What property features would you never have again?

[AnxiousRose]

What features from your current or previous property would you avoid if you were househunting again?

For me, it is three storeys. I had this in my last house and did not expect to dislike it as much as I did. My bedroom was on the top floor and I hated all the stairs especially with young kids. Three storeys usually means the downstairs space is small for the number of bedrooms.

I agree with conservatory (we added a warm roof to ours but it's still freezing most of the year and expensive to heat).

Also agree with underfloor heating. Which we also put in the conservatory but it takes so long to heat it up it's not worth the bother. We just use a portable fan heater. I had it in a previous bathroom too and never remembered to turn it on.

I agree with avoiding more than 2 stories.

I love our fully tiled bathrooms though!

Not a feature, but I regret allowing Alexa in to my house. I hate her.

Original sash windows, maintenance and condensation are a nightmare!

This. We bought a house with decking and the vendors were so proud of it and were saying how lovely it was to sit out there in the summer.

When they moved out, DH slipped over and twisted his knee on the first day as we discovered they'd never actually maintained it. Where their table was, was hiding a big rotten patch and the next door neighbour came round to introduce himself and said there used to be a massive rat problem under it!

By the time the vendor "popped round" a week later to collect her post (because they were too scatterbrained to organise a redirection in advance), it had gone, revealing a perfectly laid patio underneath!

We have a conservatory and I do love it, but we don't use it as much as we did since energy prices went up. I need to stick a dehumidifier out there to stop it getting damp as at this time of year we barely use it. We use it a lot in the summer though as it has french doors out onto the previously mentioned patio, so we watch TV out there of an evening with the doors open. As we're not south facing it doesn't get too horrendous.

I wouldn't have a breakfast bar again. Our kitchen came with one and it's still there, but when we re-do the kitchen it will be going. All it is is a dumping ground and a place for the cats to beg for treats!

Thanks for all the replies. It is interesting to see the results of people's lived experience.

It seems like full open plan living, decking, attic bedrooms and conservatories are all very unpopular.

Ensuites are for people who live in houses with other people. (house shares etc)
I can walk around mine naked because it’s just my little family.
so having 2 doors between my bed and loo is nicer than hearing toileting happening from my bed.

This is one of the oddest posts ever. @MumonabikeE5

Our en suite 'sold' us the house we're in. It's massive. Bath, shower, loo.

It's brilliant because the kids or family have the other bathroom all to themselves. There are 2 other toilets in the house if anyone wants complete privacy.

I don't think I've ever been in the bedroom when DP has had to use the loo 'for toilet happenings'. He uses one of the others (except for a quick pee in the night.)

We ditched ours and changed it in to a library! Could you use it for something else?

I used to have a townhouse on 3 floors, but it was the perfect type, IMO. Built into a hillside, so although 3 storeys at the back, only 2 at the front, so you entered on the middle level. Kitchen and dining room in the middle, living room on the lower and bedrooms upstairs. I wouldn't have liked it with children, but as an adults only house it was good. You only had to do the long journey once a day, at bed time.

Would I have one again though? No, but mainly because town houses are usually semi's or terraced and I'm not going back from detached!

What do you mean mow around the edge once every two weeks in summer???

We got Livin Roof with two large ceiling windows. It’s fantastic and has transformed our conservatory (on side of house, outside wall facing neighbours' house is completely brick) into a large new room that we use daily all year round. In fact it has become our new "living room".

Interesting to hear about the lack of love for decking. We need to sort out our back garden after building work on the house. I prefer the look of paving but it is so expensive. I am shite in general with things that need a tonne of upkeep, so I think we'll keep saving for paving.

Both bathrooms here have fully tiled walls and also had tiled floors, never had any problems with wet but HATED the tiled floors so they are now flotexed. Maybe you meant a wetroom though?
Things I would avoid or change.
I wouldn't have again a tiled kitchen floor, especially not textured tiles, a swine to keep clean and dropped items go off like hand grenades. Kitchen floor is now also flotexed. I wouldn't have a semi again or a shared drive, you are so reliant on having nice neighbours, currently mine are but we are all getting to the downsize age and its a concern. Personally my next buy won't have stairs on account of having dodgy knees and a dodgy back.
On a more minor but still expensive scale, I wouldn't have a Rangemaster cooker again.

I'd never, ever live in the vicinity of a school again. Small village, however the playing field is at the back of my garden and the noise is relentless. All bloody day (they are a fab school and the kids are always out). Most of the time it isn't even the kids - there is one teacher I can hear shouting PE instructions from the kitchen at the front of the house!

I'd never live under an RAF flight path ever again. Yes, everyone loves the forces, but when you live very near a couple of big bases you find yourself shouting 'FUCK OFF!!!' as the 5th euro fighter in an hour flies over your house. Don't get me started on night flying.

Never again would I have a house without storage. Or underfloor heating and an air source heat pump. It's crap - it's either freezing or baking and no one properly understands the system!

We are moving soon though so I suspect I'll find more things in the new house!

@Gettingbysomehow
I may as well go around wearing noise blocking head phones and a gas mask.

Wow that would be a good look!

Sorry! I would hate that, especially the fag smoking. I would also feel sorry for anyone living next to someone who smokes 'weed'. Ok the deaf lady cannot help it. My dad used to say of my Nan that her tv 'danced across the room as it was so loud". She may have smoked like a chimney (and had a streak of yellow from nicotine in her hair) but she smoked fags not weed!

my dining room is now my sewing room.

I have seen those only in American films...always wondered how they worked

"So does everyine have a foyer? Not in UK but just bought my first house with a foyer"

It depends. Larger homes generally will, but they're not really like US foyers which seem to be an actual room. They're generally just a space where you pass through (and take off your coat, shoes etc) rather than a room that you would actually use.

Although very, very, large homes may well have a large space that is used in the same way as a US foyer. There is a house near us for sale at the moment that does have a space like that. The house is very large though, it is 4,600 sq ft (427 sq m) and was built in the 1910s.

Most larger British homes will have a hallway (or corridor, if you like) that connects individual rooms. The front door will typically open onto this hallway and that is the nearest most homes will have to a foyer.

Some homes do have a small, enclosed porch added on externally to the home in front of the front door.

With smaller, usually terraced, homes (row houses) then the very smallest of these will have front doors that open onto the living room.

Houses on a hill
Homes that have back garden on the second floor.
Upside down homes
Homes that have office ceilings
Homes that require parking permits.

A friend has a house with a lampost about 2 metres from her bedroom window....she never turns her bedroom light on

This is mine too, hate it and cannot wait to redo it next year and turn the one large room into two which was how it was when the house was built way back in 1922.

@Harshtruth1111

They use a couple of cylinders that grind the food waste into a liquid then it goes into the sink waste - so environmentally dodgy as well as grim. They were quite popular 10-15 years ago.

You might not agree with me, that’s ok. But the person I was responding to kept telling her architect she doesn’t want en suite bedrooms, and I was agreeing with her.

At least that solves the rat problem!

Door from pavement to living room
Stairs from anywhere other than a hall
Shared gunnels, alleys or driveway
Steep driveways - no matter which direction
No drive and restricted on-street parking (7am - 7pm, argh)
Tiny north-facing garden/yard
No cupboards for storage (and I mean none. Previous house had five or six, current one has NONE <cries>)

Hearing the news today about house building, I suspect many MNers are going to be severely disappointed - affordable housing is unlikely to have private parking, and highly likely to be terraced, and on multiple floors to save space.

@jaundicedoutlook I don't think they are very good for the water system, with all that fat going into it, but garbage disposals aren't smelly IME. Just quite noisy.

Can you explain why disposing of food waste this way is “environmentally dodgy?”

The same waste pipes remove sewage from your home, and that is just food that has been digested?

My understanding was that we separate out food waste from the general rubbish to a separate collection because rotting food in landfill causes methane buildup. So the in-sink disposal still achieves that.

We have an Insinkerator and I’m very happy with it. I don’t pour oil down it, that gets collected and taken to the oil disposal vat at the local recycling centre.

I'm surprised by the amount of people that don't like full tiles in the bathroom. It's the cleanest way to keep a bathroom without worrying about peeling paint.

A window is a must to deal with condensation issues. If there isn't enough ventilation, a 3in1 bathroom heater deals with it effectively. Slippery tiles are very old. I've renovated my bathrooms in a house built in the 70s and the floor tiles were not slippery. Maybe I'm wrong but I have the feeling this is a British issue in some of the old housing.

I hate kitchen cabinets made of particle board and melamine. They are cheap, look great for a couple of years and then the melamine begins to peel off. I couldn't wait until we had the money to replace them.

People complaining about smells from en-suite bathrooms. I just don't get it. You do your business, it smells, you flush, smell goes. In the rare event that any smell lingers you have the options of flushing again, opening the window or closing the door. Clean toilets don't smell whether they open into a hallway or a bedroom.

The person planning a new build without en-suites is being short sighted. No en-suites will affect future saleability .