Mysteries in this world. Add your own

[Ωhm]

With all this free time I find myself pondering. Most houses I've visited and mine too, when I owned a house, have silver door knobs for the bathroom, while all other door knobs in the house are brass. WHY? At one time someone showed me they had silver on one side of the door and brass on the other side. See if something is not real simple, I get all mixed up.
 

[mjben]

I've noticed that too.

And with all of my free time I can finally research these trivial ponderings...

 

According to a comment on houzz.com:

 

"Nickel (and then later chrome) were used in bathrooms pre-ventilation, because it does not have to be polished like brass to keep a shine and it does not oxidize. Nickel could be wiped off with ammonia if necessary and chrome is even less maintenance. Brass without the lacquer would tarnish and then the tarnish would rub off on towels and such."

[Ωhm]

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. I rationalized if someone was in your home or you were visiting someone else home and needed to use the bathroom, you could find it by the silver door knobs if all the doors were closed. Quick response.

[JMO413]

I have always wondered this also. It drives me nuts. I actually changed all of them in my house to silver beacuse I like it better. I even went to the extent to change the hinges to silver beacuse it just bugged me that they no longer matched. 

[eaglescout526]

Is this an older house thing? I remember all the handles in my house being the same brass plated handles for years till we changed all the doors.

[amsuco]

I must not be as OCD as some others on here.  I'm reading this thread and my thoughts are more along the lines of "I have door handles on all the doors.  I'm Good!"

[Ωhm]

41 minutes ago, eaglescout526 said:

Is this an older house thing?

I guess I'm talking about houses built in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. Don't know if this holds true for anything build before or after that.

[JMO413]

1 hour ago, amsuco said:

I must not be as OCD as some others on here.  I'm reading this thread and my thoughts are more along the lines of "I have door handles on all the doors.  I'm Good!"

I am very OCD but only with some weird things not everything. 

[schardein]

Another interesting thing about brass doorknobs- they are naturally antibacterial.  Discovered this surfing the net one time, don't remember what I was originally searching for...

[Minuit]

When we bought this house, it had el cheapo "brushed aluminum" door knobs on all of the doors, interior and exterior. The exterior door knobs and deadbolts are now brass.

[tugboat95]

All mine are brass colored but my house was built in the 90s.

89 Comanche
Eliminator
2wd
4.0L
5 speed PukeGoat
Factory Original

[Pete M]

if any single interior door is going to be replaced or updated or changed, it's likely to be the bathroom.  changing alllllll the doors costs real money.  but if I was remodeling the bathroom, you better believe the door or at least the hardware would be updated (likely with the plans to update everything else later on).

[youngfred]

...

 

 

Trying to stay busy, during these times.

 

I just finished removing, all-of-the-lint,

out of my belly-button, as I wondered:

 

Why do Hospitals, Medical Centers,

and Doctor's Offices - all have:

 

Door Knobs

Pull Handles

 

on all of their doors ???

 

 

youngfred

[Eagle]

11 hours ago, Ωhm said:

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. I rationalized if someone was in your home or you were visiting someone else home and needed to use the bathroom, you could find it by the silver door knobs if all the doors were closed. Quick response.

 

Nope. My house was built in 1950 by (for) my parents. It was a low budget house. All the doorknobs are brass (plated), except the bathroom door knobs are brass on the hallweay side and nickel (or some shiny, silver-ish color) on the bathroom side. mjben's answer seems like the best explanation.

[Ωhm]

5 hours ago, Eagle said:

mjben's answer seems like the best explanation.

Yeah, that's better then what I could dream up.

[FrankTheDog]

Like Eagle’s house mine was built in 1950 also. The bathroom is one of the few doors that we haven’t switched out since we moved here in 1998. It has the same door knob setup also. Brass in the hallway like most of the door knobs when we moved in and chrome inside.

[gogmorgo]

My parents’ house, built circa 1904, has the same knobs on all the interior door handles. Pretty sure they’re cast iron. But we’re pretty sure the plumbing isn’t original, unless it was normal to have a bathroom the same size as the bedrooms back in the day.

[Pete M]

20 hours ago, gogmorgo said:

My parents’ house, built circa 1904, has the same knobs on all the interior door handles. Pretty sure they’re cast iron. But we’re pretty sure the plumbing isn’t original, unless it was normal to have a bathroom the same size as the bedrooms back in the day.

 

 

do any of your closets have a mysterious hole in the floor? 

[gogmorgo]

 

52 minutes ago, Pete M said:

 

 

do any of your closets have a mysterious hole in the floor? 

Not that I’ve noticed. Are you thinking about a rudimentary waste disposal system? 
During a landscaping project in the back yard we discovered a few ~3’ diameter “plugs” you could say of rich organic soil in stark contrast to the sandy and somewhat rocky almost glacial-till-like soil that makes up the rest of the yard, which is pretty suggestive of what made up the original sewage disposal system. 
Interestingly when the sewer was added to the house, they repurposed some of the plumbing for the rainwater catchment system for the sewer stack. There’s also an ornate grate over a hole on the main floor directly above the 10’ cube cistern that I guess would’ve essentially been an indoor well.