Home improvement regrets!

[champagnetruffleshuffle]

What is the permanent feature/alteration you have made to your home that you constantly regret?

I write this while cleaning around the external entrance we added to our kitchen for the umpteenth time in a week.

It's now the main thoroughfare in and out of our house, with 2 adults 2 teens and a dog, it's constantly filthy and littered with footwear. (despite a shoe cupboard in situ!) I hate that my kitchen floor is always dirty and wish we'd put the door somewhere else.

Actually I wish we had a big enough house for a posh boot room complete with dog shower but that's a whole new moan ha!

@champagnetruffleshuffle "It's now the main thoroughfare in and out of our house, with 2 adults 2 teens and a dog, it's constantly filthy and littered with footwear. (despite a shoe cupboard in situ!)"

Is it that the shoe cupboard is too small for the needs or that people dump their shoes despite the shoe cupboard? If the latter then I just used to shout from the hall about shoes, especially if they were in the middle of something and make them put them away. They soon learned to do it as soon as they took their shoes off. No double handling of anything in this house, if it is already in your hand you put it where it belongs. The dog, you can't train but you could wash off paws outside.

Also with 2 teens why are you the one cleaning it? Time for a rota.

I'm all for that Spiral. I seem to spend my life calling them back to put away shoes, flush toilets, clear up after their snacks... beam me up! Cleaning, yes, you have a point there too!

We have the same problem and I ended up last Christmas buying six LED candles from Flying Tiger for £24.

We put them on in the bathroom when we have friends over or if I just want a bath. They look amazing!

flyingtiger.com/en-gb/products/led-pillar-candle-10-cm-3035855

@hennybeans

have you considered getting them re grouted? Navy blue or something. Yeah it won't change the white tiles, but they're easy to mop, it's the grouting that tends to look dirty.

@champagnetruffleshuffle have you got a large dog mat in the entrance, there are several brands that are hood at grasping at the dirt in laws & shoes.

I miss my cheap lino on the kitchen floor, replaced with wanky smarter tiles. Love a bit of lino!

I don’t understand how the door fitter could have allowed this to happen? Surely you wouldn’t sign off on a job that left you with only just over a foot of space to enter and exit?

I’ve had several ceramic sinks in various houses and they never stained, it’s the only sink material that always looks good imo, I hate stainless steel always looks grubby to me.

We had limestone floor installed in our kitchen. Huge mistake. Always, always looked dirty and terrible. And honestly I tried everything. We just had it ripped out last week after only 5 years to be replaced.

Same here! Cost an absolute fortune, big mistake, huge ☹️

We tiled our whole bathroom in large natural slate tiles, including on the floor inside the shower. Followed all the instructions about sealing it, but it developed white streaks within about a fortnight. We spent a grand on a water softener unit as we thought it was limescale. It wasn’t and it has got worse and worse over the years. Have never worked out what the issue is. The floor is tanked as a wet room floor with underfloor heating so it would cost an arm and a leg to replace them. They do feel lovely underfoot though.

Biggest regret so far is being indecisive so not getting more done before Covid/CoL and now everything being much more expensive!!! (And virtually impossible to find people to do it!!)

Big ol dog mat in the entrance Seaside, but thanks for suggestion. Ddog is the best behaved in the family and waits to have her paws wiped in return for a treat!
I definitely second the pre covid regrets too...

We have a large kitchen diner which is galley style and I constantly get annoyed having to walk around the table. Also, the kitchen is separated so to have the sink near the hob, it isn’t near the kettle/coffee machine etc. In hindsight I would have a separate dining area and probably corner kitchen to make things easier. But DH had a particular aesthetic in mind when we designed it.

We inherited a ceramic sink with our old kitchen, I hated it. It was cracked and stained. Had an undercounter s/s sink in the new kitchen and that’s much better. Also blank granite- it always needed polishing. Now we have white quartz that always stains! I’d go for something in the middle next time, maybe a speckled granite.

Most modern cheap toilets have a pathetic flush, but we invested in a Grohe wall mounted toilet for our wc and it has a substantial flush and is easy to clean.

Buying a stupid sofa with loose cushions on it that DH, my son and the dogs absolutely wreck. I spend half my life beating the couch back into shape. I fucking hate it.

Not enough sockets in the kitchen.

I've had too many stained/nasty composite sinks in my time - I go for good old stainless steel that can be scrubbed clean.

Re: dazzling bathrooms, when we had ours redone about ten years ago the electrician said "oh, you'll be needing a dimmer switch in here". At the time, as a frazzled mum of three small ones, I couldn't think why on earth it would be necessary, but went with it anyway. My future self is very glad about that, now the kids are out of my hair and I have time for the odd relaxing bath!

Or better still, replace all the bulbs with lower power ones. If they're currently 5W LED bulbs, 2W replacements are easy to find.

When designing our new kitchen I had my heart set on a range oven. I thought it would be great cooking lots on one shelf without having to swap trays around. I got the one I wanted, it's free standing so our kitchen units are fitted around it.
It's a heap of rubbish. It takes ages to heat up, uses loads of electric, doesn't cook evenly so it's useless for baking. Hardly use the damn thing now as the slow cooker and air fryer are much cheaper and reliable. I can't replace it with anything smaller without replacing all our base units!

Conservatory! Very expensive waste of money. Roasting in summer and freezing in winter.

@champagnetruffleshuffle

what a good girl.

Mow you have to find a way to incentivise the kids & the bloke (if there's one). Blokes are pretty easy. Pre teens money/good, teens lifts/food.

or stick? Set night for each of them to tidy/mop the area?

of just lock them all out!

When we moved into our bungalow, we changed the bathroom into a wetroom ( couldn't get in and out of the bath without a struggle, and I'm pretty fit!)

I so wish I thought to have tiled niches and a shower bench installed. Big regret.

I will forever regret letting our builders randomly choose the main tile of our bathroom when the one we carefully and painstakingly selected was temporarily out of stock. We didn’t even get them to send us a sample just went by the photo of it online.

The tile they chose is just not at all the same level of quality as the one we chose. And irritatingly their build took so long that they didn’t even do the tiling until after my beloved tile would have been back in stock anyway so we had no need to be rushed into the poor choice.

They are huge format tiles and DP won’t let me replace as it’s not our forever home and the bathrooms were 29k already so he doesn’t want to spend any more money on it.

I know it’s sensible but I spend most of my time imagining secretly replacing with non existent DIY skills while he is on holiday and hoping he doesn’t notice (he probably wouldn’t!) 🤣

Anyway lesson learnt for future renovations - LOOK AT THINGS IN PERSON!!!

But one thing I did do right was the absolutely perfect arrangement of dishwasher and draws and cupboards - I can unload the entire dishwasher standing in one spot as everything is in reach. Have to remember the wins as well 😁

Not me but the guy who owned the house before me, took nearly all the interior walls out so the house was like a barn. Impossible to heat and always cold.
I've had them all put back except one which now has a full width folding door that can be closed in winter and opened in summer.
Its much better.

But if you hadn't, those shoes/boots would be in the kitchen, so would that not be worse? I'm asking because I'm thinking of putting a porch on my kitchen for that reason- I have no space for a boot rack in the kitchen or the hall. And we have shoes, walking boots, wellies.....

Ours here has been in about a month, and we're already delighted with it. Did you not have opening roof lights to keep yours cool? We put in 4, lots of opening windows and lights, and special roof glass that cuts out a lot of the heat from the sun. Works a treat.
I think you have to spend a fair bit on one and plan it very carefully if you want to use it all year round (as we did our last one).

In our house they'd be taken off,carried through the kitchen and dumped in the hallway.