to ask what you would not choose again if moving house

[chaletdays]

Just been reading the open plan thread. When I move again I would definitely not choose an open plan layout, or to buy a place right beside a green or any other communal area where children and teenagers will gather 24/7.

What would be your no nos if moving again?

The next time I buy a house, I will ask them to move all the furniture so I can see all the walls. I have had enough of scrubbing mould off the walls every 3 months!!!

I would want a house as far away from neighbours as possible. Our last house was detached and I could still hear the neighbours phone ring on a quiet afternoon. Before that, we lived in a flat and could hear the student neighbour above us having frequent, loud sex.

No main walkways nearby. We had one and all the drunk people would spill off the train late at night and shout their way home past our bedroom window.

Only very low crime areas- I used to be afraid to leave my sleeping baby in his pram in our back garden and would never leave a downstairs window open unless I was in the room.

Main bathroom must have some sort of shower as well as bath. Otherwise guests still want to shower in the ensuite which means I have to make sure that's clean too.

No laminate flooring. Awful, never could get it streak/ mark free.

No neighbours with tall trees blocking out the light.

No shared access or drive.

Definitely want a down stairs loo.

And not at the bottom of a cul de sac. ALL the neighbourhood children would hang out on the pavement 4 feet from our living room window every night between April and October. I could hear every word of their conversations whilst sat on my sofa with the windows closed.

3 floors
Private road / unadopted road
No driveway

DH loves the en suite...I think it's just a bathroom with limited access

DH says not on a main road....every ceiling lovingly artexed.

Sorry if I've upset and en suite lovers, maybe it's just the lay out of our house but it seems like a waste of space and could do with new tiles etc, it's a bit manky and I don't like sleeping next to a toilet.

Although we do have a "no pooing in the en suite" rule which helps

New build. The snagging took a year.
A house that stretched us so much financially.
No under floor heating in rooms above garage.
Being overlooked.
No room for a dining table. We thought we'd build a conservatory but then circumstances changed,we don't earn anywhere near what we used to so that's ruled out. We have trays every day. I'm now worried that when ds has friends over when he starts school.we will be outcasts for such slovenly ways.

a sodding flat roof.

no drive / off street parking
No en suite
Must be detached

I didn't know what a difference these would make until I had them , they weren't on my list

Never ever anywhere near a Primary school again.

I have a townhouse and love it. I thought I would lose tons of weight running up and down the stairs but seem to just live in the kitchen as it is nearer the fridge. I would never buy a house that backs on to railway lines again though. I don't mind the sound of the trains, but all of the trees hiding the lines (and the awful track related buildings that have subsequently been erected), have been cut down and the view is bloody hideous now.

brilliant list of bewares.

For me, It would be make 100 % sure of neighbours. Been to hell and back and back again. Trees over hang and annoy, even drive sharing, no parking is a huge pain but if you have noisy and selfish neighbour,s it invades all aspects of your life. From waking in the morning ( if you managed to get some sleep) to trying to get to sleep at night.

I would dread moving for these un knowns now.

Yes to no woodchip, never ever ever again. Yes to downstairs loo.

I currently live in a ground floor maisonette which I adore. I love having everything on one floor and have no desire to live anywhere with stairs ever again. I am lazy :o

Our last place was a flat above parking bays, which was awful and freezing. It was also next to a river. Lovely being able to feed ducks out the window, but god awful damp all winter.

Why are three storey houses so unpopular? (Might get a loft conversion in future. )

I'd have to have a South- or West-facing garden. East-facing is crap

I don't like conservatories - too hot in the summer and freezing cold in winter (and tench to block the light from the room behind them).

I'm with the people who dislike en suites, however I quite like having a house split over 3 floors (communal floor, adults floor, kids floor).

Never again would I buy a place with a downstairs bathroom. It didn't bother me (except it was also north facing, so the coldest part of an already draughty old place), but it put off so many potential buyers when I came to sell.

Never again would I buy a place where the neighbours have a leylandii hedge...which they never maintained so it grew into massive trees that almost touched my house. I then had a battle with them to cut the sodding things back, which looked hideous, and eventually they cut them down completely leaving a really ugly view and reducing my privacy. Never, never again.

I don't know, I have 3 stories and each floor is staggered, so it's actually on 6 levels. ..I don't find it an awkward layout, its really cool and quirky, if it was for the aforementioned sodding flat roof ( ) I would be a very happy householder

Oh I loved my triple story terrace! Felt really snug and private up in the attic away from the rest of the house and the stairs were good exercise :-)

I would never buy somewhere that didn't have space for at lest a small 4 person dining table.

I don't really like open plan kitchen and sitting rooms but pretty hard to avoid in london flats.

Oh, I would also never buy somewhere with the bathroom off the kitchen. So many kinds of wrong.

My 3 storey house is split level too (so really on 5 levels) - I rather like it.

I wouldn't buy a house with a dark kitchen (we have solved this with lots of lighting, but still not the same as our previous sunlit kitchen).

The upstairs bathroom (where the toilet has a macerator) is a PITA. We will eventually run a waste pipe down the front of the house so we can have a 'proper' toilet, but could do without the expense.

Agree about the shared right of way. We don't have it, but my parents have to allow neighbours to use the tunnel through to their garden and have given next door neighbours a strip to put their bins on (the land behind both houses belongs to them.) It's a PITA, most of the time. The current tenant of the house next door never puts their bins out for emptying, which makes a horrible mess of the garden, so, inevitably, my dad ends up seeing to theirs as well as their own.

We'll never buy a terrace on a slope, again. Back to front slope is fine - had that, the front of the house was raised up, so the inconvenience of a few steps mitigated any potential problems. Current house has one side slightly underground, which is a damp/condensation magnet and people are always having to reseal where their roof butts against the neighbour's wall.

And I've lived in terraces all my adult life and be pretty lucky with neighbours. I'm not sure neighbours think the same about us, though. Detached is going to be something to look out for, when we move. Not a dealbreaker if it's not as price, location and space for the boys to keep out of each other's hair, quite likely into adulthood, plus a safe enclosed garden, however small, for DS2, who might never be safe out alone. Most of the properties I've seen with a suitable layout are detached new built types, anyhow.

White floor tiles.
Open plan kitchen, diner, living room.

DH and I are that rare breed who prefer a downstairs main and only bathroom. It's only inconvenient at about 3am. Love it, the rest of the time and it doubles up as a boot room when the kids come in out of the rain - straight into the bathroom, take off everything dripping wet, dump it in the bath until it can be dealt with by me and have all the various things in the bathroom of another wise small-ish house to hang wet coats off to dry without dripping all over the rest of the house.

If we had a downstairs loo, we'd prefer an upstairs bathroom, though. Just the one, though if we're going to end up in a new-build, then I'll probably end up with 3 sodding loos to keep clean.

Beware of nice trees, they produce all sorts of shit, mainly leaves. I spend half the year sweeping them up.

We used to live in a small cul-de-sac which was lovely but also a real pain for parking, most of the road was curved and some of the modern houses only had space for one car on their driveways, so there were cars everywhere.

The same house had 4 private drives all passing through a shared bit to get to the road. A neighbour's visitors always parked on it making it really difficult for us to get out. I wouldn't want to share any sort of access.

We now live in an Edwardian semi and apart from the thin walls between us and next door it's been fine. We've got our own drive, the road is busy with a double decker bus route but it only goes down our road on the other side to our house, plus we're set back from the road too. In fact, I like the convenience of really local public transport.

Downstairs loo is another must for us, plus we always buy a garden that gets the sun during the day. You can change bits of the house and garden, but you can't move the orientation of the sun!