My sister used to be a nanny for two very successful lawyers in the Seattle area. Since then they have built an even larger house on Lake Washington that is probably >$8-10M in value.

She was housesitting for them this past weekend and we stopped by to say hi. The house is pretty over the top in terms of quality, etc.

They had a lot of normal rich-people stuff like theatre room, huge wine cellar, tile that is imported from italy, etc etc.

I am generally pretty up to date with current rich people things, but one aspect of the home in particular surprised me.

My wife asked if they planed to retire in the home, and she said "Yeah, there is a shaft hidden in one of these walls for an elevator".

As a non-rich person, I would have never considered putting in a place for a future elevator into a house that was being built. Now that I think about it, it's pretty brilliant.

This thread sucks but I already typed out this post so I'm going with it...

ive seen both shafts for potential elevators as well as actual elevators in homes costing well under a million...

What about the elevator/no shaft combo.

A friend of a friend has a four story condo on Queene Anne. First floor is garage and spare bedroom w/ full bath. Second floor is Master bedroom, third is kitchen, dinning, and living room with balcony. Fourth floor is a roof top deck. All connected by stairs and an elevator. Place was super sick and had an epic view of Elliot Bay. The resident? A fat bastard that was 22, son of a rich ass parent. His older brother lived next door in a matching unit. Rich lazy bastards.

I've gotten the shaft before, but no elevator.

Trophy wives.

There is a rich girl who goes to college with me that has a personal driver that drives her around campus in her pearl white Lexus GX470. He does small tasks for her like laundry, cleaning etc. also. Her parents live in NY and he lives alone in a separate apartment outside of campus. Completely absurd. Seriously I would be so embarrassed to have a personal driver/slave.

There was a billionaire's daughter who went to high school with me (prep school so she was rich for anyone's standards) and not only did she have a guest house behind her 15,000 square foot ultra mansion which is standard for rich people, she also had a deck house (with and elevator of course). Her entire 4 story deck had multiple levels of redwood decking and it all wrapped around this gorgeous multi-level deck house. It's just hard to explain but it was immensely baller and overlooking a lake. Bill Clinton hosted a fundraiser on this deck. I was not invited.

What's even more absurd is she had a personal trolley from her house that transported people from the deck house hundreds of feet down a steep hill to their boat house on the lake (they lived on a cliff overlooking a lake). She also has 4 other houses around the world. That's standard rich people stuff though.

Spiral wine cellar built into the kitchen floor

A savings account?

But seriously, the obsession with clothing and jewelry has always confused me.

Now that is pretty badass.

Money

money?

OH.MY.GOD.

that is incredible. that is the kind of thing I'm talking about

My friend's dad makes a lot of money. They bought a pretty big house back in the day... a little over 8000 sqft. Through the giant double front door thing was this sort of open-framed partly glass stairway going down. Under the stairway was a giant pond... like 4000 gallons? It had a fountain on each side of the stairs.. big rock wall with waterfalls, Koi, all kinds of lighting...

Also they had a secret passage.

here's a company that builds them but it's in UK. They have a nice gallery
http://www.spiralcellars.co.uk/showcase/