What's the broken thing in your house that everyone just puts up with?

[Yebbie]

I'll start. We have a three legged Henry Hoover, and any time anyone hoovers you hear lots of banging and "fuck offs" as it falls over every 3 seconds. It's been like it for five years and rather than replacing it we all have just grown to accept our disabled Henry.

What's that broken thing in your house that everyone just accepts and lives with, despite how annoying it may be? I feel every family must have one

@alwaysstressed

My driveway gate has fell off so its propped up against the side of the fence and the dog keeps pissing off dog the street

That’s really not good! Why on earth wouldn’t you fix something that stops your dog getting out?

Am heartened by the amount of dodgy loo seats - I’ve got one, I really need to fix it this year.

The people who are saying just fix it are missing the point. These are things we have learnt to live with. Fixing them requires either time to go to b&q to get the right things (sometimes several times) or finding a tradesman prepared to come and do a small job that will cost £££. The effort and money involved does not compensate the small inconvenience so we just put up with them.

Other things like broken gates (we've just hat a quote and it's 5k) and kitchens/bathrooms (10k) are budgets people just don't have.

the shower,
it is hanging up by a hair band

@MrsLargeEmbodied Ah, ours is held in place by a large pebble wedged just the right way – I like to think of it as coastal shabby chic

@stuntbubbles

The thermal catch on the washer/drier.

To open it you have to turn it off at the mains, wait for a click, then kick it about an inch to the right of the door a couple of times and wobble the handle

Oh. And the light switch that Does Nothing.

Keep intending to take the plate off the wall to see if it's even supposed to go anywhere

Inspired by this thread I have made a start on the List (not long moved, so the list is long!) by bleeding the attic radiator & repressuring the system. I’m hoping this will knock on the head the complaints that it’s too cold to work up there now.
Some of the list is going to be fixed with tape and no more nails, but it’s a start!

@Frenchfancy
I think there are 3 types.

1. learn to love it (eg broken henry). Cute, we all have these probably :)
2. expensive
3. sloppy/messy/unkept

1. Electrolux hoover - worked perfectly but lost all 3 wheels. stuck a piece of big furniture felt (the one to stop chairs slipping) on it's tummy to not damage the hardwood floor. I was really sad when it actually broke years later.

My home office chair. IT is more than 25 yrs old. Creaks, wobbles. But still won't make my back hurt like the new one I bought a few years back. (Even bought a Chesterton office chair - lovely to cuddle up in, but totally unsuitable for 8-10hrs of work. had to send it back)

1. kitchen, as many others
2. never anything for more than a week or so. we fix it or change it if not too costly. doors, leaking things, broken things - when it was our own flats. we even fix things in our rentals, but do call the agency more than before.

The shower. Doesn't work at all. We have a very tiny bath (as in 4ft long one) so we just put up with the broken shower.

Printer

@Frenchfancy

The people who are saying just fix it are missing the point. These are things we have learnt to live with. Fixing them requires either time to go to b&q to get the right things (sometimes several times) or finding a tradesman prepared to come and do a small job that will cost £££. The effort and money involved does not compensate the small inconvenience so we just put up with them.

Other things like broken gates (we've just hat a quote and it's 5k) and kitchens/bathrooms (10k) are budgets people just don't have.

But also you grow fond of them like a quirky pet.

We could easily replace our rogue toaster on Amazon Prime. But I think we might miss it.

Me :/

Christ, everything, I think. Our house is chronically un-looked-after due to a deadly combo of not much money, lack of time, lack of enthusiasm and, I have to admit, probably prioritisation of things like days out and lazy weekends over DIY/replacing stuff...

Things that spring to mind are our back doors – lovely big French windows but the frames are so old and swollen by rain that you have to really put your hip into it to open them, and do a specific little jiggle when you shut them or they don't lock.
And the creaky kitchen-table chairs. Not broken as such, but they basically join in the conversation when we're sitting at them.

@Bessiebigpants

You are my favourite person of the day. Came on to complain about my loo seats!

Our shower, it takes about 5 or 6 attempts of pressing it off and on to actually turn it off because the button is broken but because it doesn't do it every single time we haven't bothered to fix it.

Pop up plugs broken and dripping taps in en-suite (it's got 2 sinks so we only use the less drippy one). Been broken since we moved in 11 years ago.
Crack in the curved bath panel.
The light fitting in the bathroom - it has 4 bulbs. If we replace them all, 3 of them blow within days. And the last one goes on for ever.
The outside security lights.
The runner in a sliding door that sticks on a protruding screw head. Door opens fine but if you go past that screw, you have to fiddle with it to close it
The boiler pressure (keep adding water to the system -where does it go???)

We've just had our kitchen replaced. Big job. Walls knocked down. Windows became doors, doors became windows type stuff. Finished in October.

Half the brand new induction hob is broken (waiting on a replacement)

Brand new radiator won't get hot at all (we've had the plumbers out lots of time and worked our way through the list of trouble shooting) now awaiting a replacement.

Brand new combo microwave had to be fixed 3 times as it kept tripping the brand new fuse board we'd have put in. It's now been replaced.

Washing machine makes a god awful noise sometimes. Again we've done all the trouble shooting we can do I think am now waiting for the drainage pump to go perhaps?

@TupilaLilium I had this for years! Buy some string/cord/thread and attach it to your 6 inch light string with a Russian knot. Ta da

The first three pages of this thread had me laughing and feeling much better about all the annoying things in our house, but as I read on I started to feel more and more distressed for all this quiet low-grade suffering!

Toilet seat woes - get a piece of wrapping paper or cardboard and draw a template of the top of the loo including fixing holes and take it to a good bathroom shop. All loos are slightly different shapes so they need a template to find you one that will fit. Once you find one that fits it won’t move. I learned this after our old one broke and I bought a cheap replacement that didn’t fit and drove me mad.

Toilet flush sufferers - if water is constantly dribbling from cistern to pan, you just need a new rubber gasket that costs a pound or two from a plumbers merchant. It’s dead easy to replace, you don’t need to pay anyone to do it, just look on YouTube. For other flush troubles you can replace the whole flush mechanism, also dead easy to do yourself. Just take the old one out (quarter turn anti clockwise & it should lift out) and take it to a plumbers merchant so they can find you the right replacement.

Our water pressure upstairs is so crap that nobody can turn on a tap anywhere in the house if there's someone in the shower or it will go boiling hot and then freezing cold for several minutes. We have to timetable showers so that everyone's had a wee and the kettle's full. it's just our house - the neighbours on both sides are fine. One of them is a builder and has had a look and thinks our stop tap under the stairs isn't fully open, but it's jammed solid so we've just put up with it for 15 years.

I have lost count of the number of toilet seats we've been through. Current one is OK though - at a slight angle but it doesn't move.

Absolutely nothing. It would drive me mad. Reading all your posts makes me think I need to work on my tolerance level 😩

Thought of more. The top opening window in one of the bedrooms doesn't close without a lot of pulling and lifting and jiggling, so we don't use it. The bathroom window also doesn't shut properly, so we don't shut it.

@ProperVexed

Me!

You beat me to it!

We renovated this house and were incredibly naive about what we had to do, a few years in and there's loads we want to change ) wish we hadn't scrimped on.

Our downstairs floor is creaky because it wasn't levelled properly. That's too big of a job to do though so we just have to live with it and hope when we sell no one notices!

We've finally got a faceplate arriving for the light switch in the spare room. Our electrician was awful and left us in the lurch - see also the fan that doesn't work in the bathroom and the bedroom lights that were meant to be dimmers but aren't.