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

I hated our Henry with a passion. Me and DP used to enjoy coming up with various ways of bumping him off...

We have a sliding wardrobe door that doesnt slide and never has. You have to grab hold with both hands, lift it slightly and shuffle it over.

@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.....

Sorry, but this had me giggling!

A bath that sounds like a timpani!

Toilet seat that I replaced because the old one slipped sideways when you sat on it... slips sideways when you sit on it. No amount of tightening fixes it.

All my back fences are knackered at one side but they belong to my neighbour so I'm waiting for him to sort them. 2 years and counting..

Our oven permanently says 4:31. It's been a running joke in our house for a couple of years if anyone ever asks what time it is. It's 4:31.

@SilverHairedCat

Henry is an utter bastard even with all his wheels intact. We traded him in for a new super powerful trades vacuum. Looks similar, but is suitable for cleaning up an actual construction site. I fucking love it.

Currently, the broken thing in the house is the curtain rail above the the patio door. It's hanging off precariously but it can fuck off until I think of a way to deal with it as it's the second time in a month with completely different drill holes each time.

You didn't get a crappy Kärcher did you perchance? They are equally as crap as Henry. DH says that due to his German heritage we have to buy German appliances, but this is definitely Vorsprung durch Techmist (Progress through Technological crap), how did the Kärcher ever get off the design floor??

Our bathroom door has to be shoved open and closed as the wood swells in winter

Tumble dryer door catch is broken so metal link things clang all over the floor every time I open it.

Several ill-fitting internal doors that are a pain to close.

Strange fridge that is basically a freezer at the back of the shelves, but not complaining as it keeps stuff edible for longer.

The kitchen kickboards / base units.

They are so bodged by the previous owners they don’t even fit the space properly.

Anytime someone hoovers against them or you slam a cupboard door slightly too hard the fuckers fall over flat on the floor.

There are a lot of FUCK OFFs when hoovering the kitchen

The bit of flooring over the threshold of the hallway and the kitchen, like a dividing strip.

Broke years ago, is precariously balanced where it should be and is tripped over at least once a day

Really laughing away at the beloved broken soup ladle and the 6 inch long light pull

We've already replaced the shower once so we stubbornly live with the temperature control being utterly useless. Anything up to 39c is freezing cold, anything above 40c is scalding hot. If you can twist the knob very carefully to about 39.7c you can enjoy a lovely warm shower though!

Upstairs landing light, on a double switch next to bathroom light.
If you misjudge and hit the landing light, it trips the electrics, setting the house alarm off, and the fuse box is in the garage.
So that's fun and games when I hit the wrong one at 6.

Dodgy flush which sticks
Radiator in the downstairs loo which doesn’t work so it’s freezing
Mystery smell in the cellar
Sash window which drops itself shut

We spent eleventy billion pounds on a house refurb and still have these issues. In fact the radiator was fine before

We got a new tumble drier but the touch sensor start button broke pretty much straight away, dh pressed it so hard he smashed the front do bang went the warranty. I got a bread knife to it and hacked a hole over the button, we now have a bit of plastic / metal mesh tape hanging out of the front which I have to touch in exactly the right way to start it. It's less than 2 years old so it'll be like this got a few years yet.

Our marriage

Our front door is very stiff, always needs a good kick to open it

DH's penis

@PickAChew Try these they’re actually amazing www.amazon.co.uk/floor-pops/s?k=floor+pops&tag=mumsnetforu03-21

The shower has leaked through to the kitchen ceiling for 5-6 years. We’ve had it ‘repaired’ several times ( and the kitchen ceiling repainted several times, sigh). Only way to ‘fix’ it apparently is to rip it out and retile but that means ripping out and retiling the whole bathroom. Marble tiles … about £6k. So instead I’ve tied the door handles up with string now. It’s a very pretty little string bow.

@HeyUpits2022

The panel on the side of the bath.

Unfortunately it only attacks in the middle of the night when you're stumbling in to the bathroom for a midnight wee.

I "you feckin thing" it at least once a week, and am very surprised to still have my little toe on my left foot.

I lived with those one those for years!! Bastard thing. When I had a new bathroom fitted I was over the moon with the new panel that actually stayed in place. It was my favourite bit!

Toilet seat here too. It's a Cooke & Lewis toilet, odd shape & auto closing thing too, so not easy to replace. I can still tighten it up with an Allen Key, but it works loose again ver quickly. I need to brave up to taking the fitting off but it's a sealed unit it's in so if the 'nut' or whatever's on the end drops in, I'm fucked!!

I replaced the cistern of the old one, before I had the bathroom redone, so I'm not a total incompetent, but currently it just seems easier to keep tightening it up with the Allen Key, but I'd like it permanently fixed or replaced really.

Kitchen tap drips if I don't use a cloth to tighten it up and I'm worried about constantly over tightening it and it just going one day, it's so old I think it'll fall apart if I try to replace the washers. I'm going to put in a new kitchen, (well I'm not, I'm going to pay someone to!!) but I've been waiting for covid to Bugger off so tradesmen aren't rarer than golden hens teeth. 🙄🙄

Doors with no handles.

Had them removed to get the doors stripped back to the original pine facing, but they still need sanded and waxed before we replace the 'door furnishings'.

Can't be fucked. You can close them, technically, but you need a thing to open them with (god forbid if you accidentally close them from the inside with no openy thing and nobody else in the house).

Will get round to it one day.

Bathroom light, phone torch job
Sitting room door won’t close
squeaky floorboard in bedroom - been “fixed” many times

Etc etc

The back gate which leads to the garden/back door every time it rains it gets wedged shut and basically we can't use it for 6 months of the year, It's only been 5 years..

For those with loo seat issues (after spending 9 million on various ones through the years that all feckin moved!) I eventually found these

www.argos.co.uk/product/3261956
£13 ,3 years, one small child and a heavy arsed other half and they still don't budge.

Highly recommended for less yelling at toilet seats.

Broken bathroom lights, only have one left! Am I going to replace them before the third one dies? Hell no.

The letterbox, which falls off every time we shut the door, and also tries to eat the postman’s fingers. DP swears at it daily. It’s been like this for two years.

The washing machine, it sounds like its going to explode at the very end of the wash and moves around so much, we have adjusted the feet so many times and have just given up with it now. Waiting patiently for it to properly just die. We thought our luck was in a few weeks ago as it started and then stopped washing 5 minutes in…alas we turned it off and back on again and it hasnt done it again. We wont replace until we really have to