Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Culture
  3. Legacy Archives

Who needs stairs? These houses have indoor slides

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

If you’ve only ever gone down a slide outdoors, you might need some wealthier friends. Indoor slides exist in a few residential homes, and we have the pictures to prove it.

Steve Jones, founder and CEO of ChaCha, has one made of mahogany in his home. It took 18 months to build and cost around $150,000, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Carmel, Indiana, home is hiding a few other surprises, including a secret bookcase and two-story treehouse. Jones gave HGTV a tour of the 1938 manor-style house, which is outfitted with all kinds of home automation, too. His alarm clock opens the blinds and turns on the fire when it’s time for him to get up.

Recommended Videos

Builder Steve Kuhl transformed an entire bedroom into a pirate ship. It has a hull, a bridge, a wheel … Honestly, it kind of overwhelms the fact that the room also has a secret slide. There are stairs or a rope to climb if you want to take another ride, according to My Modern Met. But Kuhl also put another $9,000 slide in his own home, for his kids to enjoy. Plus, it requires ascending the stairs if they want another ride, he tells WSJ.

Related: 10 homes so lavish they have actual shark tanks inside them

The article also features John and September Higham, who built a slide, zipline, and climbing wall in their Mountain View, California, home for their kids. The whimsical features aren’t entirely surprising for an aerospace engineer and software consultant who quit their jobs to spend a year hauling two kids across 28 countries back in the early 2000s.

A house with an indoor slide might feel like something out of the movie Blank Check, but that doesn’t mean we don’t secretly want one.

East Village Penthouse, Turett Collaborative Architects — New York, New York

In New York City, Turett Collaborative Architects helped a client transform two penthouse condos into a two-bedroom duplex via a connecting slide. There are also stairs, but the stainless steel tube is clearly the best way to go.

Sliding into Home, Coburn Development — Boulder, Colorado

A 4,700-square-foot home with five bedrooms and four bathrooms isn’t exactly small, so the owners decided to add a slide, with the help of Coburn Development.

Skyhouse, David Hotson Architect — New York, New York

In the appropriately named Skyhouse in New York, designed by David Hotson Architect, a slide takes visitors all around the home, even offering access and entry points on different levels.

Greenville Estate, Gabriel Builders — Greer, South Carolina

While it’s not connecting two separate floors, this indoor playhouse’s slide is still exactly one more slide than we had in our homes growing up.

A Pirate’s Life for Me, Kuhl Design — Minneapolis, Minnesota

The amazing orange slide might be the lamest thing about this room, which also features a floating pirate ship, from Kuhl Design.

Prewar Loft, raad studio — Greenwich Village, New York

If our home office, like this one designed by raad studio, had a slide, well, we’d never get anything done.

Stanwood Equestrian Residence, Designs Northwest — Stanwood, Washington

This house, from Designs Northwest, is on the grounds of a horse-boarding facility. Presumably, the slide is not for the ponies.

This was originally a post from our brother site, Digital Trends.

Jenny McGrath
Former Former Digital Trends Contributor, The Manual
Please reach out to The Manual editorial staff with any questions or comments about Jenny’s work. Read Full Bio
We’re only a few months away from our new Bond, Producer Amy Pascal teases
Accessories, Sunglasses, Transportation

Since Daniel Craig bit the big one in his James Bond swan song in 2021’s No Time to Die, fans have been waiting to find out who the next person to drink the martini shaken instead of stirred will be. In true Bond fandom fashion, a whole slew of fancasts have started to muddle the waters as to who could possibly be the new 007. Callum Turner, Jacob Elordi, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and more have all been pitched as possible replacements. Some more ethnically diverse options like Henry Golding and Rene Jean-Page have also emerged. But, alas, no word has come down from on high to give us the scratch to this fan itch raging on for the last five years. That is, until Producer Amy Pascal sat down during her Spider-Man: Brand New Day press tour and gave a bit of insight on when we can expect an announcement, and also what we can expect in the cast.

I would say the end of the year is a good bet. We are being really, really methodical. – Amy Pascal

Read more
Elevate your elegance: Choosing your first cigar
Face, Head, Person

Earlier this year, I was strolling the streets of New York and ended up sitting in the Carnegie Club with an Old Fashioned in one hand and a cigar in the other while My Way by Frank Sinatra played from a speaker flanking leather-bound books behind the couch I had been using as my perch. It was my first cigar, but it led to a slight obsession that recently found me on the back deck of a lodge in Kenya, staring at Mount Kilimanjaro and smoking a stick while giraffes meandered by. Admittedly, there has been no intention in my budding hobby; I am aimlessly choosing the cigars that look good (the ones that look like those smoked by Arnold or Stallone in the movies, obviously). But I have decided to approach these in a new way, with a little help from my friends over at La Aurora, who graciously decided to navigate my ignorance with some info compiled by Brand Manager John Gaglio, with input from Master Blender Manuel Ynoa, CEO Ed McKenna, and Brand Manager Elvis Batista.

What to look for in your first cigar

Read more
FIFA’s Gianni Infantino Is Uglifying the Beautiful Game With $20 Billion Plot — But the Global Soccer Community’s Punching Back
People, Person, Crowd

For the better part of two decades, perhaps even more, corruption has allegedly run rampant within FIFA. Sepp Blatter, in particular, became the face of alleged extortion schemes, and he operated with impunity while at the helm of the organization for 17 years, from 1998 until his forced resignation in 2015 amid an FBI corruption probe. He’s banned for life from all football-related FIFA activities. If you’re new to the organization’s alleged deep connection to corruption, Netflix offers a brilliant 2022 documentary, FIFA Uncovered. In that documentary, Gianni Infantino appears in his previous capacity as Secretary General of UEFA (2009-2016) and later as the newly elected FIFA president, who vowed to root out corruption and hand the beautiful game back to the people where it belongs.

That, as it turns out, was all wishful thinking.

Read more