What Insane Quirks in Your Home...

[Notasinglefuckwasgiven]

Drove you mad when you moved in? What madness from its past life did you find? And why do you absolutely love your home even though it has the lurgy...?

[RaphaellaTheSpanishWaterDog]

Not our current house but our last one....when we purchased it in 2011 the PO had started a program of restoration work on the period house but due to ill health had not proceeded beyond repkacement I got the roof and done timbers.

The first floor bathroom contained an old high level loo that he and his family had been using for the twenty years of their ownership. Nothing wrong with that - I love old high level loos - but in this particular instance the cistern was actually situated on the floor of the second floor bedroom directly above the bathroom.

The flush mechanism was operated by pulling a piece of string that hung down through a hole in the ceiling. Anyone sleeping in the bedroom above knew exactly when someone was using the facilities!

It took us three years to transform the house from an unmortgageable wreck to a comfortable family home, but that bathroom was one of the last jobs things we tackled.....then we sold up.....

Another quirk of that house was the sheer quantity of hooks in every ceiling....and the bright red attic bedroom - leading us to question what business was carried out there.

Current house was previously owned by someone obsessed by security - there are cctv cables running literally everywhere - thick bunches of them!

[RaphaellaTheSpanishWaterDog]

beyond replacement of the roof and some timbers grrrr, bloody iPad has a mind of its own!

[emwithme]

We are doing a complete (back to the brickwork) renovation of a house built in 1887, last updated in the 1970s

So far we have found:

Bad Things

A window - blocked up with a fence panel and then plasterboarded over.
Missing RSJs - when the sliding doors between the two living rooms were removed, the builders found the upstairs being held up by two 8 foot long pieces of timber (6" x 3"); swiftly supported by an acrow prop. Same issue was found in all doorways that have been moved (back living room, hallway to breakfast room, breakfast room to kitchen)
Stud wall between front big bedroom and smaller bedroom was being held up by the sink/radiator (sink one side, radiator the other). When these were removed, the wall fell down.
Water pipes for the sinks had been pushed through from the upstairs bathroom in the gap between the floorboards and the downstairs ceilings, with no access at all.

Nicer Things

On Thursday May 28, the carpet in the hallway was removed. We found about half a dozen pages of The Daily News from Thursday 25 May 1911.

The house was seriously stuck in the 1970s - I referred to it as the most 70s house I'd been in, despite being alive back then (!) - was riddled with damp, wet rot, dry rot, woodworm (you name it, the survey pointed it out) but I knew from three steps in that it was my Forever House I am never buying a property with my heart again

[Fizrim]

Our first house also had a high level flush but at least ours was in the same room snob. And what a room it was - woodwork painted purple (including the lead lined box of the flush) only relieved by 70s floral blue and purple wallpaper. They even painted a wooden chair purple to match. The ice that formed on the inside of the window in winter was a nice touch (no central heating).

Our second property had a kitchen wallpapered in a small brightly-coloured floral print (popular in the eighties, which was not the decade in which we purchased it) and the massive window had a blind to match the wallpaper. I demonstrated this feature to a friend ('look at this') by pulling the blind down and she pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her pocket and put them on.

[bettysviolin]

Bad things: mad wiring. The bulbs blow after a few days. Can't afford to get it properly fixed, but have had a few patch up jobs to make it safe.

Gorgeous extension design was then built on the cheap. The floors are uneven.

Old windows. I know you are supposed to love original features but these are manky and rusted and very hard to open or clean. Would love replacements but again, too much.

Love everything else about the house though: big square rooms, fantastic outlook over countryside, lovely original features (apart from the windows) such as parquet flooring and fireplace.

[Notasinglefuckwasgiven]

These are brilliant! Mine has to date...
The sockets for the fitted kitchen are ( drum roll ) under the bloody sink.
The electric supply to the bathroom sockets which are plastered over are simply cut wires with tape on them, the immersion tank was a loose element literally sat in the hole in the top!
Mostly fixed now. Bathroom is ongoing. But I love this house! It's spacious, old and by the river. It was cheap due to its crazy previous owners ideas but I'm in an area I wouldn't be otherwise and I swear it has mood swings, this old place

[PoorNeglectedBike]

When we channeled out bits for rewriting it went - paint / paper / plaster / paper / plaster / brick

[CookieMonstersAngryTwin]

Our old flat seemed ideal... a few godawful shock surprises were being able to put your finger through the plaster in the bedroom it was that damp, the kitchen walls bending in so we had to sand half the wall off fitting a new kitchen and a storage heater which went lukewarm. At its highest setting.

None of which was picked up on any survey, needless to say we're now happily settled in a new build

[dannydyerismydad]

The shower is at the wrong end of the bath, so I have to stand on tiptoes with my heels up the back rest bit to wash my hair.

[groovejet]

When we moved in our current home we were a little bemused as to why the shower head was positioned so low down the pole. A couple of showers later we realised it was because it leaked at normal height, just wish they had warned us it only cost a couple of pounds to sort with some new sealant.

Lot's of little niggles, we have discovered why the grass in the middle of the lawn is so difficult to maintain, previous owners just lay turf over a concrete path, a bigger issue with the boiler, that one really annoyed me. Have fixed most of the problems although we are about to redo the bathroom so may discover more shoddy work whilst that is being done.

Still happy here though we hated our last place that was just a house to us this place is our home.

[CrispyFB]

Our house we moved into recently, I think the seller had a bit of a lightbulb fetish. In nearly every single room, even the hallways, has multibulb lighting in each ceiling fitting with a variety of "trendy" styles. The living room alone has two of them, each with six bulbs on, so twelve bulbs altogether. They all take fancy bulbs of differing sizes that are going to be impossible to find and almost certainly not energy efficient. There are 48 lightbulbs to potentially replace - and this isn't a mansion!

I dunno, maybe this is a "thing" these days, but we don't like it!

[Ruhrpott]

We had a similar problem. 26 light bulbs in kitchen, 12 in lounge, 12 in hallway, 14 in one bedroom, 8 in bathroom. Our electricity bill shot up. We have now replaced most of the horrible light fittings and put led bulbs in.

[CrispyFB]

Quite!! In our last house we had entirely energy saving LEDs of one type or another, and never more than one per light fitting so probably only about a dozen in the whole house. With the DC leaving lights on all the time this could get really expensive with our first bill..

How easy was it to replace the fittings? Did you do it yourself or get in a local electrician? What sort of cost is it? I've read so many different answers online!!

[HeyMicky]

A light switch plate on a wall at the end of a long hallway. It's the only thing on the wall.

THEY INSTALLED IT CROOKED

Every time I walk down the hall I twitch

[Ruhrpott]

My husband is good at changing light fittings so he did it. It looks quite easy when he does it, I've no idea how though. We replaced lots fittings with 5 light bulbs in for single ones and now for example only have three in hall. Still have 9 in utility room though so changed them to 4 watt led bulbs.

[Watto1]

The letterbox is in the back door and the catflap is in the front door .

[Ruhrpott]

The nine lights in the utility, were 50 watt each, so 450 watt, now 4 watt led bulbs and the new single bulb fitting over dining table. This is instead of the 5 bulb fitting that was there which blinded anyone sitting at the table.

[CrispyFB]

Mine has changed wall sockets before, I guess it's a similar sort of thing only a ladder is involved.

Ours are not entirely dissimilar to the ones you have, except it's different for every room and no consistency anywhere so there's not even a theme! It IS way too bright, there are dimmers on some of them, but even so..

[Notasinglefuckwasgiven]

I am so glad in a twisted way it's not just my house that has psycho tendencies

[TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams]

Our bathroom extractor fan was wired through the airbrick, down the outside of the house, back in through another airbrick and simply plugged into a socket in the kitchen, which itself was run off another socket, run off a socket etc. Bog standard electrical cord, no weather proofing of any kind......

The fan oven we had in our first house used to trip out the fuse board everytime we switched on the oven while it warmed up. If only one of us was in the house, we had to ask guests to hold up the mains "tab" to stop it happening while we cooked them dinner ....

[ruby1234]

Mine has a public right of way running through it.
When the house was built in the 1980's, the original right of way was re-routed round the side of the house. Regulations then said (something like) if someone were to challenge the original footpath route then the house may have to be demolished to re-site the path to its original place. The builders handily got round some of that rule by placing the doors of the house on the route of the path, so in theory you can walk through the front door, the porch door, the lounge, dining room and out of the patio on the exact route the original path took, and rejoin the path at the end of the garden.
We have been here 20 years now and no-one has asked to walk the route and now the 'new' right of way is the actual one, so nobody can anymore ask to walk through the house.
Caused us loads of (mortgage) problems when we bought it, and no doubt still will when we sell it.

[flightywoman]

Ours was built as a house but had been split into two flats. It then caught fire and the repairs returned it to being one whole house which is what we bought.

When we moved in it had been empty for a few months after all the work had been 'completed' but there had been no-one to snag it so loads of things were a bit off or just wrong...

The bathroom door wouldn't stay shut. Took me ages to realise that it was because there was no 'thing' on the door-frame for the lock to actually latch into.

The loo wouldn't lock because the 'thing' on the door-frame was out of alignment and the door frame isn't flush to the wall, it's about 3 inches out.

The dining-room door won't close properly because the door-handle is about 1-2mm too close to the door-frame. This one pisses me off every day.

The boiler wouldn't start.

The shower didn't give hot water, and has always been a bit intermittent, there was no shower curtain rail or shower doors.

The utility room flooded when I used the washing machine - it was all plumbed in correctly, I did it myself, but the pipework done by the builders was shoddy. I got them back to sort that out.

The water stop-cock is behind the fridge.

The kitchen is really badly designed and has only 2 drawers. I LONG for drawers.

And all the plug sockets are part-way up the wall, presumably to comply with DDA regs, even though the corridor and doorways aren't wide enough for a wheelchair and there is a step up to the house.

Weirdest of all, the tv just wouldn't work, the aerial was plugged into the wall socket but the screen kept saying there was no signal. About a week later I was in the garden and I looked up at the roof, only to realise that there was no actual aerial up there. So we had to get an aerial fitted. The irony being that the house had been given a whole new roof but they hadn't put the aerial back up.

I love my house, it's lovely but the refurb was a piss-take. I'd never use that company if I need work doing.

[Notasinglefuckwasgiven]

Ah we could swap kitchens! I have multiple drawers, and worktops with cupboards under, and not 1 single on the wall cupboard. Just...tiles. Tiles as far as the eye can see. If it won't go in a drawer or a unit it gets chucked out

[SevenAteNine]

Home made wooden windows. With home made wooden lintels above.
A broken concrete floot. On the first floor.
Gas lamps.

[SevenAteNine]

I bloody love my house.