'oh ffs why did they do that?' What in your house is going to make a future buyer swear? of your house go '

[BarrelOfOtters2]

Just bumped my head on the cabinet above our loo, the door opens at head height, and nearly got trapped in the utility due to poor placing of door handles where 2 doors knock into each other.

There's also a random door - that we ran out of steam with builders to work out what to do with...so it needs to come off - but we find it handy to corral the cats for the vets so it hasn't yet...

Similar, we moved in last year, shower in our daughters en-suite has the floor and tiles up to the tray and all sealed, now a pipe is leaking so we either rip out the floor/tiles and shower tray to fix it or cut into the ceiling below :-( i think we're going in via the ceiling.

One reception room that has a skylight that doesn’t open as the only light source ( planning permission). Hived off some of the garage as a utility room so what’s left of the garage can’t accommodate a car. Light switches that don’t turn anything on ( inherited these).

The hideous shadow carpet that shows footmarks when you walk on it, the crappy workbenches that scratch every time you put something on them and the hideous brown vanity unit in the bathroom.

None put in by me, but I hate them with a passion !!

Not our fault but the people who lived in our house before us put the pump for the central heating/hot water under the floor in one of the bedrooms. It's reasonably accessible but still annoying.

What is our fault - no airing cupboard - hot water cylinder is in the loft. This was so we could fit in an extra loo.

Our house has had adaptions to make it more accessible to cats.

Ah... we thought we were in this position too. But we contacted the plumber who had set it all up. Turns out there's a secret passage in the loft to sort out the bath (also in the loft)
it goes all round the house in the eaves so I would never have thought it was there.
So check - there may be something nifty.

We have to remember to turn the upstairs landing light on from the opposite side of the hall to the stairs because the previous owners had it wired in the most inconvenient place possible, even then there is no light above the stairs so have to go up and down in semi darkness. No window on the side either so always dark on the stairs.

Pretty much our whole house - an "architect designed" 1980's split level 4 bedroom creation:

Come up the outside stone steps to the front door which opens into a large hall way. From the hall way you can go downstairs to a long dark hallway with bedrooms and bathroom or right down to another hallway again with bedrooms, shower room and weird random space. Or through to the middle of the living room:

Our living room is long and narrow with a wide chimney breast giving a large alcove at one end and a door to the "dining room" at the other. The hearth is the length of the chimney breast. The fire place is off centre leaving a large expanse of 1980's slate. The doors are diagonally opposite each other and the only way to reach the kitchen (other than downstairs, along the hallway and up again) is through the living room and the dining room.

Through the living room and into the dining room:

A tiny room with a room divider and open to the kitchen. The kitchen is a typical U shape with a small area of work surfaces and the oven/hob as part of the U o very little working space. On the open end of the U is a cupboard door meaning you can't put a table or work surface against the wall because then you can't access the cupboard.

From the kitchen there is a set of stairs to the hall way with bedrooms and bathroom and door to the garden.

The family bathroom is huge with the bath parallel to the window. If the bath was turned by 90 degrees the bathroom could be smaller and the bedrooms bigger.

On the lowest floor (accessible from the other end of the hall there's access to the garage, two bedrooms, shower room and a weird space that we use for storage.

There are two windows in the tiny shower room - one normal window and one that is in the shower but partly blocked by the wall of the weird space.

This was my parents' dream house and we have lived hear for 30 years but have never had the money to pour into it to make flow.

The kitchen in the house we recently bought:

No splashback behind the 90cm hob, just painted plaster. This is the most baffling thing I’ve ever seen. We have 4 (yes 4) Miele wall ovens, acres of granite worktops and no hob splashback.

Huge kitchen with an integrated fridge of a size more suited to a two bedroom flat. Starting to conclude previous owners neither ate nor cooked.

Acres of shallow cupboards that are absolutely useless for storing anything useful, fixed with nonsensically low shelves that are e.g. too short to store a bottle of squash upright.

Pull out larder fitted against a wall so only one side is accessible.

Expensive Miele dishwasher with racks too small to accommodate standard size dinner plates. We either use side plates or hand wash.

Our tiny kitchen didn't have a cutlery drawer either when we moved in, I coped for 14years before we built an extension and I now have a lot of drawers. I was very excited when I 1st got to use them.

Our tiny kitchen didn't have a cutlery drawer either when we moved in, I coped for 14years before we built an extension and I now have a lot of drawers. I was very excited when I 1st got to use them.

I bet you were like a kid at Christmas!! It's bonkers that the drawers are one of the things I'm most excited about in our new home. I think unless you've lived with a small kitchen with no drawers you wouldn't understand the joy of having somewhere out of sight for those items to call home.

Light switches in inconvenient places (old victoria terrace), at front door and back door, so you have to walk across a dark room to switch the lights on🤷
Also, the noises the plumbing makes🤔I've had a plumber who turned water pressure down...... No different🤦

If the next owner of our house decides to reconfigure the kitchen they will be spitting mad when they take the cupboards off the walls. The kitchen fitters who installed our new units did the plastering after the cupboards were installed. The walls are in really bad shape because the cowboys who did our last kitchen 15 years ago used polyfilla instead of plastering. The lining paper took ages to remove so I left most of the paper up where the cupboards were going.
Sorry future home buyers!

Most of the bodges are from the previous owner (apparently her dad did a lot of it). I've sorted quite a lot. One I haven't sorted is 2 layers of tiles on the bathroom floor.

One I've caused is a double socket in the living room no longer wired to anything. It was spurred from another and I had to disconnect it to install a woodburner. The plan is to reroute the wiring when I do the kitchen as I'll pull the ceiling down as part of that job. It's miles away though. (no chance of rewiring it as is due to the stone floor)

Ah yes, we put in a lovely new back door and a nice utility door and the joiner was horrified at us putting a cat flap in both. (A fancy lockable one so no random cats). But he was really just horrified. I was thinking = the next owner will probably share that view...

This is a growing trend of annoyance in recent years . I think people who dewing kitchens these days cut costs and don’t actually know how kitchen works
It’s almost impossible to buy 5 drawer units at reasonable prices- only the fancy manufacturers or ikea with it odd sizes makes them.
I moved into my new house knowing (cos I checked) my kitchen only had 2 pan drawers..wtf….where did they put cutlery, utensils, tea towels, etc etc.
I Had to move the fridge position and squeezed in a set of drawers. I couldn’t get 5 drawer to match. Even the 4 drawers I got doesn’t quite match.
I wish all under counter kitchen cabinets were drawers (except corners and odd spaces). So much easier. And for anyone with disability or elderly so much easier to access.
we need to start a “bring back drawers” campaign

My vendors had bricked in both patio doors in the sittingroom so it had no windows. They called it a cinema room. I called it a dungeon. I am spending a lot of money getting the doors reinstated. Fgs - why do people do this. They were flipping the house anyway..why on earth did they think that was an improvement 🤦‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️

Our front door doesn’t have a snick closure ( or rather it did but it is irreplaceably damaged) . You have to hold it closed by the very robust lock.
When we moved in I was going to replace the door so you could open and close it without locking, but I couldn’t find one which was glass all the way down, which we like. And the glass matches the glass in the four surrounding panels… Also one of the men who came to do an estimate for the replacement told me it was the ‘sort of quality you can’t get now’.

Its surprising how you get used to locking yourself in all the time.

We have a loo just off our kitchen, which I imagine a lot of people will find off-putting. We just desperately needed a second loo and there was absolutely nowhere else for one to go - we don't have a hallway, and the under stairs cupboard is too small. The house rule is the kitchen loo is for wees only!

It'll convert easily enough into a pantry or a small utility though.

Re the drawers, it is possible to buy retrofit pull out baskets for kitchen cupboards which do pretty much the same job. I know this because we have just put them into two base cupboards. The base mounted ones are easier than the side mounted.

My whole house is designed for tall people. People smaller than about 5'5 are going to have issues, but it's perfect if you're 5'8 and above.

My wired smoke alarm is wired from the bt phone line coming into the house.
I mostly ignore it as haven't begun to think about sorting the hallway out where it is. The electrician who came to do some work laughed at it.

In our tiny downstairs loo I couldn’t be bothered to properly clean, strip and repaint the window so I just cleaned up the bottom, painted over it then hung a frilly tart’s knickers blind over the rest. Its removal will reveal my laziness.

I was also too cheap to buy enough floor paint for the bedroom so just got enough for the floor that’s visible around the rugs, which will come with us when we move and reveal large chunks of grim, flaking varnished floor. There may also be some unpainted wall behind bits of furniture.

That should be a random cat who has decided to move in and refuses to move out again.

A friend of mine acquired another cat by finding one in their house. They advertised for a year for someone to take the cat but no-one did. The cat also kept coming back to their house every time they chucked it out.

It took a friend 5 years of swearing at the previous owners before she realised she had a hidden cutlery drawer in the top of her super wide pan drawer in the kitchen of her new house.....