What item in your house is broken ?

[Hyacinthandrichard]

A while back I had a thread on what is broken or needed in your house that everyone just thinks is normal now. I wondered if anyone fixed anything yet.
I thought of this because our tumble drier handle is broken and we have been opening it with a butter knife for about 9 months now. It's just become normal. Our toilet only flushes once every 10 minutes but we just all put up with it.
The tumble drier would be relatively low cost to fix but we just don't get round to it
I think my original thing I posted about was a broken Pyrex jug ( where the lip is chipped and it doesn't pour cleanly ) Still got it but I do have a new smaller one that's too small so I keep the broken one still!
Anyway. Before anyone suggests i am a journalist , I'm really not. Just wondering at my life and why I haven't fixed the easy ish things yet! Sunday musings I guess.

I've got a small shower leak in the en suite which I'm currently waiting for someone to come and look at and repair and in the meantime i'm using the main bathroom .

I never leave things broken in my house they are always fixed as soon as possible. It's a very slippery slope once you start ignoring broken stuff in my opinion.

DS’ door catches strangely when you close it, so it does with a bit of a bang when you have to shove it. It’s annoying, but not big enough to warrant trying to find someone to come and sort it!

When I first moved in there was an overwhelming amount of things wrong, including a leaking kitchen sink and a bedroom window that couldn’t shut, so it would blow open in the night! A broken tap in the bathroom too. How the previous owners coped I don’t know.

The ancient plastic washing basket is badly cracked and is clearly going to break inconveniently spilling my clean washing onto the patio when I go to hang it out.

I haven't replaced it because I can't decide on what new one to get.

The clock on my oven. Which is really annoying as we can't get the oven to come on on the timer. I've no idea if anyone would be able to fix it as it doesn't seem to fall into any obvious trade. I keep meaning to attempt to take the front cover bit off the oven (it's a big range cooker) to see if it's a part I could replace but it's just not worth the effort!

The gate below my bedroom window which bangs annoyingly in the wind. The toilet in the ensuite won't flush using the proper chrome "disc" on the top - that's now been taken off and you flush it by pushing down the 2 plastic rods in there. I don't even think about it any more, just do it.

There's a hole in my bedroom wall from when me and my husband moved in. We were moving a cupboard in and were laughing and caused the hole. We have put a frame around it and it makes us giggle when we see it everyday. Think it will be there for as long as we are

I dropped the kitchen clock the first time I changed it (in March), it’s got a big crack in the plastic casing but I’m short sighted so don’t see it. It was only £13 in Sainsburys but feels such a waste of money to replace. I’ll probably drop it
again this month!
DD’s built in wardrobe door is off its hinges but you can only tell if you try and open it. She doesn’t live here any more and it’s full of old soft toys. I don’t know who to get to fix it and it’s not a priority. Unless I have a house guest here long enough to unpack!

We have a hole in the flat part of our roof above the stairs. Because it's awkwardly placed, we'd need a lot of expensive scaffolding to get it fixed and are hoping to get a loft conversion done next year, so I'm not doing anything about it until then, I just put a bowl underneath where the drip is when it rains heavily 😁

Also, two of the doors downstairs seem to have dropped on their hinges so are very difficult to open/close. Need to get those sorted soon.

The sticky outy bit on the tumble dryer door that pushes into the dryer so it comes on has been sticky taped on forever. Had the dryer going on 12 years (maybe longer actually) & it still works perfectly fine. I did try replacing the door thing once, but it broke exactly the same way, so it's just staying that way 🤷‍♀️

@RollerSkateLikePeggy same here! It annoyed the shit out of me for a long time, then I stuck a clock on the wall and I haven't thought about the oven clock til this thread!

The buttons on the extractor hood are broken so it is really difficult to turn on and off and you can't adjust the speed. I can source the part but it would then be getting it fitted.

@Chowtime agreed with stuff like water leaks!

I’ve been opening my tumble dryer with a screwdriver for over a year 🤷‍♀️ it lives in the garage so o don’t have to look at it, and it works fine

@bigbadbarry love the name! And the solidarity with another tumble maverick

The oven door isn't really attached, you can't see it by looking at it but open it and the thing falls off!
Tbh I never use the oven anymore as now live alone and use a halogen oven, the hobs fine though so it stays as storage instead.

Partner.

Also. Some arsehole painted over all the wallpaper, so now some of the walls are starting to crack.

Quick job for an electrician

Washing machine door is broken. It kind of hangs to a funny angle when the door is open. Washing machine still works fine though.

One of the kitchen cupboard hinges keeps coming out. Again it can be 'fixed' but really should be replaced.

Kitchen tap, pipe that drains from the kitchen sink, bath tap, 3rd floor banister, curtain pole in the dining room. Wooden flooring in my daughters bedroom, chest of drawers in the dining room, two door handles and the shelf in the shower.

Unfortunately that's the minor, easily fixable stuff

Our microwave hasn't had a working light for about three years. I have to open it from time to time if I'm heating up milk or porridge to check it's not boiling over.

The internet says it is:

a) simple, cheap, easy and ecologically responsible to change the bulb, and

b) incredibly difficult and dangerous and must never be attempted even by an electrician lest you nuke your town.

🤷‍♀️

Gosh, I hadn't thought about washing baskets that much! Just whatever seems sturdy and will hang on the hook!

My main one is the windows. It's going to be such a big expense as well as the redecorating,so we're saving up and waiting until life gets a little simpler. A lot of them are badly rusted but two have rusted such that they're a pita to try to shut. Several are blown. I also have a few radiators where the temp valve is broken. As they've broken on "high" that's something we just manage. We did have a well known and trusted guy fix them initially, but the new mechanism broke again immediately. Somehow it left us defeated!

Tumble dryer, it tripped the electrics. It's been repaired 5 times. Been broken just over a year! No idea why it's still there.

I have a new one coming Wednesday at long last as it was hell drying clothes last winter.

Our oven trips the fuse for half the house every time it gets used. So we haven't used it for over a year. It's an unusual large size/shape and we won't be replacing it. Last Christmas we did festive dinner for 5 in a mini-air-fryer-oven, will be doing the same again this year.

The kitchen wall units have these fancy slatted glass sliding doors on plastic tracks, you pull a handle on the first slat to open/close the doors. When we moved in, I immediately noticed that one unit was missing the first slat+handle. Then I put all my stuff in the other unit, pulled the handle to close the door, and the entire slat snapped out of its track, causing me to drop it in surprise, and shattered into a million shards at my bare feet. We've lived here for 8 years and use the wall units as open shelving (I loathe open shelving in kitchens).

The cold tap in the bathroom was installed without a washer or whatever the thing is you put under the sink to stop it moving around/leaking. So the tap moves around and if you get water around it, it drips through the gap onto the floor. We simply put a plastic wastepaper bin underneath to catch the drips.