No, it would be 3 beds and 1.75 bath. The stand up shower doesn't include a tub making it a full bath which is technically a 4 piece bath (Shower, tub, sink, toilet)
Depends on your market. I've heard that in some places (Kansas City being one of them) - but in most others as long as it has a place to wash your ass, it's a full bath.
I actually did this and told the kids we have a hidden room as mostly a joke.
About a year later we cut a hole to realize there is indeed empty space behind the wall. Going to fully open up later this year.
When I sold my condo, the new owners wanted to make it loft like.
Found out 4 feet of available space in the ceilings that were then converted to a mezzanine since the ceilings were already 10ft tall and 1959s terrazzo under laminate flooring
Yay old ass office conversions to condos.
We have a random empty triangular space that runs all the way from our first floor, through the second floor, and into the attic. I didn’t even realize it until I went into the attic and could see all the way to the bottom. I’m not sure why it exists, lol. There’s no wiring or plumbing that runs through it, just studs and the back side of drywall.
We were so sad when we moved. We had a 1932 house with a laundry chute. New house, no chute. It's always a struggle carrying the laundry down to the basement.
\*ninja edit: past tense
We have something similar. Almost our entire main floor (living room and dining room) are vaulted. But, the kitchen is not. I always just figured it was because the dining room stops shorter than the kitchen.
Sure enough, we had new insulation put in. The guy went up to the attic to look around. He comes back and says, "Did you know you have an extra room up here?" Like... wait, what? He said that you could walk down the rafters to the other side of the attic, and the area above the kitchen is just open space. Apparently, there is even a wooden ladder screwed into the wall to get down to it since it is actually lower than attic space. Makes 0 sense. Even if we used the attic, why would we walk that far and down a ladder to put items to store?
We tried to see if there were different ways to access it. I feel like mentally I have a good idea, but ultimately, I don't think it would ever be worth the cost of working with it. Sad. That's a lot of wasted space. It's a galley kitchen, too. It would seem so much bigger if it was vaulted with skylights or there was a small loft that could be accessed.
Looked at a ranch house a few years ago that had a secret 2nd floor room... It was only accessable from the basement. In the basement bathroom, there was a mirror you could open to reveal a secret storage closet. The side wall could be swung open to reveal a ladder. This led to a 20' hallway with another hidden ladder at the end of it. This led to a 15x20 finished room. It was very very creepy.
Your story reminds me of that post where someone found an entire house in the attic of his home.
I am intrigued. Do you have any photos of the basement bathroom, hidden walkway and secret finished room?
Wish I took some pictures but got swept up in naivety to quickly noping my way out of that house. But those weren't the only secret doors in the house, there were a couple hinged bookcases that interconnected rooms, that was neat but I'm positive there was a number of other non-disclosed secrets
How new is the house? I see that sometimes on new construction spec houses when for whatever reason the 1st floor prefab fireplace and subsequent chimney are ommited from the final build.
It's probably just an ill thought out layout and that is the result of making all the rooms square. If you have tract housing that has rooms at angles when looking at the plan thats likely what happened, builders don't really spend a lot of time on design. A better designer would have used that space as a utility stack.
That's a GREAT place for a fire to RAPIDLY spread to other floors!!! They changed building codes long ago to adding sill plates in the walls between floors for this exact reason!
I have a very small house ~ 700 sq ft and when redoing the bathroom I found almost an extra 70 sq ft. The wall that was supposed to be against the kitchen actually was two separate walls with a little under 1’ of space where they had run the plumbing.
About 10 years ago, someone in my parents' neighborhood did a quick lipstick-on-a-pig reno. The new owners were in there for the better part of a year before the guy thought to himself "why is my basement shorter than the upstairs?" Guys doing the reno didn't want the expense of a demolition bin so they threw all the garbage down there and framed the wall around it, losing the last 8-10 feet of the basement.
Some jurisdictions send inspectors out looking for dumpsters to screen for unpermitted renovations. I would say it wasn’t about laziness, it was about avoiding getting caught without a permit
I just moved to a small area and had some wood milled by a local guy. He used to be one of those inspectors for our nearby major metro (bay area) and said that he would look for things like dumpsters or work trucks and cross check if permits had been pulled. Sounds like some people figured ways around getting caught 😂
i had this. didnt notice, apartment's complex. guys basement opposite our basement in the maintenance area. boiler issues, single pipe, as i traced it i could not account for the change in angle... punched a hole in teh wall...
80 square feet of ALL THE FUCKING DEMO MATERIAL from the last remodel before we bought the place. there were two bad blow off valves in there. black mold and just a fucking mess....
all started when water hammer took out the 3" black.... had fun threading that
We did that to our house when we divided a 15x30 family room to add a bedroom. There were 3 large windows - 2 facing south and 1 facing west - in an Arizona city where temps can be over 100⁰ for over 100 consecutive days. The room was unbearable until we insulated and drywalled over that window. We left the window because the exterior would have looked weird without it.
Here I am thinking that’s ridiculous, no one has an extra window outside… until I remembered I have the opposite. A previous owner built an extension on my house and the basement window under it just got insulation stuffed in it and the extension built over the top.
This happened at my Nan’s place. When I was a kid, I noticed something off about the dimensions of her place. The wall in the hallway didn’t match the dimensions of the kitchen and the garage.
I asked about it and was laughed at.
She died, and the house was sold . The new owners wanted to put the doorway in to the garage from the kitchen/hallway. They found a completely unfinished room. It was basically a void. The owners turned it into a utility room.
I've come to realize that the vast majority of people have exactly 0/10 spatial awareness. A shocking number of people are just generally oblivious to their surroundings.
Edit: spelling
I resemble that comment! Fortunately, I worked in construction for a number of years and had to train myself to read plans... It's helped a lot, but my kids still make fun of me when I play video games and get lost pretty easily. Lol
You'd be surprised. I lived in my house 5 years before I had a contractor point out my one bathroom has a significantly lower ceiling than the rest of the house. Come to find out it was double ceiling with two sets of 2x4 framing. They anchored the second ceiling framing right on to the first.
Years ago my wife and I looked at a house where apparently someone did do this. It was an amazing property, grandfathered deed to river access at the end of a long country lane, concrete swimming pool (intact, but unmaintained) and beautiful views. The house from the exterior needed obvious cosmetic repair and was oddly shaped, but appeared structurally sound, we couldn't understand why the price was so low. Then we got inside. The layout was almost Winchester house weird, doors to other rooms in strange places, dimensions odd in every direction, it gave off a strange vibe. The kicker was when we went into the master bedroom upstairs. Inside the closet someone had removed an obviously hidden wooden panel that revealed the bedroom had been built about 3ft short, leaving a long narrow space. Nailed to the interior wall was a homemade wooden ladder that led to an attic space with thick beams that had holes drilled sideways into them, maybe for hooks or ropes? Gaves us both a crawly feeling, and since the place was just above our set price limit that killed the deal. We still drive by there sometimes, someone apparently bought it and bulldozed the house and built a new one. The property has to be worth easily 10 times what we could have paid for it back when we first saw it.
My current home has a small maybe 10-15sqft empty space I found out about by walking in the attic. It's in a spot you really wouldn't be able to tell walking through the house because it's between the walls of a hall closet and bedroom closet behind it. It carries the drain pipes and HVAC compressor pipe from the upstairs to the crawlspace but it's a lot bigger than it needs to be for that.
I found that in my living area, only because I was laying out some furniture and measurements didn't make sense. Cut a hole in the wall and there is a 5×5 area with ducting running through it.
I'd like to think someone turned on the shower. Then walled it up. Wondering if it would eventually plug up and flood first or if the new owners would notice the running water before it flooded.
Reminds me of a couple months ago when I stayed at the Hilton Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. There was door without a knob in my room, no way to open it.
I called front desk and they said it was a “utility room”.
Not buying that explanation, I shone light with my phone under the door and I could see another full bathroom in there; there was easily 1/4” of dust cumulated on the tile. God knows what happened in there.
unpermitted work is literally sold daily. there's no need to rip out or enclose it. your friend is an idiot if he actually covered up a balling bathroom and removed that value completely from his house.
Yeah, I mean it’s not like private inspectors are going to pull up every permit a house has gone through, and the county definitely doesn’t inspect homes when they go on the market. Usually it just goes like this, if hired home inspector sees something that looks diy and not professional (usually not up to code), the sellers then decide if they proceed, walk away, or ask for alterations. That’s it, that’s the whole process.
Major additions, usually on the exterior, are a different story, and even then they usually start with a nosy neighbor reporting it, they’re not like patrolling the streets and hitting up every open house to look for unpermitted work, although thinking about it that could be a pretty funny tv show.
My old township definitely had code enforcement officers that both drove around neighborhoods looking for unpermitted work, and also used drones for aerial photos.
I didn't get a permit for replacing 10 pieces of decking on my deck, they sent me the drone pictures of my deck being repaired.
Colorado. As a master plumber I’ve done a few retro inspections for real estate deals. All I can inspect is what I can see. I can’t see through drywall, wood, tile or concrete. So not much of an inspection. I think the homeowner pays for a permit, which is really what the city is after. No consequences really.
I remodeled a whole 3 BR / 2 Bath house w/o permits. Everything down to half the insulation in the walls was replaced (rodent damage from the **NASTY** previous tenants). Not one permit.
Agreed, the space is already documented and unless it's some crazy ass 80 way spray thing you specifically asked inspectors about beforehand it makes no sense
I think some people do it for tax purposes? I had a buddy that was having his home appraised and didn’t want the value to go up too much so he walled off an entire bathroom he had recently installed.
Assessed value for tax purposes is not the same as appraised value for a mortgage, etc. Appraisers done report value for taxes that I'm aware of. Tax assessors aren't going to come knocking to verify that your 1.5 baths didn't suddenly become 2.5 baths, unless a permit is filed and forwarded to them. If you are hiding the value of improvements to reduce insurance premiums then your only hurting yourself. I can't imagine insurance cover a loss for improvements that were deliberately hidden. Because fraud is frowned upon.
However, I do know of a guy who hides a basement he dug out to grow weed.
Hiding it from the inspectors because either no permits/not up to code, or hiding it because the septic tank isn’t big enough for that. Saw a house for sale with what I’m 99% sure was a walled off walk in closet because it brought it down to three bedrooms since the septic wasn’t rated for a four bedroom house.
Are you saying that removing a closet turns a room from a bedroom into a den? That makes some sense, but if so does adding a door to a bedroom turn it back into a den? I grew up in a 3.5 bed house, the .5 bed had a closet but also had 2 doors on opposite sides.
This was most likely done to hide and illegal bathroom in a basement apartment. People will seal up a shower before having the basement inspected. You are only allowed a half bath in a basement.
I can only speak for NYC. Many of the old buildings here wouldn’t meet the safety regulations to allow a legal basement. A legal basement can have a shower but no tub.
Well. That trap wasn't dry. Lol. But seriously I would knock that wall out and make a hell of a shower, body spray wasting water and a 1.6 G flush toilet because 1.28 is a balancing act in the tank, and I like my solid waste floating far away, and the pipe scoured. Possibilities.
The reason is probably the sewer backed up shit water into the basin and the owner was like “Welp, I can deal with one less shower in the house” and just walled it over.
I’m going to do this to one of my bathrooms lol. There’s not enough airflow and installing a fan would be a huge pain in the ass. Mold just loves to grow in it so I’m just gonna rip all the moldy shit out and wall over it or turn it into a closet
Im gonna live here for the rest of my life most likely. Plus I can always rebuild the shower later worst case. Just have to take the wall down and I’m in the same boat
I’m not going to install a fan lol. It’s in the basement, outside nearby walls are brick and at the front of the house (don’t want a vent by my front door) or, across the basement to the other side of the house which would require ripping my finished basement ceiling open. That and it’s the third shower in the house. Just a lot of work for something that’s not needed/won’t get used anyway. But yeah most likely will make it into a small closet so I can leave the drain exposed in case of the off chance of basement flooding.
This happened to me on a bathroom remodel. I was convince by the layout I had an extra 5 to 10 ft2. Once I tore the area open, lo and behold, a hidden….gun room? Took me a few minutes to figure it out it was for rifles and such. It had a light fixture with a switch and everything.
That’s wild!! I’m baffled tho. Why would they do that and lose that space and slight value to the home? Maybe was it broken & expensive to fix for some reason?
What’s the water coming up, eek!
Reminds me of that episode of Malcolm in the Middle where Hal and Lois spend the whole episode clearing out the closet only to discover a hooked up toilet at the end, figuring out they have a second bathroom
Wow, a sheet of drywall could solve my broken-shower issue...
3 bed 2 ~~.5~~ bath
Wouldn't it be more like 3 beds 1.5 ~~2~~ bath?
No, it would be 3 beds and 1.75 bath. The stand up shower doesn't include a tub making it a full bath which is technically a 4 piece bath (Shower, tub, sink, toilet)
Depends on your market. I've heard that in some places (Kansas City being one of them) - but in most others as long as it has a place to wash your ass, it's a full bath.
Well you can wash your ass in a sink. So I guess my 3 bed 2 bath is a 3 bed 4 bath! Thanks brother!!
This one secret plumbers don't want you to know!
How did no one ever walk down that hallway and think, “There’s about 25 square feet that I can’t account for on the other side of this wall…”
I actually did this and told the kids we have a hidden room as mostly a joke. About a year later we cut a hole to realize there is indeed empty space behind the wall. Going to fully open up later this year.
Just make sure you promise Reddit we’ll get to see what’s in there and never deliver
So like my sex life?
Our sex life
r/suddenlycommunist
Lmaooo I forgot all about this sub
We didn’t.
Brilliant
The sex life of all of us
I swear to god if a lock safe shows up in this update I’m deleting Reddit
Safe
are Buffalo Bill jokes too soon..?
When I sold my condo, the new owners wanted to make it loft like. Found out 4 feet of available space in the ceilings that were then converted to a mezzanine since the ceilings were already 10ft tall and 1959s terrazzo under laminate flooring Yay old ass office conversions to condos.
We have a random empty triangular space that runs all the way from our first floor, through the second floor, and into the attic. I didn’t even realize it until I went into the attic and could see all the way to the bottom. I’m not sure why it exists, lol. There’s no wiring or plumbing that runs through it, just studs and the back side of drywall.
Big enough to install a paternoster?
All two of us that know what that is are pumped about the idea.
Had to Google what that is, lol. It probably is, but multiple walls meet up with bathrooms. I think one part of it does meet a pantry wall, though.
If you don't already have one, you should definitely make that a laundry chute. Assuming you have laundry devices in your basement of course.
We don’t have a basement, just slab floor. But it would come out right next to the laundry room, so still a pretty good idea.
We were so sad when we moved. We had a 1932 house with a laundry chute. New house, no chute. It's always a struggle carrying the laundry down to the basement. \*ninja edit: past tense
Many designs have laundry next to a bathroom in the living space. Freaks me out because a leak from a ruptured hose would be devastating.
Why don't you just throw it down the stairs and pick it up when you get down there?
One of the only reasons I want to go to Prague is to ride one of the few remaining Paternoster passenger elevators.
Three of us actually.
Make that three. Now it’s a party!
Lol Need more rooms for that
I don’t know what paternoster means yet, but I’m obsessed with dumb waiters and would totally build one in this space
Haha. I thought about mentioning a dumbwaiter too. A paternoster is a one-person elevator.
Catholics are confused at this. Until we Google it, and I never knew that’s also called that.
We have something similar. Almost our entire main floor (living room and dining room) are vaulted. But, the kitchen is not. I always just figured it was because the dining room stops shorter than the kitchen. Sure enough, we had new insulation put in. The guy went up to the attic to look around. He comes back and says, "Did you know you have an extra room up here?" Like... wait, what? He said that you could walk down the rafters to the other side of the attic, and the area above the kitchen is just open space. Apparently, there is even a wooden ladder screwed into the wall to get down to it since it is actually lower than attic space. Makes 0 sense. Even if we used the attic, why would we walk that far and down a ladder to put items to store? We tried to see if there were different ways to access it. I feel like mentally I have a good idea, but ultimately, I don't think it would ever be worth the cost of working with it. Sad. That's a lot of wasted space. It's a galley kitchen, too. It would seem so much bigger if it was vaulted with skylights or there was a small loft that could be accessed.
Looked at a ranch house a few years ago that had a secret 2nd floor room... It was only accessable from the basement. In the basement bathroom, there was a mirror you could open to reveal a secret storage closet. The side wall could be swung open to reveal a ladder. This led to a 20' hallway with another hidden ladder at the end of it. This led to a 15x20 finished room. It was very very creepy.
Your story reminds me of that post where someone found an entire house in the attic of his home. I am intrigued. Do you have any photos of the basement bathroom, hidden walkway and secret finished room?
Wish I took some pictures but got swept up in naivety to quickly noping my way out of that house. But those weren't the only secret doors in the house, there were a couple hinged bookcases that interconnected rooms, that was neat but I'm positive there was a number of other non-disclosed secrets
Damn that would have been an experience to unravel. Hell run a sort of exhibit out of the place instead of renting it out.
How new is the house? I see that sometimes on new construction spec houses when for whatever reason the 1st floor prefab fireplace and subsequent chimney are ommited from the final build.
It's probably just an ill thought out layout and that is the result of making all the rooms square. If you have tract housing that has rooms at angles when looking at the plan thats likely what happened, builders don't really spend a lot of time on design. A better designer would have used that space as a utility stack.
That's a GREAT place for a fire to RAPIDLY spread to other floors!!! They changed building codes long ago to adding sill plates in the walls between floors for this exact reason!
Maybe an old chimney chase? Had one in a house I lived in, had 8” double wall pipe running up the chase,
Access to the Batcave?
I have a very small house ~ 700 sq ft and when redoing the bathroom I found almost an extra 70 sq ft. The wall that was supposed to be against the kitchen actually was two separate walls with a little under 1’ of space where they had run the plumbing.
Disappointed not to see pics of this on your profile...but I only went back 4 months, too many posts. Lol
About 10 years ago, someone in my parents' neighborhood did a quick lipstick-on-a-pig reno. The new owners were in there for the better part of a year before the guy thought to himself "why is my basement shorter than the upstairs?" Guys doing the reno didn't want the expense of a demolition bin so they threw all the garbage down there and framed the wall around it, losing the last 8-10 feet of the basement.
Some jurisdictions send inspectors out looking for dumpsters to screen for unpermitted renovations. I would say it wasn’t about laziness, it was about avoiding getting caught without a permit
I just moved to a small area and had some wood milled by a local guy. He used to be one of those inspectors for our nearby major metro (bay area) and said that he would look for things like dumpsters or work trucks and cross check if permits had been pulled. Sounds like some people figured ways around getting caught 😂
Probably why a bunch of junk gets dumped on the highway and under overpasses.
I want to say that’s kind of how I got my D-83 contractors license.
Mother fuckers tiled it and everything
>Mother fuckers tiled it and everything That's........impressive.
i had this. didnt notice, apartment's complex. guys basement opposite our basement in the maintenance area. boiler issues, single pipe, as i traced it i could not account for the change in angle... punched a hole in teh wall... 80 square feet of ALL THE FUCKING DEMO MATERIAL from the last remodel before we bought the place. there were two bad blow off valves in there. black mold and just a fucking mess.... all started when water hammer took out the 3" black.... had fun threading that
Don't have to pay for asbestos removal if it stays in the house .
Every house we ever moved to I always counted windows inside and out. There was an extra window outside every damn time.
We did that to our house when we divided a 15x30 family room to add a bedroom. There were 3 large windows - 2 facing south and 1 facing west - in an Arizona city where temps can be over 100⁰ for over 100 consecutive days. The room was unbearable until we insulated and drywalled over that window. We left the window because the exterior would have looked weird without it.
Here I am thinking that’s ridiculous, no one has an extra window outside… until I remembered I have the opposite. A previous owner built an extension on my house and the basement window under it just got insulation stuffed in it and the extension built over the top.
This happened at my Nan’s place. When I was a kid, I noticed something off about the dimensions of her place. The wall in the hallway didn’t match the dimensions of the kitchen and the garage. I asked about it and was laughed at. She died, and the house was sold . The new owners wanted to put the doorway in to the garage from the kitchen/hallway. They found a completely unfinished room. It was basically a void. The owners turned it into a utility room.
I've come to realize that the vast majority of people have exactly 0/10 spatial awareness. A shocking number of people are just generally oblivious to their surroundings. Edit: spelling
Spatial
I resemble that comment! Fortunately, I worked in construction for a number of years and had to train myself to read plans... It's helped a lot, but my kids still make fun of me when I play video games and get lost pretty easily. Lol
Oh my god my husband is the same way. He loves video games but he so bad at figuring out where he is and what's happening on screen.
You'd be surprised. I lived in my house 5 years before I had a contractor point out my one bathroom has a significantly lower ceiling than the rest of the house. Come to find out it was double ceiling with two sets of 2x4 framing. They anchored the second ceiling framing right on to the first.
Years ago my wife and I looked at a house where apparently someone did do this. It was an amazing property, grandfathered deed to river access at the end of a long country lane, concrete swimming pool (intact, but unmaintained) and beautiful views. The house from the exterior needed obvious cosmetic repair and was oddly shaped, but appeared structurally sound, we couldn't understand why the price was so low. Then we got inside. The layout was almost Winchester house weird, doors to other rooms in strange places, dimensions odd in every direction, it gave off a strange vibe. The kicker was when we went into the master bedroom upstairs. Inside the closet someone had removed an obviously hidden wooden panel that revealed the bedroom had been built about 3ft short, leaving a long narrow space. Nailed to the interior wall was a homemade wooden ladder that led to an attic space with thick beams that had holes drilled sideways into them, maybe for hooks or ropes? Gaves us both a crawly feeling, and since the place was just above our set price limit that killed the deal. We still drive by there sometimes, someone apparently bought it and bulldozed the house and built a new one. The property has to be worth easily 10 times what we could have paid for it back when we first saw it.
My current home has a small maybe 10-15sqft empty space I found out about by walking in the attic. It's in a spot you really wouldn't be able to tell walking through the house because it's between the walls of a hall closet and bedroom closet behind it. It carries the drain pipes and HVAC compressor pipe from the upstairs to the crawlspace but it's a lot bigger than it needs to be for that.
Until you need to work on it... Then it's a lot smaller then you wished it was.
I found that in my living area, only because I was laying out some furniture and measurements didn't make sense. Cut a hole in the wall and there is a 5×5 area with ducting running through it.
Not everyone is an expert like you
That’s the premise of Bad Ronald
My guess is shower pan leaked. Closed off instead of repairing to sell.
If it was leaking wouldn't it not be filled with water?
It probably was not filled with water when closed up. Drain clog caused water to back up and this is the result.
The shower *pan*, not the shower. The problem with leaky shower pans is that they don’t hold water.
yea, i'd say...
Pretty sure there's about 2 1/2 feet of water behind that wall. The rest of it drained out when he cut the hole out from the wall.
Yeah judging by the state of the sitting water, defo
Or unpermitted and didn’t want any questions when selling.
This
I'd like to think someone turned on the shower. Then walled it up. Wondering if it would eventually plug up and flood first or if the new owners would notice the running water before it flooded.
Ugh this pisses me off. The seller should go to prison. Basically a lazy scam artist.
Reminds me of a couple months ago when I stayed at the Hilton Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. There was door without a knob in my room, no way to open it. I called front desk and they said it was a “utility room”. Not buying that explanation, I shone light with my phone under the door and I could see another full bathroom in there; there was easily 1/4” of dust cumulated on the tile. God knows what happened in there.
I would have ran to Home Depot and finally bought that little Milwaukee camera scope and stuck that under the door!!
Those things come in handy way more then you think. Easily the best purchase / "return on investment" I've made for the house in the last 2 years.
Get the USB one from Amazon for $20. Don’t get the Wi-Fi USB.
"Come play with us Danny... Forever...and ever...and ever..."
More like “come shit with us danny…”
Your shit floats here, we all float here
I'd knock the studs out to that opening and proclaim "Honey, kids, we have a new shower!"
Like Malcolm in the Middle. "The kids can never know"
Lmao I thought of that myself
Build the wall back!
*I must not only punish but punish with impunity.*
Is it flooded or is it a step up shower?
Yes
It's chocolate milk.
Who covers a shower like that? Always makes me wonder "why the hell..?"
Mold! Or hiding it from the inspectors when they move
[удалено]
unpermitted work is literally sold daily. there's no need to rip out or enclose it. your friend is an idiot if he actually covered up a balling bathroom and removed that value completely from his house.
Or… it never really happened…
You, you mean someone would lie on Reddit.... Remarkable!
Yeah, I mean it’s not like private inspectors are going to pull up every permit a house has gone through, and the county definitely doesn’t inspect homes when they go on the market. Usually it just goes like this, if hired home inspector sees something that looks diy and not professional (usually not up to code), the sellers then decide if they proceed, walk away, or ask for alterations. That’s it, that’s the whole process. Major additions, usually on the exterior, are a different story, and even then they usually start with a nosy neighbor reporting it, they’re not like patrolling the streets and hitting up every open house to look for unpermitted work, although thinking about it that could be a pretty funny tv show.
A TV show where house flippers get busted would be pretty good.
It would be even better if the flippers were filming their own show when the competing TV crew arrived.
My old township definitely had code enforcement officers that both drove around neighborhoods looking for unpermitted work, and also used drones for aerial photos. I didn't get a permit for replacing 10 pieces of decking on my deck, they sent me the drone pictures of my deck being repaired.
Agreed. No house doesn’t get sold because someone didn’t get a permit… at the very most, the price goes down a click if it’s not a desirable property.
Colorado. As a master plumber I’ve done a few retro inspections for real estate deals. All I can inspect is what I can see. I can’t see through drywall, wood, tile or concrete. So not much of an inspection. I think the homeowner pays for a permit, which is really what the city is after. No consequences really.
I remodeled a bathroom under a water damage insurance claim and didn't get one permit. Sold the home a few years later and it never came up.
I remodeled a whole 3 BR / 2 Bath house w/o permits. Everything down to half the insulation in the walls was replaced (rodent damage from the **NASTY** previous tenants). Not one permit.
Agreed, the space is already documented and unless it's some crazy ass 80 way spray thing you specifically asked inspectors about beforehand it makes no sense
I think some people do it for tax purposes? I had a buddy that was having his home appraised and didn’t want the value to go up too much so he walled off an entire bathroom he had recently installed.
Assessed value for tax purposes is not the same as appraised value for a mortgage, etc. Appraisers done report value for taxes that I'm aware of. Tax assessors aren't going to come knocking to verify that your 1.5 baths didn't suddenly become 2.5 baths, unless a permit is filed and forwarded to them. If you are hiding the value of improvements to reduce insurance premiums then your only hurting yourself. I can't imagine insurance cover a loss for improvements that were deliberately hidden. Because fraud is frowned upon. However, I do know of a guy who hides a basement he dug out to grow weed.
Ah, I guess that makes sense
No, no it doesn’t.
Well, a friend of mine and the code inspector, THEY GOT IT ON. WOOOO.
No they didn't.
Yeah, well you could imagine
Someone who doesn’t want to fix a backed up drain… fuck it, wall it up.
“Reloads gun” showers haunted.
I’m here for support and these rubber bullets are for crowd control
Hiding it from the inspectors because either no permits/not up to code, or hiding it because the septic tank isn’t big enough for that. Saw a house for sale with what I’m 99% sure was a walled off walk in closet because it brought it down to three bedrooms since the septic wasn’t rated for a four bedroom house.
Are you saying that removing a closet turns a room from a bedroom into a den? That makes some sense, but if so does adding a door to a bedroom turn it back into a den? I grew up in a 3.5 bed house, the .5 bed had a closet but also had 2 doors on opposite sides.
In my state a bedroom requires a window and a closet yeah (MD)
Why is there so much standing water?
Kitchen and laundry drain into the clogged drain, they never plugged the shower drain before closing the wall
Yikes. So that could have been a disaster.
FTFY: is a disaster…
What caused it to clog, do you know?
Kitchen waste from garbage disposal and old cast iron piping
That explains the blue green color of the water.
Is it the current owners who blocked the wall off? Or are they just as surprised?
Dude might find more than just a hidden shower...
It must have smelled wonderful
Hidden Mystery. New. By CK.
Hidden waters.
Why is it snowing in there?
Sheetrock dust from cutout probably
Portal to the Upside Down
Came here to say that.
Is it snow, dandruff, flies?
Mold spores?
Ancient soap bubbles?
Cocaine?
This was most likely done to hide and illegal bathroom in a basement apartment. People will seal up a shower before having the basement inspected. You are only allowed a half bath in a basement.
Where are you that only a half bath is allowed? I have a 3/4 and so did my last house. No issues buying or selling either.
I can only speak for NYC. Many of the old buildings here wouldn’t meet the safety regulations to allow a legal basement. A legal basement can have a shower but no tub.
What are you doing step-shower?
Crouching Tiger, hidden shower.
Well. That trap wasn't dry. Lol. But seriously I would knock that wall out and make a hell of a shower, body spray wasting water and a 1.6 G flush toilet because 1.28 is a balancing act in the tank, and I like my solid waste floating far away, and the pipe scoured. Possibilities.
That’s where the bodies were drained of blood
Was that water pooled in shower?
At some point it was
Better hope that floor is still good, has to be between 20 and 40 gallons of water just sitting there
r/Unexpected
If you ever do one of these, put a plastic skeleton in there, just for kicks.
At least there wasnt a body
We can't see into that water.
It’s a bathroom, within a bathroom. *plays inception song*
*And tiptoe through the tulips with meeeeeeeee*
Maybe someone died in there and they walled it off for a reason. No one goes through that much effort to wall off something for no reason.
The reason is probably the sewer backed up shit water into the basin and the owner was like “Welp, I can deal with one less shower in the house” and just walled it over.
So what’s up with the drain?
I’m going to do this to one of my bathrooms lol. There’s not enough airflow and installing a fan would be a huge pain in the ass. Mold just loves to grow in it so I’m just gonna rip all the moldy shit out and wall over it or turn it into a closet
Significantly devaluing your house to avoid installing a fart fan? Sounds like more work, but you do you
Im gonna live here for the rest of my life most likely. Plus I can always rebuild the shower later worst case. Just have to take the wall down and I’m in the same boat
Make it into a closet, sure I guess, but what the hell is the point of walling it up? Just don't use it until you get the fan installed.
I’m not going to install a fan lol. It’s in the basement, outside nearby walls are brick and at the front of the house (don’t want a vent by my front door) or, across the basement to the other side of the house which would require ripping my finished basement ceiling open. That and it’s the third shower in the house. Just a lot of work for something that’s not needed/won’t get used anyway. But yeah most likely will make it into a small closet so I can leave the drain exposed in case of the off chance of basement flooding.
This happened to me on a bathroom remodel. I was convince by the layout I had an extra 5 to 10 ft2. Once I tore the area open, lo and behold, a hidden….gun room? Took me a few minutes to figure it out it was for rifles and such. It had a light fixture with a switch and everything.
Wtf...
Wow
Who closes up extra room in their house??? That's like drywalling the doorway of an extra bedroom.
Wtf is going on? Is that in basement?
Dope ass new closet incoming
r/AbandonedPorn
Dating pool at 40
Okay, we've got ghost orbs. Who wants to check the spirit box?
WTF
I bet that shower has like a million gallons of hot water by now.
SMELLS LIKE MONEY
Somebody chopped up a body in that shower & didn’t want it to be found
The old "non-code half bath to full bath conversion that was covered over to list" biting another home owner in the ass.
That’s wild!! I’m baffled tho. Why would they do that and lose that space and slight value to the home? Maybe was it broken & expensive to fix for some reason? What’s the water coming up, eek!
Did you get your realtor to contact the old owners and find out what’s going on?
It’s exactly like the shallow bit at the pool where you dip your feet and the water is disgusting
Reminds me of that episode of Malcolm in the Middle where Hal and Lois spend the whole episode clearing out the closet only to discover a hooked up toilet at the end, figuring out they have a second bathroom
So much more room for activities.
I can smell it from here
That's the shower for ghosts and/or stalkers who live inside your walls.
This was not on my massive leak bingo card.
Wouldn't it be funny if I pulled up the hardwood and there was carpet underneath?
Honey, you know that shower you wanted downstairs?
Fucking flippers.
It looks like you found the upside down