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

@MissConductUS - the leak is fixed but the ceiling needs repainting and we can't reach it with a normal ladder unfortunately - it'll get done (one day..)

@suckingonchillidogs you need those painter/decorators that so it on stilts!

@Nemorth - imagine balancing halfway up the stairs on them! Might suggest DP tests them out 😆

You attach the paint brush or roller to a long stick climb the ladder and go for it

@ProperVexed

Me!

😂😂😂 This is what immediately came to mind when I read the initial post - no, seriously, I throw all broken and deficient things out pretty much immediately - I am not rich but had an electrical house fire (dodgy HP charger) last May so I don’t piss about now and have become a bit of a minimalist :)

[quote Nemorth]@suckingonchillidogs you need those painter/decorators that so it on stilts! [/quote]
When I was in halls at uni, some workmen left a pair of these on our landing.
You can imagine the fun we had with them 🤣

So many things! Cords on velux blinds - you can half open them, so that'll do! Pallet as a back step since extension built 11? years ago. It's just the right size, but it is a pallet.
There are others.....

The handle on the washing machine door snapped after about a year, and we have spent the last six years opening it with a pallet knife because it’s otherwise a brilliant machine

Nothing at the moment (touch wood) because any repairs end up being epic.

We lived with a broken shower for about 3 years. We could turn it on and off fine, but changing temperatures involved pliers. Prior to that we had to explain to visitors that the hot and cold symbols were the wrong way round as the previous owner, ( a builder who went bankrupt) had plumbed it in the wrong way round.

After 3 years the hot tap on the bath stopped working and having little kids meant using the bath a lot, so father in law offered to replace the hot tap, and the shower at the same time. (He's good with plumbing.)

When he came to put the new taps on he realised the stop tap had seized, tried to use the one at the street, and that had also seized, so we paid for a plumber to replace both of those.

Tried again to replace the taps and realised it was physically impossible to reach the far tap because of the previous shoddy plumbing job.
Reaching the far tap meant taking the bath out, which broke some of the bottom tiles. We didn't have enough spares to replace those and the ones that would get broken when repairing the shower, so we had to replace all the tiles too.

What should have taken an afternoon took over a week, a few hundred ££ and resulted in half the bathroom being redone.

The shower and the washer dryer that partially drys your clothes hmmm

Had a fancy chrome tall towel rail fitted when we had the bathroom redone a few years ago. Bloody thing doesn't even get up to blood temperature. Might as well get showered outside its so cold. So, we heat up an oil filled radiator on the landing then, using oven gloves, quickly drag it into the bathroom and shut the door. By the time I've made my cuppa its warmed the room enough to be tolerable.

I am whispering this very quietly, so as not to tempt fate, but I might be getting a new loo roll holder in my bathroom! I have ordered a new one - which is step one - and hopefully once it is in the house, it won’t take dh another 13.5 years to fit it.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius

I am whispering this very quietly, so as not to tempt fate, but I might be getting a new loo roll holder in my bathroom! I have ordered a new one - which is step one - and hopefully once it is in the house, it won’t take dh another 13.5 years to fit it.

i am now wondering when my other half will put the new loo roll holder on the wall hmm i bought it several months ago =p

It has arrived - that was fast! Now all that remains is for dh to fit it. Hopefully this year!

@spiderlight

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.

When we moved into our house we discovered the water pressure was shit. We'd not checked it and were disappointed and kicking ourselves.

For 3 weeks we moaned and grumbled. Then we reached out to the old owners who told us they'd turned the stop tap down 'just in case'. Problem resolved.

The light in our sitting room has two switches, one at each end of the room. Only one switch will turn it on and which of the two switches it is depends on whether the other one has been pressed or not. They’re round dimmer switches so you can’t see what position they are in. Family know to only use one particular switch but it confuses everyone else and means they think they have blown the house electrics when they get it wrong.

Electrician tried to fix it ten years ago and failed. It’s part of the house now!

The flush. My parents whinge about it every time they visit, but I've got the knack and make it work first time (almost) every time.

@ooherrmissus14

It was the bath panel in our bathroom until our cat learned that if he sat on his back paws and banged on it with his front paws it sounded like one of those massive drums you get in an orchestra. Lovely being woken up by that at 3am every day. It had been broken for years but took just two months of our percussionist cat to force us to get it replaced.....

PMSL

@thenightsky your towel radiator may just need bleeding, if it gets hot at the bottom but not at the top.

Me,
My body doesn't work quite like It used to, my brain has fudge moments and I have seen better days 🤣😭

[quote TwoLeftSocksWithHoles]@thenightsky your towel radiator may just need bleeding, if it gets hot at the bottom but not at the top.[/quote]
If only. Tried that. Just spurted lukewarm water all over the floor. There's no air in there at all.

@thenightsky oh, I only have one other suggestion. Turn all the other radiators off and see if your towel radiator heats up. If it doesn't... it'll be summer in a few months.

Upstairs landing light, not worked for 14 years , we’ve lived here 15 ! Stupid thing comes on when lights blow (bulb pops etc flicking main fuse to all other lights) so that one comes on whilst all others off! What’s that about. ?

@Ddot

Me, My body doesn't work quite like It used to, my brain has fudge moments and I have seen better days 🤣😭

@Ddot. Yes, if I were a kitchen or bathroom, I'd need ripping out and replacing.

Steamer lid has a bottle opener for a lid handle