9 homes with indoor slides

East Village penthouse

Combining two one-bedroom apartments in New York City's East Village into one penthouse unit gave this condo owner extra space for a game room and a putting green on the terrace, among other things.

But the real fun comes via the way these two apartments, one atop the other, have been combined into a single space. At the owner's request, Turett Collaborative Architects linked the apartments with a stylish staircase and a helical, half-tube stainless-steel slide that descends through an 18-foot, glass-enclosed atrium. In addition to views of the city, the slide provides a quick route from near the second-floor office in the 2,400-square-foot penthouse to the living room and dining room on the lower floor.

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Twisty Minnesota slide

Among the features that residential design-and-construction firm Kuhl Design Build added to one client's home in Medina, Minn., is a spiral slide. It descends from a round, waist-high opening in the wall of a mud room on the first floor to a padded landing area in the basement.

Builder Steve Kuhl says the slide, which was reclaimed from a local community center, is 55 feet long and completely enclosed within the wall. Only the entrance and exit are visible.

For the less adventurous, an adjacent staircase leads to the basement, which also has a climbing wall.

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Indonesian concrete slide

Jakarta, Indonesia-based architectural firm Aboday kept a family's 5-year-old boy in mind when it designed their home in the suburb of Tangerang. The concrete home includes a coiled slide to speed descent from the boy's second-floor bedroom to the living room downstairs.

As it turns out, the boy is not the only one who uses the slide. It has proved popular with the family's guests, as well.

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Three-story slide in Japan

This Tokyo house by Level Architects has a clean, modern style for grown-ups. But the structure also has a kid-friendly feature: a three-story, interior slide that wraps around the home's core, providing a fast and fun way to get from the third floor to the ground level.

Level Architects has at least one other indoor slide to its credit, as well.

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Chicagoland basement slide

Chicago teacher and blogger Erin Beus and her husband, Shawn, created an indoor slide in their home outside Chicago. Shawn Beus, an electrical engineer, had dreamed of having a built-in slide, and their house had the perfect spot for it: a space inside the wall next to the basement stairs. He cut an opening in the wall to access the space, moved some pipes and heating ducts to make room, and reinforced floor joists to support the extra weight. Meanwhile, Erin Beus found a tube slide online that fit the new space. The couple and their six children now have a zigzag slide that leads to the basement.

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Underground London slide

London's Michaelis Boyd Associates designed a five-bedroom townhouse, completed in 2004, with an indoor pool and a children's play area. Designers aimed for environmental sustainability while coping with restrictions that required it to be built no higher than a 6-foot boundary wall, so it would be hidden from the street. Thus, the two-story house was built mostly underground.

In addition to meeting these guidelines, the project has its whimsical side. The children's play area includes a slide that runs along the staircase to the home's lowest level.

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New Jersey rainbow slide

Designers Robert and Cortney Novogratz built a slide along a staircase as part of a basement redo on their HGTV show, "Home By Novogratz."

The project involved converting a basement in Westfield, N.J., into a haven for the Everett family, with an entertainment center and bar for the parents and a playroom for the three kids. To make getting down to the basement more fun, they added rainbow-inspired stenciling to the steps, as well as an adjoining slide accessed via a cutout in the wall atop the stairs.

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Indiana spiral slide

Woodworker Rodney Miller of Anderson, Ind., says it took 15 months for him and his company, Wood Innovation, to create the spiral staircase and attached 27-foot mahogany slide in inventor Scott Jones' home in suburban Indianapolis.

Jones, who invented voicemail, wanted an extraordinary slide for the Tudor-style mansion he bought and renovated in the mid-1990s. He told Forbes magazine that he spent more than $10 million on the renovations, which also included an indoor treehouse, a full-size movie theater and a therapeutic waterfall shower.

Miller says he constructed the slide using shipbuilding techniques in his garage workshop, which he had to expand for the project. He then disassembled the slide and put it back together in Jones' home.

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Indoor slide to pool

Looking like something out of James Bond's apartments in the 1960s, this slide in a subterranean mansion in Bowdon, England, transports residents and guests from a dressing room off the master bedroom suite to a lower-level pool.

The whole house is underground, and it contains a gym, bar, plant room and garage. It also can be yours, for around $3.17 million.

Note: Currency based on exchange rate as of the week of March 19, 2012.

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