Is there anything strange or unusual about your house that you enjoy?

I don’t know. The birds seem to like my back door and it’s strange because it is the entrance I go in and out of most. Maybe they think all the hubbub will keep predators away.

To orient you this is my back door

This the nest the robins build on my porch light to the right of the door

And here’s the last little robin fledgling teetering on the edge of the porch light nest. She was a little reluctant to go.

And these are the Mourning Doves that built a nest on the ladder to the left of the door the year after.

When I read at night and have my light on, it attracts bugs to my windows, and the bugs attract bats. The bat slap into my window and flap around. When we first moved in I thought someone was trying to get in but I went outside to look and saw the bats. I like them more than the bugs so I read as long as they’ll eat.

@lillycoyote I love the nest on top of the ladder. How interesting! and cute

We have vines growing on our fence, and my bedroom faces said fence, so the vines now cover my windows as well. I absolutely love it. When you draw open the curtains, all you see out the window are the vines and they filter the sun in really nicely.
It’s not very unusual, but I do really like it.

@jonsblond

Me too! Frogs everywhere this time of year. Pacific tree frogs. Sometimes they jump on me when I am walking in from my deck. They are spoiled, I leave the porch light on late so they can catch extra bugs. I also have a water garden on my deck with reeds and other water plants and they hang out in there. Frog Zen garden. :-)

Yes, many here know I live in a rural setting on 5 acres, and, infact, just NOW, I just came in the house from my cold hot tub and dousing myself in the cold hose on my deck
I was drying off naked, standing on my deck at dusk when a doe ran throuh my pasture and a big owl was startled by her and flew from a tree. I can also be naked and there is absolutely NOBODY around. I take for granted walking around my house and deck and patio in the buff. LOL
I LOVE my peaceful space over here!

Vines. I grew up in Massachusetts, in places that aren’t so different from where I live now in Connecticut (these two states could be counties in some of the western states). I don’t recall seeing a single vine in Massachusetts, other than the occasional ivy growing on a brick wall or chimney. If I don’t spend time (a lot more time than I am spending) trying to pull them out and control them, they want to crawl over everything. I kind of like that, though.

this is my favorite thing about my house.

@CWOTUS and @martianspringtime I’ve always wanted a house covered in vines. Or at least part of the house covered. It gives a house character.

@Coloma My daughter and I have had our share of frog piss on our hands this summer. ;)

@Judi Warm air dryer made me giggle. No cold nights for your tush. How sweet!

@jonsblond I moved into a new home this year and had the same thing! My window wells fill up with toads and frogs and it is weird to sit in the basement with all sorts of amphibious peeing Toms!! lol!

@Judi Is it the “Oscillating and Pulsating Comfort Washing” that made Neorest 600 the toilet for you?

My house has a patio with sliding glass doors from the kitchen and from the master bedroom. We have enclosed the patio, so you can now go completely around the house, down the hall, through the bedroom, through the patio room, through the kitchen, and back to the hall without having to go outside.

I installed a gate on the front porch of my house, which is always kept locked. We enter and exit only through the garage door into the kitchen.

There’s bats living in the walls and basement of out apartment building. I’m not sure where the nest is actually, but it’s in here somewhere. I sometimes hear them mess around in the walls, usually a bit during Spring and Autumn. The chick up on the second floor says she can see them zipping by at night every now and then. I guess that’s not really unusual, but it’s awesome.
I know my cats see them, or at least sense them when they’re outside. I haven’t seen any though, other than one that was trapped in the hallway. I ended up killing it with a fly swatter. A tenant, now gone, was screaming her ass off when she saw it. I just wanted to stun it and bring it outside, but it was pretty big, I didn’t think it would actually die.

The landlord recently put up this weird thing by the roof though, that disrupts sonar waves or whatever, and confuses the bats as they fly around. So eventually they’ll leave.

That sucks.

Thanks for the visuals everyone. You are keeping me happily entertained this evening. =)

The house my kids and I are living in was built in 1865— In the basement, it looks like there were 2 separate building phases- one in 1865 and again around the 1920’s. The basement still has remnants from the coal-burning furnace, water storage, and ice cellar days. It’s really creepy because someone plastered over the old walls in the coal area, but there are black veins seeping through the plaster and that area is much cooler than the rest of the basement. It’s also darker and really creepy.
All of us, including oblivious guests, have experienced some disturbances- being woken up in the middle of the night by sounds or ‘tapping.’
My bedroom used to have a different door for a closet, but the ‘door’ is still there- one part of the closet opens up into a second closet behind the first one, but the back closet has the fridge in it. I suspect there was a wall there, but they needed space for the fridge and cut an opening in the old wall, then put a fridge there. I can dart things out from the sides and top of the fridge to scare the beejeebies out of people—hee!!!

@jonsblond If you want to stay entertained all night I think you need the Neorest 600

@lillycoyote I’m pretty sure that thing will cost as much as room and board for the next semester at my son’s university. I’d rather have my son off the couch for the next 4 months. ;)

The original wavy glass in the windows (1920s) is awesome. Not very energy efficient or noise dampening, but awesome, nonetheless.

@augustlan

I LOVE that vintage ‘wavy’ glass. Reminds me of giant ice cubes. I think it is so cool!

Two side-by-side bedrooms in my house, one in the old part and one in the addition, have abutting closets: the closet recess in one room is next to the closet recess in the room on the other side of the wall. So the two closets share a narrow wall between them.

When we were building the addition, I insisted on having a little door built into that small shared wall, a narrow, half-height Alice-in-Wonderland door that a normal adult could barely squeeze through. I thought of it as a secret door. Those two rooms were at one time the boys’ rooms, and I figured that at some point they would discover the secret door and think they’d found something we didn’t know about.

As a child I read any number of stories with secret or hidden passageways and doors, including Alice in Wonderland, the Narnia books, The Princess and the Goblin, one or more Nancy Drew mysteries, and I don’t know what else. The very idea fascinated me. So I put one in our house just for fun.

@Jeruba What did the boys think about it when they found it?

What a great idea. My grandsons are always looking for secret passages in our closets, but so far they haven’t found any that I know of.

Secret doors are so cool! I’ve always wanted a secret passageway behind a bookcase.

Ha yeah, that would rock. I’d love to go in some old house with secret doorways and mysterious basements and all.

My secret garden in the backyard, where me and my children have planted maples, larches, pines, and a vegetable patch. Our backyard used to be completely bare 8 years ago, but now we’re surrounded by beautiful trees, each with its own story.