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A friend just finished a new house and filled it with all kinds of features I never would have thought of… automatic flushing urinal in the lavatory, radiant heat under the garage floor (he says it keeps his truck warm), even a dog food dispenser in the pantry- made out of black walnut- that could hold its own in Fine Woodworking mag!
What have you seen on the job or built for clients that was really unusual and caught your eye?
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Barrel vaulted single lane bowling alley started by friend (but never finished) that was copy of alley in FL Wright house in Spfld, IL.
*One more, a 300 cubic foot ash pit under the fireplace (mine).
*In our custom homes some clients want elevators to go from the basement to the 2nd floor. Also, there is the occasional wine cellars, Humidor rooms for cigar collections, saunas and things like that.However some of the most different construction (as far as methods) was for a new MRI room at NIH outside D.C.And a few years ago in Ohio I helped build a 44,000 square foot home on the Niles-Cortland road and they were also building a detached garage/storage building and they had a full size basketball court built upstairs for their children. It had to have specially modified floor trusses installed and other design considerations.Billy
*How about a planter with 40'(foot) palm trees that raises up out of the floor to expose 8 TV each with VCR. This was located in the "Oriental Room" for an overseas project of mine.
*How about a salt water aquarium about 8 feet high, 20 feet long and 6 feet wide that separated a disco/bar from the outdoor pool. You look into the pool from the disco through the aquarium and visa versa. Another overseas project I was involved with.
*Two doors for an A/V cabinet (each door was 2 1/4" thick X 30" wide X 10' tall) that were wrapped with black water-buffalo hide and hung on stainless steel piano hinges with a 3/8" barrel and 3" leaves. (I didn't design it, I just built it . . .the cabinet went into a room where the walls were paneled with perforated stainless steel. All the other walls of the house were exposed concrete, including the interior partitions.)
*We built a planter that sat in the middle of the "Oriental Room". It had 40 foot palm trees in it. At the push of a button the whole thing raised up to reveal 8 TV's each with its own VCR. Another overseas project.
*Saw a circular sliding board that went from the 3rd floor childrens bedrooms to a basement mini-theatercomplete with popcorn consession stand.
*I worked in a house with a "footsie spa". I didn't know what it was, had to ask.
*I built a cabinet around a toilet that is part of a wet bar next to an open rail stairway up in an observation lounge. Lift the lid, open the door and have at it. One can look over the rail to see who's coming up for a look see. Cal
*For texture on my walls and ceilings, i crumpled up tissue paper after tearing the straight edges ragged. Then i rolled a coat of cream-colored paint about 4 square feet, laid a sheet of wrinkled paper in it, and rolled the paper into the base coat. Picked up another load of paint and did it again, overlapping the sheets. When it was dry i used some dark oil stain thinned with linseed oil to flood the walls, then wiped them down. The effect looks just like leather--beautiful texture, color, and "grain". Cost was about $30 for tissue paper and roller covers, as i got the paint and the stain at a paint swap sponsored by the city sanitation dept. to keep it out of the landfill.
*I was working on an "entertainment room" -building a DJ booth when the homeowner comes around the corner pushing the frnt end of a Corvette-he had me mount it on the front of the booth to create the illusion that the car bust thru the side of the building-he set up blinking headlights, the horn-too much money & too much time- If I only had such problemsgb
*Did some trim and cabinet install in a house that had a "mural room" in progress. This particular "mural".....seems such a basic word to describe what was going on......was....on the wall in front of you....a floor to ceiling painting of a rock out cropping, which is semi-famous here, that over looks the city. The painting was done from the 1800's time frame. Everything was depth perception perfect. The rock that you'd be standing on was about 3' wide, by 6' long(deep). The trees that bordered the center were life size. This led to a view that continued about a mile away. Across the river....little tiny indians were cooking teeny tiny fish next to their canoes! To your right and left....on the respective walls....were the view that you'd have if you were standing on that rock and looked right and left! Same same field of depth. Birds in trees right next to you that were life size, yet further on, to the other hills, were boulders the size of your finger nail. On the wall behind you was the trail leading back down the mountain. Amazing! I went in there after lunch everyday for three weeks.......and I found something new each time. There were birds, bugs, animals, indians, mountain men, boats, canoes, fish........All perfectly in scale. The artist estimated it would take her about a year to finish. I took a few pictures.....but they do it so little justice, that I don't even look at them. Never seen anything like that in my life. I have a new fun thing to buy when I hit the lotto! Jeff
*We built an English pub to scale (from the real one) in a clients basement. Retro-fitted an old trunk with a TV elevator. Seems to be a big thing in Dallas right now.Ruined many an antique bombay bureau to make powder room vanities. That also seems to be a big thing right now. Not counting the amoires we've butchered for TV's. What a shame.Hidden safes, doors and stairs.....too many to mention.Did I tell you about the dog house with air conditioning? It get's hot in Texas......even for the pooch.How about the New England style covered bridge across the creek on one clients property? You couldn't drive a car across it, just his personal golf cart. That was fun to build.Then there was the bowing alley with Brunswick lanes, the indoor pools, the indoor basketball court...............Money buys everything but happiness.Ed. Williams
*how about a clear lexan floorwith lights underneath, and all the walls and ceilings were done in sprayed concrete!!
*Like Ed, to many hidy holes, hidden gun compartments and hidden rooms to count.A snake room for a breeder with hydronic heated shelves.The most ironic, A small $70,000.00 wine cellar for a client who soon after I finished, got caught doing the nasty by his wife. Wife divirced him, got the house and he paid her rent to use the wine cellarLuck
*a completely hidden room with false doors and the works. just like in an old fashioned thriller.
*A perfectly straight stud nailed to a perfectly straight plate.jimsorry I couldn't help but type that
*I didn't actually build all these things, just saw them on prints. One plan had a fireman's pole between their kids' bedrooms. It went to a playroom in the basement. Saw a his & hers master bedrooms - Hers on the 1st floor and his on the 2nd. There was a spiral staircase in the middle of the rooms for conjugal visits. Saw one with a room over the garage with no windows that could only be reached through a door at the back corner of the master closet. You would never know it was there unless you walked all the way through the master closet. (Which was pretty long) We couldn't imagine what anyone would want a room like that for, so we called it the "whip and chain room". Saw an elevated "T" shaped house once that was for a single woman. It had no doors anywhere, except on the room with the toilet in it. The bed was on an elevated platfrom just off the living room. It shared a see-through fireplace with the bathroom, which had a huge jacuzzi in it. We called it "the orgy house", as we figured that was the only practical use for it. That's all I can think of for now.
*b WBA At Your ServiceA custom spinning door (center pivot, top and bottom) in the wall between the breakfast room and kitchen. The door had a shelf for the TV and VCR. Allowed the owner to view from either room. The 5 year old nephew was a bitch with spinning the door. As you can guess, the cords were an issue when he was around !
*My brother is an architect in Detroit who designs houses for people with more money than brains. One day he called me and said, "can you get down here and build a doggie door; the pay is $400, but it has to be done today". And of course, I could. I get to this house which looks very much like an english castle, in progress (Blue probably framed it), and they point out where the doggie door goes; on the left side of the 7 car garage (seven being a lucky number). What I find is a tunnel, for the dog, going under the garage floor, cemented, with lights and the whole nine-yards, all the way from one side of the garage and under all those stalls to the house. Seems the owners didn't want the dog to track mud in the house from directly outside, or let the dog out themselves, so they were going to train it to walk down a set of stairs, go through this tunnel, then come out "outside" to do it's business and return. Last I heard, the dog was so scared of that narrow passage it did ALL of it's business about three feet inside the tunnel, which the owners didn't discover for about three or four days upon moving in.
*With apologies to jim at great white...Last month I finished a job where everything was right and it looked great! That was pretty unusual.Rich Beckman
*A client wanted an exterior pocket door between the kitchen and the screen porch. We installed a standard sliding patio door with the fixed panel buried in the wall pocket. End result was weather-tight (and this is on a waterfront property) and has worked smoothly through the years.
*A doggie tunnel under the garage? My mutt would check it once for bunnies or other critters and then ignore it for all eternity. Okay, so what have you built that was unusual and that you would consider putting in your own home (besides a straight stud nailed to a straight plate)? After a few beers that ridiculous automatic urinal started making more and more sense....
*My favorite house that I work on was built in 1856. The first floor has a widows walk leading to the street. If you raise the bottom window sash, the wall under it splits and opens to provide you with a walk through to the small deck/widows walk. It was sealed years ago but I am tempted to reopen it for free to see the thing working again!David H. PolstonFounder of Sawdust Inc.
*Chris B asked: "Okay, so what have you built that was unusual and that you would consider putting in your own home (besides a straight stud nailed to a straight plate)?"I would do interesting things under the house. After the blocks are laid, I'd have a concrete slab poured then have the framers frame the house. How many times have you all crawled under a house? Whouldn't you rather scoot around on a mechanics creaper? Plus, why doesn't anyone put lights and recepticals under there? We are under enough of them and I really hate pulling cords and lights with me. Don't get me started on how nasty some crawl spaces are. Another "novelty" for me would be radiant heated porches, steps and sidewalks (I hate salting down my sidewalks).
*David, I worked on a house that had a concrete crawl space. I installed an intercom system and had to use a crawler after the first day. A rough broom finish wears out both flesh and cloth.The craziest thing I ever put in a house was a "secrete door" in a half bath wall. We hid it behind a full lenght mirror and used some large SOSS hinges to pivot the hole wall out. What was nuts is that it only went into a dressing/make-up room attached to the master suite. Never figured that one out. In the same house we improvised a dumb waiter from the basement garage to the kitchen out of an old garare door opener. That one made sense.Dave
*Dave....up here...we do that all the time....we call it a basement! Jeff
*In my area, basements are rare. I wish we did have a basement. They don't call this area Tidewater for nothing! =o)
*Didn't build these, saw them or know the guys that built them. A dining room table, 20 or so foot long that was on a hydraulic cylinder and would go down stairs to be set by the help, then come up through the floor, through a pocket door type floor opening. They worked weeks getting it to stop at the right point so the floor was level. A generator with specially designed double mufflers and noise deflectors so you could not hear it run on the patio, 25 feet away. (who want to be on the patio during a power outage anyway?) His and hers master bathrooms that enter in a common entrance, seperate, in the back in each is a walk in closet (large), in the back of each walk in closet there is a door that leads to a common shared walk in winter closet. DanT
*DanT, your big dining table reminds me of a commission i got for a lazy susan for a 14' round table. I could only fit a 4' susan in the Toyota truck (it was for a place several hours away), so they made do with that instead of the 5' one they originally had in mind.
*I want to know where these guys found a STRAIGHT stud. That in itself is almost as rare as a screen door in a submarine.
*A friend of mine made a radiant heated garage floor and driveway. He lives in the mountains where it snows 400"-600" inches a year. Without the heated driveway, it would be impossible to get his motorhome into the garage.Here is another crazy idea. Build a trampoline room. I have a friend who has seen this in Bill Gates house. It is a round room with padded walls. A skinny floor along the wall allows spectators to stand in the room while others are using the trampoline. The trampoline stretches from the floor so there is no climbing onto the trampoline. I have no idea how high the ceiling must be for this. If you had all of the money in the world, would you do this?
*Took an extra bedroom in a double wide, covered the walls with visqueen, and then sheet rocked on top of that. Add a really good air filter/exchanger, and some lights, viola: killer green bud several months later.
*This was on a walk-out in a hillside. I carved furthur back in under the house, taking out 20 or 30 yards of ledge with a jack hammer to build a gymnasium/exercise room. I'll be dead and buried before the owner gets as much workout in there as I did building it
*I once worked on a crew remodeling a bank. We put a static-free room in the basementwith lots of special precautions all thought out to keep ststic, dust, and moisture from getting to the big ole' 'puter.When the thing got delivered, it was a mainframe bigger than a Mazda pickup and wouldn't go down the 'L' shaped stairs. An expert had to come and spend a few days taking it apart and rebuilding it to get it in 'cause no-one had thought about that.BTW, when we were demo-ing the old vault (built in 1897 out of stone and mortar) we found a lot of empty pint liquor bottles laid into the mortar spaces in the middle of this two foot thick wall. Local history said that they used prisoners from the local jail to buld the bank. Picture it....
*Install a 4" pvc pipe from attic to basement utility room, provide access on every floor. If you need any wires or an air hose for any use's its a big help and cheap and easy. Insulate the walls of your master bedroom for noise control, unless you cant make your wife moan loud.
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A friend just finished a new house and filled it with all kinds of features I never would have thought of... automatic flushing urinal in the lavatory, radiant heat under the garage floor (he says it keeps his truck warm), even a dog food dispenser in the pantry- made out of black walnut- that could hold its own in Fine Woodworking mag!
What have you seen on the job or built for clients that was really unusual and caught your eye?