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

166 replies

BarrelOfOtters2 · 27/07/2022 13:59

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...

OP posts:
whenindoubtgotothelibrary · 27/07/2022 19:08

WinterMusings · 27/07/2022 18:29

That stuff is often advertised for kids rooms or playrooms.

'I think fucking NOT' is muttered everytime I see it!! It looks great...when it's new, when you have nothing better to do than hoover/mop/hoover/mop, give up and hand wash!

DH chose a cream rubber studded floor for a bathroom once. Always looked absolutely filthy and was a magnet for grease and hair. After 6 months I had it replaced with something marginally less bonkers. Thank god I didn't let him do the whole of the downstairs in it, which was his original suggestion!

OnceAnElephant · 27/07/2022 19:11

Why is the bathroom sink so high ??

When we redid the bathroom we had the sink fitted 6 inches higher than average as we are a tall family.

Plasmodesmata · 27/07/2022 19:11

Our last house had the most pointless ensuite ever, shower and sink but no toilet, in the corner of the bedroom, carpeted. Wasn't me that put it in but we didn't get round to taking it out either.

Lunaduckdrop · 27/07/2022 19:13

We remodelled the layout and moved the stairs. The next owners will wonder why there is a double socket in the wall above the staircase that can't be reached from anywhere.

Our en suite is on a macerator because it's impossible to connect the toilet to the soil pipe any other way.

The downstairs loo has two doors. It works for us but might not suit subsequent owners - you have to remember to lock both of them!

Whoever built this house didn't deem it necessary to mortar up the vertical joints in the blockwork as well as the horizontal. It took cavity wall insulation and an additional internal insulation layer to make it draft-proof enough to support air-source!

QueSyrahSyrah · 27/07/2022 19:17

The extractor hood doesn't have a stopper fitted, so if you pull it out too far it falls down onto the glass hob below.

thecatsthecats · 27/07/2022 19:17

We have a giant jacuzzi corner bath. Everyone coos over it and says how nice it is.

That motherfucker takes 40m to fill on a good day, and good luck trying to get the bubbles to work. I'd like to see the new buyers testing that on viewing.

Aria999 · 27/07/2022 19:25

@thismeansnothing omg a climbing wall in the bedroom. I should totally do this for DS6 except he would probably break his neck jumping off the top

Sunnysideup · 27/07/2022 19:26

I used n more nails to put a silly funny sign up in the loo. Can’t get the fucker off the wall for love or money. It’s their for eternity,

CornedBeef451 · 27/07/2022 19:27

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen could you give me link to the base mounted pull out baskets please?

That's exactly what I need if and when we finally move but I can't find what I need online, I must be searching weirdly.

HerRoyalNotness · 27/07/2022 19:31

We did the upstairs bathroom as it was 2
tiny rooms with the sink and window to the front and shower and toilet in the back room. Knocked down a wall, retailed, new sink unit etc. There had previously been a double sink and I originally thought I’d get 2 smaller sinks installed with shelving between them in the middle. Trying to save a couple of bucks I went for a single sink unit smaller than original. I did not think about the pipes. Now on one side the builder concealed one quite well with a tile and you wouldn’t notice it. On the other side is a pipe sticking out of the wall through the tiles 🤦🏽‍♀️ he did check in the wall and said he could fix it so it was all in the wall and H refused to spend the money chasing the pipe properly from down to upstairs. Fair enough. I’ve got a small shelf in front of it which I’ll leave behind if we ever move.

Ive discovered though, people around here buy a house and redo it all before they move in, so it probably won’t bother anyone.

mrs55 · 27/07/2022 19:32

Aria999 · 27/07/2022 14:12

@KitKattaktik yes we are having to remodel the whole damn bathroom to fix a leak under the bath. I don't know why people do this!

We just had our bathroom done but had one pack of tiles spare to leave in the garage and they left a few tiles actually behind the tiled bath incase we or anyone else if we sold would have to break a tile out for leaks .

HerRoyalNotness · 27/07/2022 19:32

couldn’t fix it due to how the piping was done

HerRoyalNotness · 27/07/2022 19:38

WalkingOnSonshine · 27/07/2022 17:59

We are the first owners of a new build, but came to the development late. Someone had already reserved this house and had selected all the extras, fittings, kitchen, flooring etc.

For some reason they picked a different colour carpet for the stairs and landing, than for the bedrooms., so it’s all just clashing and awful.

The developer did give us 20k off the asking price and all the extras for free though.

That’s what the owners of our house had done. They had a mustard colour for downstairs, stairs and landing. Purple in one bedroom and a blue in another. Can’t remember the last two colours. Just do it neutral so it matches everything!

LaWench · 27/07/2022 19:51

Everything we unearth we don't understand why they fitted it like that or just left it even if it wasn't working.

*old wired doorbell chime - no longer works so just leave it on the wall.

  • old alarm system, again doesn't work but is all over the house.
  • so many telephone wires in room. Ditto sky cabling.
  • curtain poles screwed in upside down or wonky.
  • leaking stop tap? Put a milk a carton under it, don't bother fixing it.
  • don't take old rawlplugs out, fill hole and sand, just paint over them.
  • old wooden fitted shelving, don't use nails and fit to wall, shove some newspaper around it to make it fit.
  • big lounge/ diner. Cheap laminate in lounge and carpet in dining area. Why would you choose to carpet the diner over the lounge?
DuesToTheDirt · 27/07/2022 19:59

MIL's house has light switches in stupid places, so you have to walk across a room for instance before switching the light on. I'm pretty sure that in the past the downstairs layout was changed, e.g. the two main rooms were knocked through. But noone thought how this would change the flow of usage and the effect on light switch locations, or maybe they just didn't care enough to move them.

DuesToTheDirt · 27/07/2022 20:07

TrashPandas · 27/07/2022 17:06

I'm renting at the moment and there's carpet in the bathroom. WHY?

My mum had carpet in her bathroom and both loos. When one needed replacing I tried to persuade her to switch to vinyl or other hard flooring - she said, "But what if I need to get at the floor under it?" I said, "How many times have you needed to do that in the 40 years you've been here?" "Er, never..."

Reader, I failed in my attempts. She bought another carpet.

OakleyStreetisnotinChelsea · 27/07/2022 20:08

We did a complete refurbishment and extension of our house. First time we've done anything like it so mistakes were made and there are lots of things we would do differently.

Our bedroom being a case in point. We managed to make a room with no logical place to have a wardrobe. And my daughters room has a radiator pipe that means you can't quite get a single bed frame under the window, if we'd put the radiator 5cm to the left it would have been fine.

Natsku · 27/07/2022 20:09

When my partner was on the wrong ADHD meds he got super obsessed with our heating system and decided to put electric radiators on top of most of the normal radiators so now our heating is mostly direct electric heating which is expensive. And also now there's no heating at all in the shower room.

QueenoftheFarts · 27/07/2022 20:10

My house was built in 1870 and has many wonderful quirky original features..... but some nobber has laid laminate flooring all over the place. It's quite bouncy so dread to think what is underneath.

NeverDropYourMooncup · 27/07/2022 20:24

An alarm system that was disconnected but the wiring left in situ.

The doorbell also wired in but doesn't work.

A pointless mini wall to mount the consumer unit and one of the phone sockets on. Might be the master socket, but nobody's got a clue, really.

The kitchen cupboards over the top of the hob that are legally too close to the hob to ever get a replacement installed.

The boiler installed on the wall by the door instead of against the side wall so it could be serviced and the rest of the wall used for a cupboard.

The understairs cupboard that is broom height inside but only has a small square hatch door.

The water and central heating pipes embedded into the concrete floor so they can never be repaired without use of a pneumatic drill.

The three foot drop from the back door to the patio.

The patio slabs wedged in together without any sand/cement between them so they're held there by tension and friction. Plus the inevitable lifting as a result of the ground sinking.

The mystery concrete slab the shed was dumped on rather than putting it where it wasn't taking up the only bit of the garden that gets sunlight, complete with perfect little gaps for rodents to set up homes in.

The bay window that's been added onto the front of the house so that there is no way of securing curtain track or poles, as they built the walls before remembering the window was wider than that. And the window goes right to the hardboard ceiling, so nothing can be attached to that, either.

The loss of interest in installing skirting boards halfway up the stairs.

The random handrail up part of the stairs that's too low, can't be held onto and is embedded into the wall so it can't be replaced.

The many cross beams in the loft that make it impossible to actually reach the roof if it starts leaking.

The TV aerial sockets in each room that don't connect to an aerial. In a TV signal dead spot. No way of installing an aerial, either.

The very expensive solar water heating that was never connected and then when the boiler failed, had to be replaced by a combi because the fancy failing boiler didn't have a replacement available anywhere in Europe.

The shower room drain that lets water trickle around the sides but blocks the actual pipe (just sawn) so the water runs along the pipe into an unspecified destination.

The absence of a stopcock. Individual things can be isolated, but if a pipe bursts before the first isolation valve, we're going to need a dinghy.

The downstairs toilet sink at a height of 2.5 foot, no plug and no covering for the pipework. No toilet lid.

The upstairs bathroom sink that's wedged between the window and the pedestal bit so that it can never be taken out to deal with a leak unless you take a sledgehammer to it.

The bedroom door that's been hung upside down.

The front path that is too narrow to enter with a wheelie bin in the only place it can be put because the gas meter is plonked randomly partway along the wall. We have to have 3 wheelie bins under this local authority, too.

The weird triangular gap where the house was built on the skew so that there is a 2 foot gap at the back to the wall, but a 3 inch one at the front. With a corresponding one on the other house that didn't have a wall dictating they had to be built on the piss.

The sink that's too close to the edge of the cabinet so the overflow pipe could never be connected. Couldn't be further along because then it was too close to the hob.

The decision to create a 1.5m cupboard that is blocked off underneath the boiler instead of one that had opening doors. Access to the boiler pipes is by lifting off the half worktop they decided to put on top (rather than put an entire run of worktop on the opposite side of the kitchen where it would have been useful) and then dangling one's body into the hole.

The specialist low energy lightbulbs that cannot be purchased anymore and require an electrician to remove and replace with a standard fitting.

The shower room with a towel rail as the only heating, uninsulated concrete floor underneath vinyl and within 2 foot of the shower. No shower screen or place to install one and the floor is uneven so shower water runs out of the room into the kitchen rather than down the largely non functioning drain. It's therefore never used, wasting an entire, windowless room in the middle of the kitchen.

The joys of disabled accessible social housing.

PlantsAndSpaniels · 27/07/2022 20:25

We've slowly been fixing the previous owners DIY failures. Our patio doors used to be a window but they couldn't be bothered to make the opening higher so tall people have to duck to get out and it has a window sill style base to walk over. We also have light switches which don't turn anything on or off, a light with no on or off switch so permanently on with a bulb in and our outside light just had the cable shoved in the wall without it going anywhere.

They bought a new build after which is probably for the best.

Teardroprain · 27/07/2022 20:30

The man who lived here before was a family member of my dh but he died years before I ever met dh. He made our wooden airing cupboard. He died before he fitted the doors. So the doors don't hang right, stick and take some pulling to open. But I know that the mans mum wanted to finish the job before she died herself passed away. She had terminal cancer and it was one of the final things she did. My mil helped her fit them. My DH inherited the house. Every time I am fighting to get those doors open. I remember that story. I kind of love those doors now.

UrbanMage · 27/07/2022 21:03

A previous owner bodged the garden by putting wonky concrete all over it. It's 4 different levels. So as we have no side access and couldn't afford a crane to lift equipment over, DH has put astro down. It's the good quality stuff and we have made borders etc.

Oh and we painted the smaller living room a very very very dark pretty much black blue . I love it though. Think dark academia

UrbanMage · 27/07/2022 21:08

Oh and we've just had the bathroom redone as the previous owner never cleaned and the whole thing was half wrecked when we moved in that and we've not been able to actually get a builder for the last 2 years. We knew that the old shower was a bit dodgy but when they removed the panel, there were no floorboards under it. Just the builder looking straight down into my understairs cupboard. Where the former owners cowboy builders had left a lot of exposed wires...

Isittimef0rbedyet · 27/07/2022 21:30

Our front and back doors are glass doors which I think some people would hate.

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