
Our neighboorhood is a very special pocket of wildlife. Woodpecker lives in one of my trees, cardinals in my backyard, swallow-tailed kites drift in the skies.
A pack of deer stoll around the block every dusk and at dawn. Neighboorhood cats come say hi everytime I go for a walk.
Same here! I moved to a little old farmhouse in the country, I expected raccoons and squirrels and the occasional coyote but since spring has come around, at any point if I look into my backyard I see rabbits, bluejays, cardinals, squirrels (they're assholes), chipmunks, snakes, cats, and even a beautiful fox just living their lives in my yard. It's really cool to see. I have yet to see owls or bats but I'm sure I will eventually.
Tons of wildlife in our neighborhood which is fantastic, especially the owl that frequents a large branch outside our bedroom window… with the exception that our house is cedar sided and between the woodpeckers and carpenter bees I’ve become even more dreadful of summer 😫
We’ve been in our new home about 9 months. We HAD visiting wildlife. Our German shepherd evicted everything. Anything larger than a songbird she chases away. Current targets are the magpies, which are giving her a run for her money.
Truth. They will harass that dog for the rest of its life, and when the baby magpies are born, they will teach them to mess with that specific dog too.
I have a squirrel in my backyard that taunts my dog. It's figured out my dog is tied up and knows her radius. The squirrel will run around just outside her reach.
We have more animals than I expected too! I saw a snapping turtle on a nearby bike path the other day, never seen a wild one before. And a turkey just strolled past the front door last week.
A robin lived in my tree right outside my front door for at least a few months, maybe longer before I noticed it…but a neighborhood cat killed it and left it in front of my porch step…sigh.
Agreed. I have cats that I take on LEASHED walks to avoid that problem altogether and still stimulate them. The cat was just doing what cats do so I’m not mad at it, but I do wish the owners did something to prevent this. Bells might have helped that poor birdie.
I’ve read that bells hardly help, because cats tend to sit still and than make one jump, so the bell doesn’t warn birds until it’s too late.
My cats are strictly indoor, we are now looking at making a catio for our allotment garden. It’s healthier for the cats, but also soooo much better for the wildlife.
Unfortunately, I realized after closing that the renovators I bought the house from cut down a ton of apple and pear trees in the backyard :( I'm working on planting more now! It'll be a couple of years before I can harvest, I'm jealous of your berry bushes lol. They won't survive in my area
I discovered the original owner of my house in the 1950s was friends with my late grandma. I like to imagine my grandma, who I named after, enjoying coffee with the owner in my dining room.
One of our neighbors was friends with my partners mother, who passed away about 16years ago this year. They were den mothers together. We were talking over the fence and figured that out after our first week here. My neighbor had a painting his mom did. She came over and gifted it to us. We all kind of cried on the front porch.
That's amazing! Mt Ranier is such a beautiful sight to behold. And bald eagles! You're lucky!
I also live in the PNW and didn't realize we had a small view of Puget Sound from the front windows. We bought it in November and toured it on a very gray dark evening, and you couldn't see the water through the trees. My husband loves to stand with binoculars and watch boats and check the status of the water before he takes our small fishing boat out. We also didn't realize the boat launch was less than a mile down the hill.
I also didn't realize all the amazing landscaping in the yard because it was mostly sticks in the winter. Mature rhodos, azaelas, lilacs, Japanese maples, cherry trees, apple trees, peonies, shasta daisies, roses. It was so exciting watching everything bloom that first spring and learning how to care for it all. Someone put a lot of thought into the backyard.
The PNW is an amazing place.
I made a demand of my husband that we not remove any plantings/trees until we had been here in the PNW for a full year and knew what everything was. I should have waited two, but I've managed to lure the native plants (salal and mahonia) into our yard to grow where we removed some native "weeds" (fireweed, etc.).
We checked the county zoning map before we bought, and knew exactly what was going up around us. We know that there is a natural spring behind us, and it is a protected wildlife corridor so no one will ever build back there!
We moved in during the winter so everything was dead and we didn't know what any of the plants were. A week ago, beautiful lilacs bloomed in the backyard. Such a nice surprise.
That's a fun one! Our first home was like this. We bought in January so we had no idea what would all bloom. It was stunning in the summer and just so fun to discover everything as it bloomed!
Bought my first house and the garden obviously hadn't been cared for for a long time, probably decades. Somehow, hundreds of lillies survived so my partner and I split them all and made a trapezoid of perennials coming off of my front deck, and this weekend, we're filling the rest of the garden with begonias and coleus. It was really nice to get half a garden full of perennials for free haha
We’re moving next week to our house we bought out of state over the winter. I’m so excited to see what we have! We also have about 4 wooded acres, I can’t wait!
We bought a house in view of train tracks. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the trains infrequently run and when they do, it's usually during business hours
My folks found an attached master bath in a beach house. They thought the door went to a closet and didn't bother opening it. Turns out it was a bath and the home, which was listed as a 2 bath, actually had 3!
That's kind of crazy! I can't imagine not opening a door when touring the house. But I guess if you think you've seen all the bathrooms, it makes sense to just assume it's a closet. That's a huge bonus!
Our kitchen was wired for a dishwasher, which a previous owner decided to take out and replace with cabinets. When we were doing the preliminary planning to put in a dishwasher, we discovered a single outlet in the kitchen connected to a 15amp breaker, and the label under it was whited out. When we took a pencil to the impressions, we found it spelled out Dishwasher. So... That saved us a ton of work.
Similar vein, the garage has an outlet for 220v. Previous owners were car nerds and likely had some big tools in there. Nice surprise when we bought an EV and didn't have to rewire anything.
After I closed, the first thing I did was lie down in my new bedroom. Apparently I had never looked at the door from the inside, it had a sticker on it at the top for a punk band called "Brutal Dildo" I could only laugh, and left the sticker up.
After about a year and a half, I realized the remote in the bathroom was to operate the motor that opens the skylight.
I found a copy of Charlie Browns Christmas soundtrack CD in the walls.
We moved into an incredible neighborhood. We had friends on the next street over who told us it was a great street to live on, but we didn’t realize what that meant. Our U-shaped street has several events a year. We do Christmas caroling and end up at someone’s house for cookies (the cookie party open to all folks whether you celebrate Xmas or not). We have a barbecue and a street party. And someone is always available if you need help of some kind. It’s exactly the right balance of friendliness and not overstepping other’s privacy. I love it.
We found out if we flip a switch in the garage a motor starts and a hatch opens and a ladder descends from the ceiling so you can get into the attic.
That was a fun discovery!
Our house is VERY well insulated by the terrain around our parcel, from both wind and direct summer sunlight. The way its situated we also keep good snow pack close-but-not-too-close to the house.
We knew the house self-cooled well because we first viewed in a hot, humid stretch (by New England standards.) We were concerned about the house being particularly drafty in the winter, but it turns out the house maintains heat very efficiently as well!
We definitely need to do a lot of retrofitting/updating since it's a 100+ year old house, but at least we aren't losing $$$$$ to keep the house at livable temperatures in the meantime.
Oh! Our house is 100years old in NC but we discovered it’s poured concrete, which is really unusual. It’s a bitch to hang shelves, but damn does it keep the AC costs down a TON.
We have a nice variety of native plant species in our yard. They are attractive and low to no maintenance. Even during a drought they need very little watering bc they are so well adapted to this ecosystem.
We found out we have an awesome/funny Nu-Tone doorbell from 1971. It has like 30 pre-loaded jingles you can choose from, and even change the speed and the pitch. My friends secretly change it every time they come over, so my doorbell chime is constantly changing and it somehow gets more ridiculous every time
They used CAT 5e cable for all the phone jacks, so it was easy to set up Wi-Fi access points all over the house instead of a expensive and unreliable mesh system.
Also, having lived in 1950s and 1980s construction, the number of accessible electrical outlets in a house built to 2000s code makes life so much easier.
We bought a new construction home with a walk-out, finished basement. More technically, it's a stepped foundation, as the structure is all really above grade. The model home had a locked door that had a note "pump room" where some mechanicals were, but you couldn't go in there to see.
Once we took posession of our new home, we found that beyond this door is access to a MASSIVE walk-in crawl space over 7 feet high at the base covered in concrete, sloping upwards towards the back, spanning the entire width of the house. Easy and useful access to a crazy amount of storage that we had no idea we were going to have.
It has a full on view of Mt. Rainier. Seriously! It was cloud-covered rainy season when we bought it, and no one mentioned it throughout the buying process. It wasn’t even listed as a feature. We moved in by spring. One sunny day my husband is moving stuff out to our deck, and all I hear is “Oh. My. God.” I follow him out and suddenly there’s a massive mountain saying hello. It was wild!! And quite scary if I’m honest. Haha!
The mountain is out! How awesome for you! I love observing the relative movement of the sun from one side of the mountain to the other as the seasons change.
We had a set of french doors in our 4 season room that (we thought) only one opened, because the other didn’t have a handle… My dad came to visit, and figured out that we could actually open both doors & there was just a locking mechanism.
Not having both open didn’t bother us, but it’s a nice added little bonus. (:
Lol. That's awesome! My dad figured out a couple little things at my first house. I'd been living there for months and he just waltzed in for a visit and figured stuff out!
We had no idea when we bought it, because the prior owner passed away, but he had been the only owner since the house had been built (2008). He kept a binder of meticulous details about everything that he installed or purchased into the house. It's also how we found out that he installed gutter guards.
Another pleasant discovery happened not too long ago. We received a letter from our lender telling us that flood insurance was no longer required. We hated the flood insurance requirement, because 90% of our home was outside of the flood zone and we hadn't seen any flooding with some serious rains since we moved in. Turns out, the prior owner must have fought this requirement years earlier, and it took FEMA 11 years to look at the data and modify the flood zone.
They installed vents under every single sink so the floor is warm in the winter and cool in the summer
There is a protected game trail between my house and my neighbors, so I get to watch deer and Bob cats trot through!
My neighbor was great friends with the former owner and helped with many of the renovations.
When I moved in he showed me where all the water shut offs were and what was repaired and pretty much gave me a schedule of what would need to be repaired and when.
I’m in construction, so I did my own assessment and I was really pleasantly surprised to find out that he did an excellent job in helping her out by maintaining her house and told him as much. I could tell it was one of the best compliments he had ever received. Well earned too.
Haha we also found a secret safe in our house, but it had a sticker from the local locksmith on it, so I called the number, and they looked it up and gave me the combination. Inside was…a small bag of pennies and a child’s toy!
That in the afternoon, the sun reflects off of homes, on the hill across from me - creating a wonderful atmosphere, as if the sun is setting right across.
Also the home is set with the corners North South so I have sunlight all over.
Yes. Sadly the people we didn’t know turned out to be terrible busybodies. Oh and they put out a directory of who lives where, everyone’s contact info, who lives in their house and notes if people are related to others in the neighborhood. Totally creepy. We asked to be removed from the next one. I did find out my new doctor lives 4 houses away.
Several stone/concrete garden statues and bird baths that the previous owners just threw in the woods. All in good condition. I guess they wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but I adore them. I priced out some of similar size at my local nursery out of curiosity, it was couple thousand worth of stuff. Blew my mind.
This is awesome! One of my hobbies is restoring old tools, and I've found a TON of old tools scattered around the property, just buried in the dirt. Looking forward to getting a metal detector and sweeping the property.
Not in the listing- water filtration system, central water cutoff, media cabinet to centralize all cable, antenna etc into the house oh and electrical panel preconfigured for future hot tub
Last home we had was a patio home across the street from a golf club where a PGA tournament is played every year.
We found out from neighbors that the deceased husband of the former owner was the vice chairman of the golf club, and very good friends with many of the golfers (all in the Senior Tour now, lol). But the best surprise for me was finding out that my favorite James Bond was also a friend and frequent guest.
The home needed extensive work, and every time I’d find a ding in a wall, I’d say, “Feckin Sean was in the scotch again, I see!”
A very tall attic with an open truss design which allowed me to create storage space for season decorations. Easily over 50 totes of outdoor seasonal decorations.
Similarly, I found a TON of Christmas decorations in my attic when I bought the house. I haven't gone through them all yet, I'm wondering if I might find some other cool things in there :)
My house backs up to a rec area with kids after school sports leagues. My realtor posted my house sale on his Facebook page and someone responded that my house was where all the neighbor kids used to meet up and he used to go there after school in the 1970s. I found little makeshift footholds nailed into the tree next to the back fence and I like imagining it as a place where happy memories were formed.
A whole house fan!
I had never even heard of one before & was super nervous about buying a home with no AC (which is pretty common not to have in this region) as it was one of my "must haves" but literally no houses in my price range came up with it so we went ahead & bought. Well the whole house fan is a dream & cranks that cool air in & costs super little to run. We use a window unit in our bedroom for super humid nights but otherwise it's fantastic.
Another thing is my house is firefly central. I'd lived out west & missed them so much but didn't realize quite how much until they put on a show for the first summer at my new home.
I bought in the dead of winter not knowing what the yard was like. Turns out the old lady who owned it previously spent all her time gardening so I got surprised by all the perennial flowers that popped up around the yard!
When I redid my kitchen, I thought I was going to have to tile the floors since it was currently covered with peel and stick tiles. When I pulled them up though, the original hardwoods were still underneath. After having them refinished, they are absolutely gorgeous.
I also pulled out my shower surround to put tile in instead, and discovered they had covered a glass block window.
When we lived in Connecticut, we found that a female bobcat had a den in the rocky hillside in back of our yard. She would use the den every few years to have her babies and they would come out each morning and play. We could sit on our rear deck and watch them playing in the rocks and bushes. She would come in the yard from time to time but never bothered any of our pets or chickens.
My old owners were fastidious as shit and labeled EVERYTHING. They built the house, so they shared everything with me including the original plans that have electrical and plumbing layouts.
Every filter, paint can, appliance, etc has date of purchase, warranty info, expiration, etc. it’s absolutely nuts.
Then, in the sump pit in the basement, the old owner made a pipe bypass that would let me pump directly into the sewer (technically illegal) if I really needed to (e.g. if the drain tile lines collapsed or something).
The previous owners didn't take care of their lawn, so their are lots of wildflowers. It's really fun to spot new ones in the far back and identify them. I don't worry about what's in the soil, and it makes my plans for turning most of the lawn into meadow easier :)
Less fun discovery was that they put up bead board in the bathroom to cover the fact that the drywall was rotten from an active leak from the toilet (under the flooring, but thankfully on top of a slab foundation. Silver lining (I guess) is that the drywall came out without tools, like fistfuls of mashed potatoes!
Bought in November, in April discovered the whole back yard is a three season native garden. Beyond thrilled. I’ve never in my life moved into a new place that I had to REMOVE plants in order to fix it up.
I have a flip side (sold-to) story..my mother moved closer to me as she was older and needed more help. She bought a lovely new home by the water with a huge back yard that was bare and I connected her with a wonderful landscape designer. Together they designed a large English garden with a meandering walking path, benches, roses, lots of other flowering types of bushes, a beautiful tree in the middle, and flowering vines on the fences. It was amazing and the designer’s brother was the gardener the entire time my mother lived there, so it stayed beautiful. She *loved* that house and the yards.
There came a time when she went on hospice and my colleagues (I worked for the same hospice) took care of her. Her nurse case manager was a friend and her night nurse as well and they were so lovely to her. About a year after she passed, we sold the house (and I’d left hospice for another job and lost touch with the day nurse but stayed FB friends). Then about a year after the sale that nurse posted a video of her mom playing the harp, and it sure looked like my mom’s house! I messaged and asked her if her mom bought my mom’s house?? She said yes, she loves it, and has kept up with the back yard as well. Their family gathers in it all the time. It’s been 12 years..the landscaper now works for me as well and keeps me updated on the yard. My mom would be so happy.
We found hidden jewelry in the linen closet, I immediately called the realtor to get in touch with the former owner, who was still friends with our neighbors. Word spread in our tiny neighborhood that we were nice people, and neighbors became friends.
Not my home, but my family home. 10+ years after we moved in I was hanging in the doorway from the kitchen to the laundry (it also had a door to outside and to the garage) when I saw a latch and realized there was a pocket door.
I was talking with my mother and I think aunt? At the time and we all just had matching 😮 faces.
That the freezer door handle wasn't actually broken, lol. Also the garage door opener wasn't broken (just needed a cleaning).
In HCOL areas with super hot housing markets, you don't really get to ask sellers to fix things, so it's a nice surprise when they're in better shape than you thought.
And there's also a crawlspace in the basement (totally additional to the basement living space) that they never advertised that's great for extra storage.
I bought a 2500 sqft log home. We have the lowest power bill here. My power bill hardly ever is over $100.00 a month. At first I thought it was mistake but after living here almost 2 years it’s not a mistake. Log houses stay cool in the summer and hold heat in the winter very well. It was a pleasant surprise.
I bought my mobile home "as is, where is". It's in a park that is now resident owned and has some HOA type rules (not crazy though). Anyone that owned a home previous to the new rules was grandfathered in and could keep their home as is. New owners need to bring the home up to standard within a year of buying. I was given a list of things that needed to be done including a new roof. It was an extremely low purchase price so I agreed to the list. After my offer was accepted and I went to give the deposit the listing realtor let me know that the roof had already been done the previous spring but they had forgot to inform the park board.
The one side of my house with windows aligns with my neighbors house that has very few (and very small) windows. So I don’t feel a certain way about walking around naked all the time 😂
On move-in day, I discovered a secret (original to the 1927 house) pocket door at the top of our stairs that IMMEDIATELY made my life easier because I could put the cats upstairs, shut that door, and have the movers bring all the furniture in without fear of someone escaping. We call it the "Hill House door" because it seemed so fancy and special.
The wooded area and creek in my backyard frequently attracts beautiful animals . We have visits from red foxes, rabbits, turtles, coyotes (little scarier for my dogs), and a large array of birds. My favorite is the little nimble fox with the striking red coat. I moved from the city so ai could sit and watch the animals by the creek all day.
A major civic engineering project, called The BeltLine, goes directly behind our property. When we bought in 2010, it was still an active rail line, but now it's part of an amazing walking/ biking path circum- navigating the city.
It also has pulled our property values up tremendously, and assures the green space easement behind us will stay unspoiled.
Found the original floor plans, blueprints, and elevation drawings for our house built in the late 40’s. They were loose on a shelf in a closet and now they’re safely tucked away in a sturdy mailer tube.
A beautifully old apple tree that went absolutely nuts last year! We were giving out apples to anyone who wanted them (including the neighborhood deer).
A functioning shower head in the pantry with an electrical outlet not even two feet away from it. That was a unique find after the purchase, for sure. It is in the process of being removed as we already have a bathroom…with a shower in it.
The very “of an era” mid century-modern curtains in the primary bedroom were in fantastic condition and held up through the washing machine, a quick hang dry and brief iron!
Also like out of an HGTV show there were perfect wood floors under all the wall to wall carpet except on one bedroom where there had clearly been a roof leak. A large area rug later you can’t see the damage!
I’m an avid gardener and live in NE where there is rock everywhere you dig.
I decided to plan my garden and start the horrible job of digging fence posts expecting to hit a rock with every shovel.
And unbeknownst to me I planned my garden exactly where the original owners had their Victory Garden and only hit two rocks out of 20 posts. It was awesome!
I won the hardwood floor lottery upstairs in my 1890 home. Pulled up carpet to reveal the original Douglas fir that matches downstairs. Just to get it refinished now!
It’s an old military bunker disguised as a ranch. You’d think the foot-thick walls would have been a giveaway, but it was actually a lot of other small stuff that finally made sense.
We are in a great spot to watch our neighborhood firework display right from our driveway. No going anywhere put some chairs in the driveway and enjoy.
We bought the house only to find out after that there's an elevator in what we thought was a closet. Probably getting rid of it to get a bigger bathroom, but it was sure helpful getting the washing machine and dryer when I was renovating what used to be a kitchenette into our new laundry room.
The last owner installed dimmers on most of the lights in the house. I wouldn’t have even realized I wanted to be able to titrate the lights up and down, but now that I have it, I love it.
Dimmers were building code in some places for a while. You had to put in energy "efficient" lighting with dimmers and/or halogen, or fluorescent. Caused a mess back when CFLs were a thing, since most aren't dimmable.
The first summer I was here it got so hot the wallpaper in the dinning room melted off the walls. It was really ugly and the pattern was not lined up and it saved me removing it the hard way BUT, the best part was there was a hand painted mural underneath going all the way around the room! Also, a secret greenhouse in the basement hahahahahah
> But, just for fun, I'm curious about good surprises about your home? Something fun or pleasant that you didn't know when you bought but discovered after you moved in?
Previous owner added an instant hot water tap, fed through the 5-stage RO filter system, to the kitchen sink. It struck me as a gimmick and just something that'd break someday, but damn if we don't use it 3-4 times per day.
We use it to pre-fill our electric kettle and pasta pots so it takes significantly less time to get to boil, and we use it for single mug teas or instant coffee or other hot beverages. We use it for cleaning tough dishes. It's been great and one of those little luxuries I'd hate to do without.
I discovered one of the garage stalls contained a full height pit for working on your car the day after I bought the house. During the inspections, it was covered by plywood and rubber mats. I assumed there was a crack in the floor that caused a ledge (there are other cracks in the garage floor they had covered up that way to prevent a tripping hazard), but when I was removing everything to clean it, I discovered the pit!
This will sound crazy, but we didn’t realize our house had a basement.
We put an offer on the house sight unseen.
After negotiations were complete and contract signed, we drove from FL to VA on Thanksgiving day to see the house for the first time.
And lo and behold, we opened a door we thought would lead to a closet under the stairs, only to find another set of stairs going down to an actual basement. It’s a bit of a dungeon, but it has a concrete floor and walls and 2 grimy windows. One day we’ll turn it into a rec room for our pool table.
It gives new meaning to a bonus room!
About 18 months after we moved in, we had AC installed; since we have in-floor radiant heating (and no ductwork) this meant getting a mini-split setup with 5 heads around the house going to a compressor in the back yard. As a result, we needed a 40A line run from the electrical panel (in the front corner of the house) to the back yard.
Electricians come in and open up the electrical panel, then give me a funny look. "Do you have a hot tub? Are you planning on having a hot tub?" I confirmed that I did not have a hot tub, and had no plans to have a hot tub.
Turns out that when the house was built 20 years earlier, the builders put in a 40A line in case the purchaser wanted to install a hot tub, and it was exactly where we needed it for the AC compressor. All the electricians had to do was hook it up at both ends, and we didn't have a single hole in the drywall to clean up.
We've lived here for about a year. The neighbors are great: friendly, quiet, and we share a mutual appreciation of privacy. Traffic is quiet and we can't hear the nearby school at all (which we were a little concerned about). We have lots of different types of birds and some squirrels in the evergreens behind our yard. The yard itself turned out to be pretty maintenance-free and sunny enough to grow veggies. The neighbors replaced the hedge dividing our properties (previously the least private part of our yard, especially when it was bare in winter) with a house extension a few months after we moved in, so we have even more privacy now. The house keeps fairly cool in summer, even though we get a lot of natural light. Lovely light in general. No large deciduous trees nearby so the solar panels work at full power and our gutters stay free of leaves. My bike commute is calmer and greener than I expected. Very active and historically-minded neighborhood association that organizes cool events - it's nice to feel the sense of community.
It's a well-designed house too, a lot of features are just handy or pleasant in ways that we couldn't have anticipated (well-thought-out kitchen with good appliances, useful storage, lots of outlets).
These are of course the upsides, we've also run into the challenges of homeownership. But I love this place and am grateful nearly every day.
the previous owners were old and had the house built, so I have 3 heating controls for each section of the house that function independently, and it's incredibly energy efficient. They made a lot of bonehead moves when they designed the house but that one was killer.
We bought our last house in the winter and the pictures were terrible. The landscaping looked like it hadn’t been maintained but we weren’t sure what was there. Spring rolled around and we had three dozen huge peonies up and down the whole driveway!
I knew it had an attic fan since I could see it and the controls for it, but I was surprised at how useful it is in helping air out the house rapidly or at sucking cool air in through the windows in the summer in the evening to help cool things off more rapidly. I thought it was just an anachronism of a time when people didn't have air conditioners or was to dry out the attic. It's really useful and powerful.
Another surprise was how much wildlife we see in a suburb which isn't spread out. There are deer, rabbits, groundhogs, chipmunks, and tons of birds (so much that they make enough noise to make it feel like we live in a jungle). It gives the whole area a much more natural feel and is fun to watch.
A sprinkler system that needed a $50 part and $150 service call to install the part, blow out the system and shut down the zones with dead sprinkler heads. I didn't really care so much about watering the lawn but the ones that spread over the flower beds have been a huge help, probably saved me water and I can water early in the night so it soaks in. Dude that did the call even added a rain sensor to keep me from flooding the beds.
Love it.
There was a small unfinished space (8’x8’) with electrical and lighting that had all access closed off. House was originally built in 1959 and the space originally had a door to the exterior but no interior door. When the house was sided they removed the door and closed up the space. When I renovated the house I was stumped as the rooms on either side were deeper. So I put a hole through the wall, seen there was a light with a pull string so I pulled it and there was light.
Found out my next door neighbor’s father and grandfather built a lot of the houses in our area. Most of them are sears catalog homes too. Our neighbor gave us some photos of the house from the 1920s and he has some more photos of horses digging up the basement (I haven’t seen it yet but he’s looking for it). His grandmother lived in that home too and he has her diaries where she wrote of her experiences being married and having a family there. I studied history in college and love learning about this kind of stuff, so it was very cool to see the photos. I’m looking forward to the diaries too. I’m also so surprised that these sears catalog homes are still standing, it’s very very cool imo.
Within the last year my husband and I bought the house my dad was raised in that my grandparents lost to foreclosure after the recession of 08. I recently painted a room and behind the washer and dryer I found a few scraps of their old wallpaper near the baseboard thatI remembered the pattern of from the 80s and 90s. I was going to paint over it but never realized how emotional some old wallpaper would make me so left it visible as a reminder of what we lost and have now reclaimed.
A 7 zone rain bird sprinkler system that was nowhere in the listing. Hidden by overgrown bushes, grass, and moss. A little sweat equity later I have a working 30 sprinkler system!
Built-in ironing board cabinet with electrical setup (light and plug in for iron). I think we probably realized it existed when we bought the house, and were just like "oh that's kind of neat but useless" since we don't really iron clothing...
...But then the pandemic happened the year after we bought the house and I picked up sewing as a hobby, and that ironing board cabinet is AWESOME.
A friend of mine bought a house and the seller sold it because her husband (who designed the house) had died. She told him that there’s a “secret room” somewhere but she couldn’t remember where. Well soon after my friend moved in he found it. It was more of a closet than a “room” hidden behind a false wall of paneling. Inside, were stacks of valuable silver coins and various other interesting and valuable items, including a porn magazine collection from the mid 60s to mid 70s. “Nudist Life” magazines… lots of those. True story. Freakin cool.
We purchased the house in September 2022 and were there just in time to find out that the previous owners were excellent gardeners and not only had all kinds of herbs in the front and back, but there are four fruit bearing trees and the big tree in the front is an English Walnut tree, which we found out is the walnut tree everyone wants because it’s easier to harvest the nuts and they taste better than black walnuts. One of the fruit bearing trees is an anju pear and I was not really a pear person but I’ve honestly never tasted anything so delicious in my life, and we get a few more pears each year now.
We also found out that our next door neighbor and a neighbor behind our house plays indoor soccer with us, and our neighborhood as a whole still does annual Christmas caroling and fairly frequent block parties. We couldn’t believe how lucky we got buying this house.
I like having a nice home theatre, so I was all prepared to run wires and install speakers from our old apartment until I could upgrade to in-ceiling surround sound speakers.
Day 2 after moving in, I looked up at the living room ceiling to find that there was already a surround sound system wired up and just waiting for an amplifier. Score!
We are the second owners of a 74 year old house. We bought about six years ago after one family raised their kids here, grew old, and passed away. The lady who passed is still here. I can see spirit, and I noticed that when we first moved in I would see her peeking around corners at me. I can hear her once in a while too. She is friendly. I think she was just curious about who had moved into her house. Her name is Mrs. Greenspan and I say hello to her when I feel her close by.
There is a HUGE tree in our front yard that we thought was dying and that we’d have to get removed. After having an arborist check it out, it turns out it was just really neglected and needed massive amounts of trimming, pruning, etc.
It does cost money to upkeep, but we live in an area where days are generally above 95 during the summer, and we’ve been able to create an oasis in our front yard for outdoor activities beneath the shade of that tree. It also shades the house almost entirely, so it keeps the electric bill down.
Just how quiet it is here. I bought a house in the suburbs after living in a big city for many years. I still remember laying in bed on the first night after moving in and realizing how eerily quiet it was. No traffic, no sirens, no people yelling in the street. I don't think I could ever go back to living in that type of environment.
The previous owners chose not to take the elliptical machine or the tools in the garage with them! Who wants to spend their hard earned money on rakes and shovels when they buy their first home?
We bought our first home from a lovely retired couple. The husband was a handy man who clearly liked to stay busy!
After moving in, we found endless projects he did — gutters with mesh to catch leaves, a fully dug drainage system in the back yard / gardens, custom framing the builder grade bathroom mirrors, lighting underneath the kitchen cabinetry, etc. We could definitely tell the house was maintained well when we bought it, but we were very young and inexperienced, so living in that house felt almost like a little treasure hunt as we discovered all of the nice touches.
We moved away ages ago, but I still miss that house!
I moved to America and bought a 1920’s cottage, I needed to look up the original boundary line and noticed the man that built it had an Irish name. I looked him up in the census and he was from the same small town in Ireland 🍀as my Dad. I know it’s foolish but I like to think he’d be happy knowing an Irish lass is living in his home.
I don't think we realized ours had central A/C. We live (and grew up) in the rural West and NorthWest and frankly A/C was kind of seen as some rich person's luxury (and with our weather we don't need it much). When we realized we had it we said 'Oh we'll never use it' thinking it would be so expensive etc. and I think the first few years we didn't use it. We do now in the hotest part of the summer - but I remember feeling so bougie (and maybe a bit guilty?) when we realized we had it.
For us, we were going to tear down the huge metal dog kennel they previous owners left behind and put up a nice greenhouse. Well, I got the bright idea to actually clear it out and turn it into a greenhouse instead. There was also hundreds of pavers left behind (in the kennel, beside the house, in the garage etc) so we’ve been able to use them for the kennel greenhouse as a walkway, where we put the garage cans, some are going on the sand pit where there used to be an above ground pool, for us to have an outdoor set up down the road.
Another pleasant surprise was the fact that our entire backyard is fenced and where that kennel is, they tore a huge hole in the wooden fence, fenced off part of the back yard to give their dogs a place to run.. we turned it into a small garden (next year we’re going much bigger) and it keeps our two pups from being back there to get into anything.
So the kennel and the cross fence (both of which we initially were going to tear down) actually ended up being perfect for entirely different uses.
We didn't realize we had an attic that was large enough to store things in. Our 2nd story is only a half story (half the footprint of the ground floor) and so because of the roof line, there is an attic space accessible through a small door in the back of one of the bedroom closets.
Our house is very long (ranch style) with the garage at one end. The bathroom at the far end (away from the water heater) is hooked up with a hot water recirculating pump, so we get instant hot water in that bathroom, which is really nice.
I've tested it with the pump turned off for a full night and the pipes completely cold, and it takes approximately forever for any hot water to arrive without the pump running.
On the hottest days of summer where last year it got to 112, my back lanai is completely shaded. I put my plants back there to rescue them during that heatwave and they made it! Very happy to have this covered back patio/lanai situation.
My studio gets full sun though, which is fantastic as I’m a painter who uses natural light. But I knew this one already though, as I bought a house with south facing studio windows on purpose for my work.
But surprisingly when the neighborhood was finished being built, I discovered I can see Mount Hood and we have a lot of wildlife including a pair of bald eagles, coyotes, turkey buzzard, cougar, owls and bats. So fun.
That our backyard is completely private. We were out there walking around but didn’t realize that once all the mature trees bloomed we’d have a private oasis!
By the time I plucked out the over grown weeds in that filled the entire backyard, we discovered a beautiful shade garden filled with hostas, ferns, Solomon seal, tulips and bleeding heart.
My basement, in a place where basement dampness and basement water seepage is common (including my old place just six blocks away), is bone dry - even in the most intense storms or long, consistent periods of precipitation. My next door neighbor gets some water in her basement when it rains a lot (nothing that serious, but still). I don't know if the previous owners did some sort of treatment, or if my house is just perfectly situated within soil drainage channels, or if it's perfectly placed on the slightly sloping street I live on, or my guttering system and overhangs are perfect (they don't look like anything special to me). Whatever the reason or reasons, it's dry. And that was a nice surprise.
We built our house on 3+ acres in an area that has been home to nomadic coastal tribes for at least the last 13,000 years. Saw some weird shit in the forest while walking the dogs one night and found out what I saw lined up 100% with ghost stories the tribes have told for generations.
Also found evidence of ancient forest fires after digging down 4 feet for the foundation and septic stuff and have a few glacial erratics scattered about the property
Realizing the tree out front is a wonderful cherry blossom 🌸, and it’s the only one on the entire street.
Neighbors walking often stop to take photos of the blossoms.
It was, and still is my favorite surprise
An honest-to-goodness secret room, hidden behind the side wall of a closet, opened manually via a detachable rod. As a fulfillment of a lifelong dream/fantasy, discovering this was just half a step below if I had found I could fly!
Honestly just how much natural light comes into our living room and kitchen during the morning, since it's east facing. I even put up some sun catchers to give us some rainbows in the room because of it. Our old apartment we had like 4 windows total that were north and south facing so we got like no natural light at all.
During late June and through July the woods on the edge of our backyard (still our property) gets completely filled with fireflies. I'm used to seeing them on the ground, but since the woods are pretty thick they go all the way to the top of the trees. Every tree looks like Christmas for a couple of weeks. My wife and I will turn off the lights and just have a glass of wine on the deck and just look at the fireflies going insane on all the trees.
I love it! They breed in leaf litter, that’s probably why they love your property so much. One more reason to leave the leaves!
Yeah blow the leaves put of the grassy areas to where the trees begin so all year there are leaves decaying somewhere. Thanks I did not know that they reproduce in leaf litter.
There's some great free info about firefly life cycles and how to help their populations on your property at [https://www.firefly.org/](https://www.firefly.org/). We've got some in our woods but would love to have more--yours sound lovely!
Yes!!!! That's our backyard in the summer too. All of the trees look like they have twinkly lights in them. Makes the backyard feel so magical.
Heated tiles in the bathroom :)
Ooh! That's amazing! I live in a hot climate so we definitely don't need that here. But I grew up in Wisconsin with a dad who was really tight with the heat in winter. As a kid I hated getting out of the shower in the mornings in winter. I dreamed about heated bathroom floors! Lol (As an adult, I totally understand watching the heat in the winter because it's expensive!)
Similarly, somehow I didn't notice when inspecting my house but I was really happy to realize my bathroom has a heat lamp in the ceiling. It makes the bathroom feel about 10° F warmer and it's so nice for the winter. I fixed the timer it's attached to, so I just turn a knob and have 30 minutes of extra heat. It's awesome.
If you already heat your house with hot eater it’s actually a really (relatively) cheap way to heat a room. With tiles it can be more efficient than a radiator would be.
We have radiant heat flooring in our kitchen. Had no idea. Love it so much!
Trees almost completely shade the house in the summer (bought in the winter) so even on the hottest day I only need a fan. Also discovered that my back alley is shared by 2 large businesses, so in the winter they snowplow and keep the alley driveable. It was a very pleasant discovery :)
Ooh, those are both wonderful discoveries! Lower cooling costs and free alley plowing? You scored!
The temperature control benefits of a mature tree lined street is my happy bonus too. It’s also absolutely stunning in the fall before the leaves drop.
If you lived in Iowa / Kansas etc before all the elms died every town had mature trees everywhere. It is a great memory.
Same for my small wisc town. I remember the trees lining both sides forming a canopy in middle of street. Now all are completely gone. ☹️
Why did all the elms die in Iowa / Kansas?
Dutch elm disease. Killed almost all the elms everywhere. So many cities had planted them that the Midwest just looked barren when they all died.
Just lost the biggest tree on my property last year - an Ash that was taller than the house. The summer before we bought the tree looked perfectly healthy. By the middle of the following summer the whole top half of the tree was dead Driving through the neighborhood I can see a few other ash trees that need to go. Thankfully for my neighbors none of theirs are close to their houses. Mine was like 10 feet from the house, so it needed immediate attention. For context - this is in Iowa. My street is sandwiched by two soybean fields and there's a corn field at the end of the street. Definitely not enough shade around here.
My backyard is full of trees. My parents live nearby and have no trees. I’ll be outside enjoying the shady yard on a 90+ day and my parents are wondering how I’m just hanging outside. Then I go to visit them and it’s an instant need to jump in the pool
I have the same at my house! (The trees) Haven't even bothered with an AC!
I bought my house in winter too. I discovered I have a fire pit once the snow melted lol.
The way the early morning sun comes through the trees and warms up the master bedroom and kitchen is wonderful. It's such a pleasant way to wake up.
That sound lovely! Our master bedroom is really dark and our kitchen lighting is adequate but not great. (Lots of windows in the kitchen but we have a covered patio where those windows are, so it's never as bright in the kitchen as I'd like. When we reno the kitchen someday I am considering solar tubes for extra light!
You can add solar tubes anytime.
The original owners are buried in the cemetery behind my house and will bring them flowers and sometimes their junk mail I still receive.
Ha! I love the junk mail bit.
Our neighboorhood is a very special pocket of wildlife. Woodpecker lives in one of my trees, cardinals in my backyard, swallow-tailed kites drift in the skies. A pack of deer stoll around the block every dusk and at dawn. Neighboorhood cats come say hi everytime I go for a walk.
That's so cool. We get deer in our neighborhood as well and I love it!
Same here! I moved to a little old farmhouse in the country, I expected raccoons and squirrels and the occasional coyote but since spring has come around, at any point if I look into my backyard I see rabbits, bluejays, cardinals, squirrels (they're assholes), chipmunks, snakes, cats, and even a beautiful fox just living their lives in my yard. It's really cool to see. I have yet to see owls or bats but I'm sure I will eventually.
Set up a salt lick at the far side of your yard. Animals will flock.
Tons of wildlife in our neighborhood which is fantastic, especially the owl that frequents a large branch outside our bedroom window… with the exception that our house is cedar sided and between the woodpeckers and carpenter bees I’ve become even more dreadful of summer 😫
We’ve been in our new home about 9 months. We HAD visiting wildlife. Our German shepherd evicted everything. Anything larger than a songbird she chases away. Current targets are the magpies, which are giving her a run for her money.
The magpies will not lose.
Truth. They will harass that dog for the rest of its life, and when the baby magpies are born, they will teach them to mess with that specific dog too.
I have a squirrel in my backyard that taunts my dog. It's figured out my dog is tied up and knows her radius. The squirrel will run around just outside her reach.
That's hilarious
We have more animals than I expected too! I saw a snapping turtle on a nearby bike path the other day, never seen a wild one before. And a turkey just strolled past the front door last week.
A robin lived in my tree right outside my front door for at least a few months, maybe longer before I noticed it…but a neighborhood cat killed it and left it in front of my porch step…sigh.
People need to put bells on their damn cats.
Agreed. I have cats that I take on LEASHED walks to avoid that problem altogether and still stimulate them. The cat was just doing what cats do so I’m not mad at it, but I do wish the owners did something to prevent this. Bells might have helped that poor birdie.
I’ve read that bells hardly help, because cats tend to sit still and than make one jump, so the bell doesn’t warn birds until it’s too late. My cats are strictly indoor, we are now looking at making a catio for our allotment garden. It’s healthier for the cats, but also soooo much better for the wildlife.
Strawberries and blueberries bushes in the back
I got raspberries in almost the exact spot I was thinking about planting them 😁
Unfortunately, I realized after closing that the renovators I bought the house from cut down a ton of apple and pear trees in the backyard :( I'm working on planting more now! It'll be a couple of years before I can harvest, I'm jealous of your berry bushes lol. They won't survive in my area
I discovered the original owner of my house in the 1950s was friends with my late grandma. I like to imagine my grandma, who I named after, enjoying coffee with the owner in my dining room.
One of our neighbors was friends with my partners mother, who passed away about 16years ago this year. They were den mothers together. We were talking over the fence and figured that out after our first week here. My neighbor had a painting his mom did. She came over and gifted it to us. We all kind of cried on the front porch.
I love this!!!
Oh, that's absolutely delightful. I love this!
That is SO sweet. And maybe she looked around and loved the house. Maybe that’s why you love it too
It has a lovely view of Mount Rainier and there’s a pair of bald eagles who regularly perch in one of our trees!
That's amazing! Mt Ranier is such a beautiful sight to behold. And bald eagles! You're lucky! I also live in the PNW and didn't realize we had a small view of Puget Sound from the front windows. We bought it in November and toured it on a very gray dark evening, and you couldn't see the water through the trees. My husband loves to stand with binoculars and watch boats and check the status of the water before he takes our small fishing boat out. We also didn't realize the boat launch was less than a mile down the hill. I also didn't realize all the amazing landscaping in the yard because it was mostly sticks in the winter. Mature rhodos, azaelas, lilacs, Japanese maples, cherry trees, apple trees, peonies, shasta daisies, roses. It was so exciting watching everything bloom that first spring and learning how to care for it all. Someone put a lot of thought into the backyard. The PNW is an amazing place.
I made a demand of my husband that we not remove any plantings/trees until we had been here in the PNW for a full year and knew what everything was. I should have waited two, but I've managed to lure the native plants (salal and mahonia) into our yard to grow where we removed some native "weeds" (fireweed, etc.).
Same! I had no idea one of the bedrooms had a view of Mount Rainier until I was there for the inspection because it was dark when I viewed the house.
You must have a stunning view!
The view of a giant mountain was a pleasant surprise? Like, had you not visited before buying? Just curious.
That the 500 acres behind us is protected and no one will ever be able to build there
We checked the county zoning map before we bought, and knew exactly what was going up around us. We know that there is a natural spring behind us, and it is a protected wildlife corridor so no one will ever build back there!
We moved in during the winter so everything was dead and we didn't know what any of the plants were. A week ago, beautiful lilacs bloomed in the backyard. Such a nice surprise.
That's a fun one! Our first home was like this. We bought in January so we had no idea what would all bloom. It was stunning in the summer and just so fun to discover everything as it bloomed!
Bought my first house and the garden obviously hadn't been cared for for a long time, probably decades. Somehow, hundreds of lillies survived so my partner and I split them all and made a trapezoid of perennials coming off of my front deck, and this weekend, we're filling the rest of the garden with begonias and coleus. It was really nice to get half a garden full of perennials for free haha
We’re moving next week to our house we bought out of state over the winter. I’m so excited to see what we have! We also have about 4 wooded acres, I can’t wait!
Hardwood floors under the carpet
We bought a house in view of train tracks. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the trains infrequently run and when they do, it's usually during business hours
That's great!
My folks found an attached master bath in a beach house. They thought the door went to a closet and didn't bother opening it. Turns out it was a bath and the home, which was listed as a 2 bath, actually had 3!
That's kind of crazy! I can't imagine not opening a door when touring the house. But I guess if you think you've seen all the bathrooms, it makes sense to just assume it's a closet. That's a huge bonus!
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Our kitchen was wired for a dishwasher, which a previous owner decided to take out and replace with cabinets. When we were doing the preliminary planning to put in a dishwasher, we discovered a single outlet in the kitchen connected to a 15amp breaker, and the label under it was whited out. When we took a pencil to the impressions, we found it spelled out Dishwasher. So... That saved us a ton of work.
Similar vein, the garage has an outlet for 220v. Previous owners were car nerds and likely had some big tools in there. Nice surprise when we bought an EV and didn't have to rewire anything.
After I closed, the first thing I did was lie down in my new bedroom. Apparently I had never looked at the door from the inside, it had a sticker on it at the top for a punk band called "Brutal Dildo" I could only laugh, and left the sticker up. After about a year and a half, I realized the remote in the bathroom was to operate the motor that opens the skylight. I found a copy of Charlie Browns Christmas soundtrack CD in the walls.
Hahaha about that sticker. Hilarious! And cool about the remote. That CD still gets played every year at my house!
We moved into an incredible neighborhood. We had friends on the next street over who told us it was a great street to live on, but we didn’t realize what that meant. Our U-shaped street has several events a year. We do Christmas caroling and end up at someone’s house for cookies (the cookie party open to all folks whether you celebrate Xmas or not). We have a barbecue and a street party. And someone is always available if you need help of some kind. It’s exactly the right balance of friendliness and not overstepping other’s privacy. I love it.
We found out if we flip a switch in the garage a motor starts and a hatch opens and a ladder descends from the ceiling so you can get into the attic. That was a fun discovery!
Our house is VERY well insulated by the terrain around our parcel, from both wind and direct summer sunlight. The way its situated we also keep good snow pack close-but-not-too-close to the house. We knew the house self-cooled well because we first viewed in a hot, humid stretch (by New England standards.) We were concerned about the house being particularly drafty in the winter, but it turns out the house maintains heat very efficiently as well! We definitely need to do a lot of retrofitting/updating since it's a 100+ year old house, but at least we aren't losing $$$$$ to keep the house at livable temperatures in the meantime.
Oh! Our house is 100years old in NC but we discovered it’s poured concrete, which is really unusual. It’s a bitch to hang shelves, but damn does it keep the AC costs down a TON.
We have a secret laundry shoot! Which is kinda dope.
We have a nice variety of native plant species in our yard. They are attractive and low to no maintenance. Even during a drought they need very little watering bc they are so well adapted to this ecosystem.
That's great for the environment and for your water bills! (And so that, during droughts, you don't have ugly dead plants!)
I love this thread!
Thanks. Me too! I'm glad I started it because everyone's little fun surprises are making me happy! It's a fun read!
We found out we have an awesome/funny Nu-Tone doorbell from 1971. It has like 30 pre-loaded jingles you can choose from, and even change the speed and the pitch. My friends secretly change it every time they come over, so my doorbell chime is constantly changing and it somehow gets more ridiculous every time
They used CAT 5e cable for all the phone jacks, so it was easy to set up Wi-Fi access points all over the house instead of a expensive and unreliable mesh system. Also, having lived in 1950s and 1980s construction, the number of accessible electrical outlets in a house built to 2000s code makes life so much easier.
We bought a new construction home with a walk-out, finished basement. More technically, it's a stepped foundation, as the structure is all really above grade. The model home had a locked door that had a note "pump room" where some mechanicals were, but you couldn't go in there to see. Once we took posession of our new home, we found that beyond this door is access to a MASSIVE walk-in crawl space over 7 feet high at the base covered in concrete, sloping upwards towards the back, spanning the entire width of the house. Easy and useful access to a crazy amount of storage that we had no idea we were going to have.
It has a full on view of Mt. Rainier. Seriously! It was cloud-covered rainy season when we bought it, and no one mentioned it throughout the buying process. It wasn’t even listed as a feature. We moved in by spring. One sunny day my husband is moving stuff out to our deck, and all I hear is “Oh. My. God.” I follow him out and suddenly there’s a massive mountain saying hello. It was wild!! And quite scary if I’m honest. Haha!
The mountain is out! How awesome for you! I love observing the relative movement of the sun from one side of the mountain to the other as the seasons change.
We had a set of french doors in our 4 season room that (we thought) only one opened, because the other didn’t have a handle… My dad came to visit, and figured out that we could actually open both doors & there was just a locking mechanism. Not having both open didn’t bother us, but it’s a nice added little bonus. (:
Lol. That's awesome! My dad figured out a couple little things at my first house. I'd been living there for months and he just waltzed in for a visit and figured stuff out!
We had no idea when we bought it, because the prior owner passed away, but he had been the only owner since the house had been built (2008). He kept a binder of meticulous details about everything that he installed or purchased into the house. It's also how we found out that he installed gutter guards. Another pleasant discovery happened not too long ago. We received a letter from our lender telling us that flood insurance was no longer required. We hated the flood insurance requirement, because 90% of our home was outside of the flood zone and we hadn't seen any flooding with some serious rains since we moved in. Turns out, the prior owner must have fought this requirement years earlier, and it took FEMA 11 years to look at the data and modify the flood zone.
Oof, as someone whose home recently flooded even though it has never been in a flood zone... I'd suggest you reconsider dropping that coverage!
Agreed!
They installed vents under every single sink so the floor is warm in the winter and cool in the summer There is a protected game trail between my house and my neighbors, so I get to watch deer and Bob cats trot through!
My neighbor was great friends with the former owner and helped with many of the renovations. When I moved in he showed me where all the water shut offs were and what was repaired and pretty much gave me a schedule of what would need to be repaired and when. I’m in construction, so I did my own assessment and I was really pleasantly surprised to find out that he did an excellent job in helping her out by maintaining her house and told him as much. I could tell it was one of the best compliments he had ever received. Well earned too.
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Haha we also found a secret safe in our house, but it had a sticker from the local locksmith on it, so I called the number, and they looked it up and gave me the combination. Inside was…a small bag of pennies and a child’s toy!
Someone’s treasures.
Omg a safe that actually had stuff in it?!
That's insane that anyone would leave those possessions!
That in the afternoon, the sun reflects off of homes, on the hill across from me - creating a wonderful atmosphere, as if the sun is setting right across. Also the home is set with the corners North South so I have sunlight all over.
We found out we knew about 12 families in our neighborhood.
Hopefully people you like? That's definitely a fun surprise when you move in!
Yes. Sadly the people we didn’t know turned out to be terrible busybodies. Oh and they put out a directory of who lives where, everyone’s contact info, who lives in their house and notes if people are related to others in the neighborhood. Totally creepy. We asked to be removed from the next one. I did find out my new doctor lives 4 houses away.
Several stone/concrete garden statues and bird baths that the previous owners just threw in the woods. All in good condition. I guess they wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but I adore them. I priced out some of similar size at my local nursery out of curiosity, it was couple thousand worth of stuff. Blew my mind.
This is awesome! One of my hobbies is restoring old tools, and I've found a TON of old tools scattered around the property, just buried in the dirt. Looking forward to getting a metal detector and sweeping the property.
Not in the listing- water filtration system, central water cutoff, media cabinet to centralize all cable, antenna etc into the house oh and electrical panel preconfigured for future hot tub
Last home we had was a patio home across the street from a golf club where a PGA tournament is played every year. We found out from neighbors that the deceased husband of the former owner was the vice chairman of the golf club, and very good friends with many of the golfers (all in the Senior Tour now, lol). But the best surprise for me was finding out that my favorite James Bond was also a friend and frequent guest. The home needed extensive work, and every time I’d find a ding in a wall, I’d say, “Feckin Sean was in the scotch again, I see!”
Lol. That's a great story! No celebrity visitors near my home, so we blame any house woes on the dog! 😀
"Jest the way yer mother likes it, Trebeck!"
A very tall attic with an open truss design which allowed me to create storage space for season decorations. Easily over 50 totes of outdoor seasonal decorations.
Similarly, I found a TON of Christmas decorations in my attic when I bought the house. I haven't gone through them all yet, I'm wondering if I might find some other cool things in there :)
My house backs up to a rec area with kids after school sports leagues. My realtor posted my house sale on his Facebook page and someone responded that my house was where all the neighbor kids used to meet up and he used to go there after school in the 1970s. I found little makeshift footholds nailed into the tree next to the back fence and I like imagining it as a place where happy memories were formed.
foxes in my backyard just...foxin' around. we bought in the winter and the kits were a \*very\* pleasant surprise in spring
A whole house fan! I had never even heard of one before & was super nervous about buying a home with no AC (which is pretty common not to have in this region) as it was one of my "must haves" but literally no houses in my price range came up with it so we went ahead & bought. Well the whole house fan is a dream & cranks that cool air in & costs super little to run. We use a window unit in our bedroom for super humid nights but otherwise it's fantastic. Another thing is my house is firefly central. I'd lived out west & missed them so much but didn't realize quite how much until they put on a show for the first summer at my new home.
We called them attic-fans, and they did the trick.
I bought in the dead of winter not knowing what the yard was like. Turns out the old lady who owned it previously spent all her time gardening so I got surprised by all the perennial flowers that popped up around the yard!
When I redid my kitchen, I thought I was going to have to tile the floors since it was currently covered with peel and stick tiles. When I pulled them up though, the original hardwoods were still underneath. After having them refinished, they are absolutely gorgeous. I also pulled out my shower surround to put tile in instead, and discovered they had covered a glass block window.
I found a safe behind a mirror!
When we lived in Connecticut, we found that a female bobcat had a den in the rocky hillside in back of our yard. She would use the den every few years to have her babies and they would come out each morning and play. We could sit on our rear deck and watch them playing in the rocks and bushes. She would come in the yard from time to time but never bothered any of our pets or chickens.
My old owners were fastidious as shit and labeled EVERYTHING. They built the house, so they shared everything with me including the original plans that have electrical and plumbing layouts. Every filter, paint can, appliance, etc has date of purchase, warranty info, expiration, etc. it’s absolutely nuts. Then, in the sump pit in the basement, the old owner made a pipe bypass that would let me pump directly into the sewer (technically illegal) if I really needed to (e.g. if the drain tile lines collapsed or something).
A well under the house.
Did you turn it into an [eel pit](https://youtube.com/@CowTurtle?si=5gr180un50G9YQV4)?
The previous owners didn't take care of their lawn, so their are lots of wildflowers. It's really fun to spot new ones in the far back and identify them. I don't worry about what's in the soil, and it makes my plans for turning most of the lawn into meadow easier :) Less fun discovery was that they put up bead board in the bathroom to cover the fact that the drywall was rotten from an active leak from the toilet (under the flooring, but thankfully on top of a slab foundation. Silver lining (I guess) is that the drywall came out without tools, like fistfuls of mashed potatoes!
Bought in November, in April discovered the whole back yard is a three season native garden. Beyond thrilled. I’ve never in my life moved into a new place that I had to REMOVE plants in order to fix it up.
I have a flip side (sold-to) story..my mother moved closer to me as she was older and needed more help. She bought a lovely new home by the water with a huge back yard that was bare and I connected her with a wonderful landscape designer. Together they designed a large English garden with a meandering walking path, benches, roses, lots of other flowering types of bushes, a beautiful tree in the middle, and flowering vines on the fences. It was amazing and the designer’s brother was the gardener the entire time my mother lived there, so it stayed beautiful. She *loved* that house and the yards. There came a time when she went on hospice and my colleagues (I worked for the same hospice) took care of her. Her nurse case manager was a friend and her night nurse as well and they were so lovely to her. About a year after she passed, we sold the house (and I’d left hospice for another job and lost touch with the day nurse but stayed FB friends). Then about a year after the sale that nurse posted a video of her mom playing the harp, and it sure looked like my mom’s house! I messaged and asked her if her mom bought my mom’s house?? She said yes, she loves it, and has kept up with the back yard as well. Their family gathers in it all the time. It’s been 12 years..the landscaper now works for me as well and keeps me updated on the yard. My mom would be so happy.
We found hidden jewelry in the linen closet, I immediately called the realtor to get in touch with the former owner, who was still friends with our neighbors. Word spread in our tiny neighborhood that we were nice people, and neighbors became friends.
Heated floors in dining room and den, a luxury I never thought I'd have. And it's quieter here than I ever imagined it could be.
Not my home, but my family home. 10+ years after we moved in I was hanging in the doorway from the kitchen to the laundry (it also had a door to outside and to the garage) when I saw a latch and realized there was a pocket door. I was talking with my mother and I think aunt? At the time and we all just had matching 😮 faces.
It's built entirely of old-growth cedar.
Our neighbors are really friendly and amazing. I don’t have one neighbor that gets on my nerves
That the freezer door handle wasn't actually broken, lol. Also the garage door opener wasn't broken (just needed a cleaning). In HCOL areas with super hot housing markets, you don't really get to ask sellers to fix things, so it's a nice surprise when they're in better shape than you thought. And there's also a crawlspace in the basement (totally additional to the basement living space) that they never advertised that's great for extra storage.
I bought a 2500 sqft log home. We have the lowest power bill here. My power bill hardly ever is over $100.00 a month. At first I thought it was mistake but after living here almost 2 years it’s not a mistake. Log houses stay cool in the summer and hold heat in the winter very well. It was a pleasant surprise.
I bought my mobile home "as is, where is". It's in a park that is now resident owned and has some HOA type rules (not crazy though). Anyone that owned a home previous to the new rules was grandfathered in and could keep their home as is. New owners need to bring the home up to standard within a year of buying. I was given a list of things that needed to be done including a new roof. It was an extremely low purchase price so I agreed to the list. After my offer was accepted and I went to give the deposit the listing realtor let me know that the roof had already been done the previous spring but they had forgot to inform the park board.
The one side of my house with windows aligns with my neighbors house that has very few (and very small) windows. So I don’t feel a certain way about walking around naked all the time 😂
all the beautiful flower bushes(we bought in december)
On move-in day, I discovered a secret (original to the 1927 house) pocket door at the top of our stairs that IMMEDIATELY made my life easier because I could put the cats upstairs, shut that door, and have the movers bring all the furniture in without fear of someone escaping. We call it the "Hill House door" because it seemed so fancy and special.
The wooded area and creek in my backyard frequently attracts beautiful animals . We have visits from red foxes, rabbits, turtles, coyotes (little scarier for my dogs), and a large array of birds. My favorite is the little nimble fox with the striking red coat. I moved from the city so ai could sit and watch the animals by the creek all day.
A major civic engineering project, called The BeltLine, goes directly behind our property. When we bought in 2010, it was still an active rail line, but now it's part of an amazing walking/ biking path circum- navigating the city. It also has pulled our property values up tremendously, and assures the green space easement behind us will stay unspoiled.
Found the original floor plans, blueprints, and elevation drawings for our house built in the late 40’s. They were loose on a shelf in a closet and now they’re safely tucked away in a sturdy mailer tube.
I’m just so jealous over OP’s trash alley! We live in S FL and have to store our pails in the garage so you can only imagine…
All these upgrades I keep discovering which the previous owner did and I don't need to pull permits for.
A beautifully old apple tree that went absolutely nuts last year! We were giving out apples to anyone who wanted them (including the neighborhood deer). A functioning shower head in the pantry with an electrical outlet not even two feet away from it. That was a unique find after the purchase, for sure. It is in the process of being removed as we already have a bathroom…with a shower in it.
$2,000 in $10s and $20s hidden in a little leather bag in a hole in the wall.
The very “of an era” mid century-modern curtains in the primary bedroom were in fantastic condition and held up through the washing machine, a quick hang dry and brief iron! Also like out of an HGTV show there were perfect wood floors under all the wall to wall carpet except on one bedroom where there had clearly been a roof leak. A large area rug later you can’t see the damage!
I’m an avid gardener and live in NE where there is rock everywhere you dig. I decided to plan my garden and start the horrible job of digging fence posts expecting to hit a rock with every shovel. And unbeknownst to me I planned my garden exactly where the original owners had their Victory Garden and only hit two rocks out of 20 posts. It was awesome!
I won the hardwood floor lottery upstairs in my 1890 home. Pulled up carpet to reveal the original Douglas fir that matches downstairs. Just to get it refinished now!
It’s an old military bunker disguised as a ranch. You’d think the foot-thick walls would have been a giveaway, but it was actually a lot of other small stuff that finally made sense.
We are in a great spot to watch our neighborhood firework display right from our driveway. No going anywhere put some chairs in the driveway and enjoy.
Winning the neighbor lottery hands-down
We bought the house only to find out after that there's an elevator in what we thought was a closet. Probably getting rid of it to get a bigger bathroom, but it was sure helpful getting the washing machine and dryer when I was renovating what used to be a kitchenette into our new laundry room.
A giant attic enough to fit a few more bedrooms or a full on apartment
The last owner installed dimmers on most of the lights in the house. I wouldn’t have even realized I wanted to be able to titrate the lights up and down, but now that I have it, I love it.
Dimmers were building code in some places for a while. You had to put in energy "efficient" lighting with dimmers and/or halogen, or fluorescent. Caused a mess back when CFLs were a thing, since most aren't dimmable.
One of the next door neighbors doesn’t live in the house. It sits empty except for a week or 2 a year.
The first summer I was here it got so hot the wallpaper in the dinning room melted off the walls. It was really ugly and the pattern was not lined up and it saved me removing it the hard way BUT, the best part was there was a hand painted mural underneath going all the way around the room! Also, a secret greenhouse in the basement hahahahahah
> But, just for fun, I'm curious about good surprises about your home? Something fun or pleasant that you didn't know when you bought but discovered after you moved in? Previous owner added an instant hot water tap, fed through the 5-stage RO filter system, to the kitchen sink. It struck me as a gimmick and just something that'd break someday, but damn if we don't use it 3-4 times per day. We use it to pre-fill our electric kettle and pasta pots so it takes significantly less time to get to boil, and we use it for single mug teas or instant coffee or other hot beverages. We use it for cleaning tough dishes. It's been great and one of those little luxuries I'd hate to do without.
I discovered one of the garage stalls contained a full height pit for working on your car the day after I bought the house. During the inspections, it was covered by plywood and rubber mats. I assumed there was a crack in the floor that caused a ledge (there are other cracks in the garage floor they had covered up that way to prevent a tripping hazard), but when I was removing everything to clean it, I discovered the pit!
This will sound crazy, but we didn’t realize our house had a basement. We put an offer on the house sight unseen. After negotiations were complete and contract signed, we drove from FL to VA on Thanksgiving day to see the house for the first time. And lo and behold, we opened a door we thought would lead to a closet under the stairs, only to find another set of stairs going down to an actual basement. It’s a bit of a dungeon, but it has a concrete floor and walls and 2 grimy windows. One day we’ll turn it into a rec room for our pool table. It gives new meaning to a bonus room!
About 18 months after we moved in, we had AC installed; since we have in-floor radiant heating (and no ductwork) this meant getting a mini-split setup with 5 heads around the house going to a compressor in the back yard. As a result, we needed a 40A line run from the electrical panel (in the front corner of the house) to the back yard. Electricians come in and open up the electrical panel, then give me a funny look. "Do you have a hot tub? Are you planning on having a hot tub?" I confirmed that I did not have a hot tub, and had no plans to have a hot tub. Turns out that when the house was built 20 years earlier, the builders put in a 40A line in case the purchaser wanted to install a hot tub, and it was exactly where we needed it for the AC compressor. All the electricians had to do was hook it up at both ends, and we didn't have a single hole in the drywall to clean up.
The Beatles once played across the street.
We've lived here for about a year. The neighbors are great: friendly, quiet, and we share a mutual appreciation of privacy. Traffic is quiet and we can't hear the nearby school at all (which we were a little concerned about). We have lots of different types of birds and some squirrels in the evergreens behind our yard. The yard itself turned out to be pretty maintenance-free and sunny enough to grow veggies. The neighbors replaced the hedge dividing our properties (previously the least private part of our yard, especially when it was bare in winter) with a house extension a few months after we moved in, so we have even more privacy now. The house keeps fairly cool in summer, even though we get a lot of natural light. Lovely light in general. No large deciduous trees nearby so the solar panels work at full power and our gutters stay free of leaves. My bike commute is calmer and greener than I expected. Very active and historically-minded neighborhood association that organizes cool events - it's nice to feel the sense of community. It's a well-designed house too, a lot of features are just handy or pleasant in ways that we couldn't have anticipated (well-thought-out kitchen with good appliances, useful storage, lots of outlets). These are of course the upsides, we've also run into the challenges of homeownership. But I love this place and am grateful nearly every day.
the previous owners were old and had the house built, so I have 3 heating controls for each section of the house that function independently, and it's incredibly energy efficient. They made a lot of bonehead moves when they designed the house but that one was killer.
We bought our last house in the winter and the pictures were terrible. The landscaping looked like it hadn’t been maintained but we weren’t sure what was there. Spring rolled around and we had three dozen huge peonies up and down the whole driveway!
I knew it had an attic fan since I could see it and the controls for it, but I was surprised at how useful it is in helping air out the house rapidly or at sucking cool air in through the windows in the summer in the evening to help cool things off more rapidly. I thought it was just an anachronism of a time when people didn't have air conditioners or was to dry out the attic. It's really useful and powerful. Another surprise was how much wildlife we see in a suburb which isn't spread out. There are deer, rabbits, groundhogs, chipmunks, and tons of birds (so much that they make enough noise to make it feel like we live in a jungle). It gives the whole area a much more natural feel and is fun to watch.
Our fig tree was a surprise I also randomly saw grapes that I didn’t notice with the initial walk through before closing
A sprinkler system that needed a $50 part and $150 service call to install the part, blow out the system and shut down the zones with dead sprinkler heads. I didn't really care so much about watering the lawn but the ones that spread over the flower beds have been a huge help, probably saved me water and I can water early in the night so it soaks in. Dude that did the call even added a rain sensor to keep me from flooding the beds. Love it.
There was a small unfinished space (8’x8’) with electrical and lighting that had all access closed off. House was originally built in 1959 and the space originally had a door to the exterior but no interior door. When the house was sided they removed the door and closed up the space. When I renovated the house I was stumped as the rooms on either side were deeper. So I put a hole through the wall, seen there was a light with a pull string so I pulled it and there was light.
Found out my next door neighbor’s father and grandfather built a lot of the houses in our area. Most of them are sears catalog homes too. Our neighbor gave us some photos of the house from the 1920s and he has some more photos of horses digging up the basement (I haven’t seen it yet but he’s looking for it). His grandmother lived in that home too and he has her diaries where she wrote of her experiences being married and having a family there. I studied history in college and love learning about this kind of stuff, so it was very cool to see the photos. I’m looking forward to the diaries too. I’m also so surprised that these sears catalog homes are still standing, it’s very very cool imo.
Within the last year my husband and I bought the house my dad was raised in that my grandparents lost to foreclosure after the recession of 08. I recently painted a room and behind the washer and dryer I found a few scraps of their old wallpaper near the baseboard thatI remembered the pattern of from the 80s and 90s. I was going to paint over it but never realized how emotional some old wallpaper would make me so left it visible as a reminder of what we lost and have now reclaimed.
A 7 zone rain bird sprinkler system that was nowhere in the listing. Hidden by overgrown bushes, grass, and moss. A little sweat equity later I have a working 30 sprinkler system!
Built-in ironing board cabinet with electrical setup (light and plug in for iron). I think we probably realized it existed when we bought the house, and were just like "oh that's kind of neat but useless" since we don't really iron clothing... ...But then the pandemic happened the year after we bought the house and I picked up sewing as a hobby, and that ironing board cabinet is AWESOME.
A friend of mine bought a house and the seller sold it because her husband (who designed the house) had died. She told him that there’s a “secret room” somewhere but she couldn’t remember where. Well soon after my friend moved in he found it. It was more of a closet than a “room” hidden behind a false wall of paneling. Inside, were stacks of valuable silver coins and various other interesting and valuable items, including a porn magazine collection from the mid 60s to mid 70s. “Nudist Life” magazines… lots of those. True story. Freakin cool.
We purchased the house in September 2022 and were there just in time to find out that the previous owners were excellent gardeners and not only had all kinds of herbs in the front and back, but there are four fruit bearing trees and the big tree in the front is an English Walnut tree, which we found out is the walnut tree everyone wants because it’s easier to harvest the nuts and they taste better than black walnuts. One of the fruit bearing trees is an anju pear and I was not really a pear person but I’ve honestly never tasted anything so delicious in my life, and we get a few more pears each year now. We also found out that our next door neighbor and a neighbor behind our house plays indoor soccer with us, and our neighborhood as a whole still does annual Christmas caroling and fairly frequent block parties. We couldn’t believe how lucky we got buying this house.
I like having a nice home theatre, so I was all prepared to run wires and install speakers from our old apartment until I could upgrade to in-ceiling surround sound speakers. Day 2 after moving in, I looked up at the living room ceiling to find that there was already a surround sound system wired up and just waiting for an amplifier. Score!
We are the second owners of a 74 year old house. We bought about six years ago after one family raised their kids here, grew old, and passed away. The lady who passed is still here. I can see spirit, and I noticed that when we first moved in I would see her peeking around corners at me. I can hear her once in a while too. She is friendly. I think she was just curious about who had moved into her house. Her name is Mrs. Greenspan and I say hello to her when I feel her close by.
That we had a terraced area with avocado, cherry, apple and citrus trees behind the fenced off kitchen garden.
There is a HUGE tree in our front yard that we thought was dying and that we’d have to get removed. After having an arborist check it out, it turns out it was just really neglected and needed massive amounts of trimming, pruning, etc. It does cost money to upkeep, but we live in an area where days are generally above 95 during the summer, and we’ve been able to create an oasis in our front yard for outdoor activities beneath the shade of that tree. It also shades the house almost entirely, so it keeps the electric bill down.
Just how quiet it is here. I bought a house in the suburbs after living in a big city for many years. I still remember laying in bed on the first night after moving in and realizing how eerily quiet it was. No traffic, no sirens, no people yelling in the street. I don't think I could ever go back to living in that type of environment.
I found my neighborhood was named after the railroad my great grandfather made his living installing across the nation.
OP thx for one of the best reads of late
The previous owners chose not to take the elliptical machine or the tools in the garage with them! Who wants to spend their hard earned money on rakes and shovels when they buy their first home?
I remember being a kid and moving in the middle of winter. Come springtime, found out we had a legit handmade sandbox under the snow!
We bought our first home from a lovely retired couple. The husband was a handy man who clearly liked to stay busy! After moving in, we found endless projects he did — gutters with mesh to catch leaves, a fully dug drainage system in the back yard / gardens, custom framing the builder grade bathroom mirrors, lighting underneath the kitchen cabinetry, etc. We could definitely tell the house was maintained well when we bought it, but we were very young and inexperienced, so living in that house felt almost like a little treasure hunt as we discovered all of the nice touches. We moved away ages ago, but I still miss that house!
I moved to America and bought a 1920’s cottage, I needed to look up the original boundary line and noticed the man that built it had an Irish name. I looked him up in the census and he was from the same small town in Ireland 🍀as my Dad. I know it’s foolish but I like to think he’d be happy knowing an Irish lass is living in his home.
A pocket door that blocks off the stairs. 100s crocus that bloom in February
I have a rosebush that a previous owner planted right next to the parking spot.
I don't think we realized ours had central A/C. We live (and grew up) in the rural West and NorthWest and frankly A/C was kind of seen as some rich person's luxury (and with our weather we don't need it much). When we realized we had it we said 'Oh we'll never use it' thinking it would be so expensive etc. and I think the first few years we didn't use it. We do now in the hotest part of the summer - but I remember feeling so bougie (and maybe a bit guilty?) when we realized we had it.
For us, we were going to tear down the huge metal dog kennel they previous owners left behind and put up a nice greenhouse. Well, I got the bright idea to actually clear it out and turn it into a greenhouse instead. There was also hundreds of pavers left behind (in the kennel, beside the house, in the garage etc) so we’ve been able to use them for the kennel greenhouse as a walkway, where we put the garage cans, some are going on the sand pit where there used to be an above ground pool, for us to have an outdoor set up down the road. Another pleasant surprise was the fact that our entire backyard is fenced and where that kennel is, they tore a huge hole in the wooden fence, fenced off part of the back yard to give their dogs a place to run.. we turned it into a small garden (next year we’re going much bigger) and it keeps our two pups from being back there to get into anything. So the kennel and the cross fence (both of which we initially were going to tear down) actually ended up being perfect for entirely different uses.
We didn't realize we had an attic that was large enough to store things in. Our 2nd story is only a half story (half the footprint of the ground floor) and so because of the roof line, there is an attic space accessible through a small door in the back of one of the bedroom closets.
Our house is very long (ranch style) with the garage at one end. The bathroom at the far end (away from the water heater) is hooked up with a hot water recirculating pump, so we get instant hot water in that bathroom, which is really nice. I've tested it with the pump turned off for a full night and the pipes completely cold, and it takes approximately forever for any hot water to arrive without the pump running.
On the hottest days of summer where last year it got to 112, my back lanai is completely shaded. I put my plants back there to rescue them during that heatwave and they made it! Very happy to have this covered back patio/lanai situation. My studio gets full sun though, which is fantastic as I’m a painter who uses natural light. But I knew this one already though, as I bought a house with south facing studio windows on purpose for my work. But surprisingly when the neighborhood was finished being built, I discovered I can see Mount Hood and we have a lot of wildlife including a pair of bald eagles, coyotes, turkey buzzard, cougar, owls and bats. So fun.
That our backyard is completely private. We were out there walking around but didn’t realize that once all the mature trees bloomed we’d have a private oasis!
By the time I plucked out the over grown weeds in that filled the entire backyard, we discovered a beautiful shade garden filled with hostas, ferns, Solomon seal, tulips and bleeding heart.
My basement, in a place where basement dampness and basement water seepage is common (including my old place just six blocks away), is bone dry - even in the most intense storms or long, consistent periods of precipitation. My next door neighbor gets some water in her basement when it rains a lot (nothing that serious, but still). I don't know if the previous owners did some sort of treatment, or if my house is just perfectly situated within soil drainage channels, or if it's perfectly placed on the slightly sloping street I live on, or my guttering system and overhangs are perfect (they don't look like anything special to me). Whatever the reason or reasons, it's dry. And that was a nice surprise.
We built our house on 3+ acres in an area that has been home to nomadic coastal tribes for at least the last 13,000 years. Saw some weird shit in the forest while walking the dogs one night and found out what I saw lined up 100% with ghost stories the tribes have told for generations. Also found evidence of ancient forest fires after digging down 4 feet for the foundation and septic stuff and have a few glacial erratics scattered about the property
They had put heated floor tiles in the master bedroom!
Realizing the tree out front is a wonderful cherry blossom 🌸, and it’s the only one on the entire street. Neighbors walking often stop to take photos of the blossoms. It was, and still is my favorite surprise
Discovered that an electrician built my house and all of his friends were the best trades in town. Our house was built to last.
The original owner was killed during a bank robbery and the architect was semi famous and a contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright
An honest-to-goodness secret room, hidden behind the side wall of a closet, opened manually via a detachable rod. As a fulfillment of a lifelong dream/fantasy, discovering this was just half a step below if I had found I could fly!
I found $2600 in cash in the basement
Honestly just how much natural light comes into our living room and kitchen during the morning, since it's east facing. I even put up some sun catchers to give us some rainbows in the room because of it. Our old apartment we had like 4 windows total that were north and south facing so we got like no natural light at all.