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

My washing machine leaks. I washed a backpack on the handwash setting in my new washing machine. I thought I had switched the spin cycle off but it seems I hadn’t as the backpack straps, when spinning, cut the rubber seal in the machine.

Instead of calling the repair man, we just used some black seal and which has stemmed the leaking 80% of the time.

Very old Hotpoint washing machine that leaks from some mysterious place unless you give the door an extra shove with your knee after closing it. Desperate not to have to replace it as is so reliable otherwise.

On the other hand we have a hideous looking black and chrome bog standard toaster that my husband bought in a hurry about 10 years ago at Asda when our last one broke. It works perfectly so I can't bring myself to replace it. I like to think it's retro.

@RandomCatGenerator I actually have some builders starting work tomorrow so when they get to the electrics I will see if I remember to ask someone to look!

I think it's potentially for the porch light which doesn't work, but that seems to have no way to connect to anything as it doesn't seem to be wired in... hrmmm.

When we moved house - 2 houses ago.. we went round and fixed everything before renting it out. drafty windows, put a sink in the downstairs loo, new pump on the boiler and re piped some of it so that the radiator in our bedroom actually worked!! I was jealous that our renters got to live in our house without the annoying little things that made is a less pleasant place to be.

When we moved out of our rental, we fixed lots of little things, in Switzerland, you are responsible for the cost of repairs and while you can go through insurance, I object to overpaying for repairs, even if most is covered on insurance. For probably about a hundred pounds, we replaced the broken drawer on the freezer, the cracked seal on the fridge, the spare key we had lost, touched up the parquet with a DIY repair kit and the small chips on the marble stair case with something similar and we had the whole house painted... if we had left it as was, it would have cost thousands, not all 100% covered by insurance, our excess was less than that.. plus the grumpy smug landlord did not get the satisfaction of having to watch us squirm to get our deposit back.

My late MIL would be tutting at half the posters, she used to have a spare of everything, so spare kettle, toaster, iron - so none of these broken toasters. We used to laugh at her, but maybe, going by this thread, she had a point.

Not broken but I can't work out how to programme my water heater

We inherited back to front taps in the kitchen and bathrooms.

The bath panel is cracked and likes to fall on you. We'll redo the whole bathroom in the next year or so so not going to change the panel for now.

My kids keep breaking the toilet seat somehow, so you never know if you are going to slide off. I'm not fixing it again until they can sit on the toilet properly!

Bloody kitchen kickboards, they drive me insane, fall over at nothing, or the hoover, or the dog.

We have to use pliers to turn our oven on. I've stopped noticing it, it's just a thing we do.

Oh and we had a broom that was held together by gaffer tape and the handle was bent. It must have been like that for ten years. I have no idea why we didn't just get a new one, I sorted it last week. It wasn't financial reasons for not doing it but DH claimed it still worked and to be fair I don't do any cleaning

This thread is really reassuring - I thought it was just my house that is a bit crap. So many things, but at the moment the most annoying thing is the dishwasher. It's integrated but doesn't have a front on which means the door isn't weighted at all. Unless you remember to pin it down, it springs back up and hits you in the face at great force. The dogs are now properly scared of it which is an upside.

Ive taken my kickboards off - they fell down so many times. We now have a crumb (and worse) ridden gap under the counters.

I find this all very strange. The only thing in my house that doesn’t work is me.
We check monthly for anything that needs to be maintained.

Shower head is taped on with sellotape keep meaning to sort it.

Bathroom sink hot tap never very hot, and has really poor pressure compared to the cold one, in fact sometimes it just stops producing any water at all. Have taken to washing my hands with the bath tap.

Plinth too tall under the dishwasher, impeding the door opening and then the whole thing starts to pull out of the unit. Have to drop the plinth and lay it on the floor to be able to access the dishwasher properly.

I've just asked dh if 2022 might be the year we finally replace the loo roll holder - because I am one short step away from ripping it off the wall and jumping up and down on it.

He said maybe.

I realise that I hadn't said how long we've been putting up with this damn thing pinging off the wall every time you sneeze near it. We moved into this house in summer 2008, and it was loose then, and it has gradually got worse and worse over the intervening 14 years.

@mum2jakie the guy keeping all the ageing double glazing in our area going for longer than the big national companies would like is a local with his own business. After we moved in, he fixed our patio doors, rebalanced some tilt and turn windows and replaced dome latches with locking ones. Sod's law had it that our misted panes blew a week after he finished the work!

It's worth asking round on Facebook, nextdoor etc to see if you have anyone like this in your area.

@itwasntaparty

Oh and we had a broom that was held together by gaffer tape and the handle was bent. It must have been like that for ten years. I have no idea why we didn't just get a new one, I sorted it last week. It wasn't financial reasons for not doing it but DH claimed it still worked and to be fair I don't do any cleaning

You should have replaced the handle like Trigger.

At my parent's house there are 3 light switches at different points of the hallway for the same light. Somehow 2 of them don't always work (depending at where it was turned off last from) and you have to walk to the other one to turn the light on. It's been like this since 1994.

@ZealAndArdour

Bathroom sink hot tap never very hot, and has really poor pressure compared to the cold one, in fact sometimes it just stops producing any water at all. Have taken to washing my hands with the bath tap.

Plinth too tall under the dishwasher, impeding the door opening and then the whole thing starts to pull out of the unit. Have to drop the plinth and lay it on the floor to be able to access the dishwasher properly.

Oh yes, that reminds me of our downstairs loo tap that’s never hot-we replaced it with one that automatically turns off, because DD used to leave it running when she was younger. She’s 16 now! We need a new one that runs for longer but DH likes the old one so refuses to replace it! It’s always cold.🤣

@anotherchocolate

Love the variety of this thread. A lived-in home is one that's slowly falling to bits

Most of ours involve the kitchen.

Light bulb in the extractor hood is dead.
Back rings of the gas hob haven't turned on in over a year.
Handle on the oven door keeps popping out at one side.
Kitchen lights either flicker or don't work.
Basil plant should have been put out its misery 4 months ago.
And smaller scale - my noise-cancelling headphones are badly shedding around the padded ears and drive me mad.

We had a non-working gas ring. Ignored it until something got into it and wedged the valve open, causing a slow leak. This was early in lockdown when the prospect of getting someone in to repair or replace a 90cm wide cooker (oven door already bust, as previously mentioned) was pretty unlikely so after some frantic googling, I discovered that you can blow out the jets. Bloody thing works perfectly, now, so no excuse to replace the dodgy oven!

The more posts I read the more I realise there are things that we just live with. We too have a dishwasher door that flies back up, you just need to pull out the bottom basket to act as a weight. The actual dishwasher works fine, so won't replace for a minor inconvenience.

@Muchtoomuchtodo

There’s a corner of wall in our bay window that continually has rusty marks no matter how often or what I paint it over with. A corner of skirting board behind the veg rack that never been painted - the kitchen is 13 years old! A double light switch in the hall, right beside the front door that we have never figured out what it controls - and neither have multiple electricians! One of the hinges is hanging loose on my wardrobe door - the other 2 do a great job so I’ve just left it as I don’t understand all the screws on hinges

Just be careful, we had one switch presumed to have once been for an outside light, assured it was defunct and safe but nearly killed the man drilling into the wall to fit a new front door! Huge bang and thrown backwards drama terrified both him and me. Seems there was a live wire leading through the ceiling up to the bathroom for some inexplicable reason 😳

The electrics! Can't out any other appliance on if you turn the kettle on or it blows the mains...that's what you get for having an electrical engineer for a husband! Everyone knows to ask-is anything on before switching on the kettle for a cuppa-or risk having to run outside and turn flip the mains fuse!

Some years ago, the handle on the loo cistern became loose and just turned round and round.
So we took the lid off and, for about six months, flushed the loo by dipping our hand in the water and lifting the lever.
Then a friend came to visit, who just casually lifted the lever and hooked it back on to the handle.

@Fraine

The bathroom (upstairs) floor leaks after a shower.

I watch the yellow stain on the ceiling under the bathroom get bigger and swollen every day but I can’t seem to call anyone.

Watch out as it may just collapse one day and god help anyone sitting or playing underneath it! Ours did this…. About a minute after i took baby DS upstairs, we were playing right where it fell and we would certainly have been very damaged if not killed