What's one home trend you have done that you now regret?

[MyCheeryPearlTraybake]

Turning a small room into a bedroom.

The panelling that looks weird at the corner of the room because it's just that must too distant from the corner line of the skirting board.

Gives me an eye twitch every time I see it

I think the oil that many worktops are finished with is rubbish.

Do your self a favour and get a clear satin finish Osmo Top Oil (can get on Amazon).

Get some fine sandpaper 100/120 ish grade and some of these https://www.toolstation.com/contour-sanding-pads/p10736?store=EN&utm_source=googleshopping&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=googleshoppingfeed&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17816255186&gbraid=0AAAAAD-vLcVSCayH7GvqLfXBeGXfDOuyJ&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjJrCBhCXARIsAI5x66UzIDTBbEIf6Ksn6MYP4Y0_Rs1CuiFA59Od5_d2ufSZar01BMEixuMaAiwxEALw_wcB

Then sand by hand the worktops you have working with the grain. use the contour pads after the sand paper.

It does not take long.

Then get a soft cloth and use the Osmo Top oil to add a finish. Add a coat, leave an hour, add another, leave an hour, add another. Leave overnight.
Lightly sand to smooth and buff with contour pad.

Oil again, leave to dry overnight. Wipe over with the contour pad.

About 4-5 applications of the top oil will give you the sleekest smoothest worktops and they won’t stain.

Its brilliant stuff, goes on like oil, dries like varnish.

Buff and reoil about every 18 months for perfection.

Thank you for this. We have oak worktops and are about to redo ours for the first time with Osmo Top Oil, but I was a bit worried about doing it.

Ours have been in for 8 months and despite lots of promises, I am not convinced our fitter did a great job with them. He was very old school and really didn’t want to use Osmo oil. So dh and I decided we would redo them once the weather warmed up.

What I would say is, we opted for this Villeroy & Boch sink https://www.tapsuk.com/villeroy-boch-butler-60-1-0-bowl-white-ceramic-kitchen-sink-no-waste-p33840 so we don’t have the ‘water around the tap’ problem and it has been brilliant. We only get an occasional, tiny drop of water on the worktop and keep a microfibre cloth handy to deal with that. Even my older teen and young adult dc quickly got into the habit of giving the worktop around the sink a quick wipe after each use. It literally takes two seconds.

I also bought a couple of clear glass worktop savers for next to the sink and the most used stretch of worktop and they have been an absolute godsend, as we all naturally gravitate to them to put things down.

We did debate whether or not to go with the oak, but decided that as they can be sanded/refinished if they get damaged we would go ahead with what we loved. No damage so far, but I do appreciate it is early days.

Freestanding roll top bath with a Victorian style shower over it. It meant we had to have shower curtains on a hoop. Was an absolute nightmare we just didn't think through first. It's all changed now though.

I don't think it is a problem, I love ours. We are changing them for french doors but that's because we're getting crittal style aluminium and the bifold ones don't look as nice. We're enlarging the opening so it'll be a bigger expanse of glass.

Grey everywhere, we are slowly changing that though. Going back to white. I don’t mind some grey, it’s a neutral at the end of the day, but I think many of us went a bit grey crazy. Rattan Furniture outside, whilst it looks nice, it is bulky and the cushions take up a huge amount of room to store over the winter. Covering the furniture is also a faff every time rain is expected, not to mention cleaning bird poo. It’s too expensive to just replace sadly.

but surely the beauty of bifold is that you then just open them.

We have south facing bifolds and they are great. My kitchen bifolds and both sets in the living room are pretty much permanently open in the summer I do have linen voiles across to allow the air in but keep insects out. They run on a second rail behind the curtains.

Not if you're out for the day, or just don't want to open them for what ever reason. As I said we have them in our house along with a roof lantern and I like them but they aren't south facing. The summer house, which is SF gets sweltering super quickly and if I'm out for the day, even with the blinds down the heat is incredible.

Most people who regret bi folds seem to have an issue because of the direction, not particularly the bi-folds themselves.

We have South facing bifolds. Love them. Opened, closed..Not had issues with heat, and I love the light they bring. It seems Instagram wants us to change fashions rapidly so everyone (except the homeowner) can make more money asap. Bifolds. nope French. nope crittal style. Nope whatever else the magazine editor likes next year.

Trouble is bifolds are already great. Why change. Why shouldn't they be a classic. No, but insta doesn't like classic. Classic means people don't buy new things and don't have to change their house every year.

I hate the way they push new products while shit mouthing things they loved just a couple of years ago. Interiors isn't fast fashion people.

Don't do it. Grey carpets is shoddy developers round here. Keep the classic beige x

A Qooker tap (previous owners installed it). The “boiling” water isn’t actually boiling and it doesn’t fit properly over the sink, so splashes the wall constantly. PITA!

Black tiles in the bathroom. Hello limescale drips

range cooker. To this I would add NEVER compromise your own taste on any big outlay with the idea of selling unless you are a house flipper. We went for bland with a range cooker expecting to sell and move, life happened and I am still here, couldn't afford to redo kitchen and couldn't face it anyway.

and fast fashion not a good idea anyway.

I don't think there is anything wrong with grey but it doesn't work as a light coloured carpet because it usually clashes with everything except the same light grey walls or white walls. And definitely clashes with dark oak furniture. Whereas if you have wooden floors or quarry tiles or a dark beige in a greeny toned beige (not pink tones) pale grey walls or grey blues or grey greens are perfectly restful and airy in northern light.

Really bright colours aren't suitable for walls in northern UK or Irish light they glare and close the room down. Dark colours in small rooms make them...smaller and darker. Cosy perhaps but smaller

I'm in Ireland at the moment and the orange hall looks much too strong. Whereas a nice grey or a dirty blue or green would be great. It's putting colours together that is the issue not the colours themselves. Most so called bad trends are people putting things in the wrong place which don't suit their situation. And if it looked good you would never want to change it.
Orange wood trim can look good in some circs even if you put the right stuff with it (white walls and black extras)

I like grey with dark wood.

We've had these put in our office refit - where the sinks are mostly used for emptying tea / coffee dregs. Big mistake - Huge!!!
Now we're having to have them replaced with ceramic after just 3 months......

If it's a warm light grey and the wood is almost black that's fine. But a cool light blue grey or a cool tonedpinky grey carpet or floor will look strange with darker orangey or red toned warmer furniture on top ...sort of stranded. There is nothing wrong with the colours of either it's just the combo.
I put retro grey light blue lino on my floor...and it looked horrible with the (charming) mid brown kitchen furniture. But the lino was beautiful! Whereas the furniture looked fine on an red toned orangey or sandy flooring.

I changed the lino back to new sandy. Cheaper than new kitchen furniture.

but those are your views....

Our bedroom here was done like that. Borders and dados even all over the walls and ceiling- all 'matching patterns' to the pink flowery plastic-covered wallpaper ( I hate wallpaper and I hate flowery wallpaper even more, and plastic covered wallpaper even more than that) - 5 'matching' designs all told- one with stripes, and not put up symmetrical to the walls either. Drove me insane.😜
Even though the bedroom was not scheduled for renovating until much later, I eventually cracked after being in bed one time and staring at the horrible off-centre ceiling borders until my mind started to crawl out of my ears, and stripped the lot off back to the lining paper, even though that meant living with just the lining paper for a year or two. Anything was better than that ruddy wallpaper.😖

I always said the grey craze would fade, but it's taken a heck of a lot longer to even start to fade than I expected. I want a yellowy-sagey-green carpet for the bedroom. There simply aren't any, not in wool, anyway, nor in anything else I have yet found, just a few blue-greens. And most carpet places have at least 50% of their carpets still grey, one place I go past regularly I think it must be around 70%. No wonder there is so little choice in other colours.

In my last house I had Matt cashmere handle less cabinet doors which were fine until the sun shone on them and you could see all the finger marks. I too was told only to use washing up liquid and a soft cloth (no microfibre) I found that putting an undiluted bit of Fairy Platinum ( think it’s called Max Power now) directly into it and leaving it for a minute or so and then wiping off with wet cloth worked. Might want to try that on a not so obvious spot to see if that works for you.

Is that the fairy skip the soak power spray?

Not one we did but cursing the previous owners who coated EVERYTHING (even ceilings) in wood chip and mismatched (like every wall a different pattern, 1 room might have 5 different wallpapers) Anaglypta and then painted them in waterproof latex paints so they are hard to steam off... WHY???

They also loved to build false walls/ceiling everywhere (every room has at least one, just wasting several feet of space for no reason... was that a fashion once? lowering Victorian ceilings by 2-3 foot, boxing in all alcoves and chimneys etc...).

Not a trend but a renovation regret.

We had 3 tiny windows in our bathroom, they also had a lot of frame. 2 on one wall and 1 on another wall.

We bricked up 2 on one wall and replaced the third with something much bigger. The new window has much more glass in it than the old three so in theory should be lots brighter, but we underestimated how much light came in from the side with the 2 windows. We went from a lovely bright bathroom to one that always needs the light on even with a huge mirror.