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Post by tangtastesgood on Apr 18, 2023 16:39:54 GMT
So many things about my current home baffle me. I have to assume, from various evidence, that the poor lady must have been colorblind. But my number 1 irk is WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY WOULD ANYONE PUT 6INCH CERAMIC TILES AS A COUNTERTOP??!  Bonus points to her for the (formerly, ahem) light grout. Add your number 1s. |
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Post by gar on Apr 18, 2023 16:58:13 GMT
That was a huge trend - a while ago mind you.
My pet hates - putting wallpaper on top of old wallpaper and painting windows shut because you can’t be bothered to open them and paint them properly.
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mimima
Drama Llama
Stay Gold, Ponyboy
Posts: 5,038 
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Post by mimima on Apr 18, 2023 16:58:18 GMT
The previous owner of our first house had one rule for plants - must have purple flowers.
She also didn't remove light switch covers or worry about what was in the way when she painted
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Post by lainey on Apr 18, 2023 17:02:25 GMT
Thinking he had the skills to do every single job himself...he didn't.
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anniebeth24
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,603
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Post by anniebeth24 on Apr 18, 2023 17:26:55 GMT
Guilty of installing a white ceramic tile countertop with a golden oak trim in 1994.
We also wallpapered over wallpaper in that same kitchen. The original paper had been hung directly on the drywall (no paint or primer) before the cabinets were installed, so it went behind them.
My apologies to the new owners.
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Post by sideways on Apr 18, 2023 17:37:11 GMT
Two houses ago. Four inch square white tile in the bathrooms, with white grout. Everywhere. Floor, shower, halfway up the walls. In the kids bath and guest bath, too.
I never want to see four inch square tile ever again.
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Post by Linda on Apr 18, 2023 17:44:59 GMT
Thinking he had the skills to do every single job himself...he didn't. yes - this there's a hole in the wall behind the powder room mirror...our best guess? they removed the existing medicine cabinet/mirror and replaced it with a large mirror but didn't repair the wall since the mirror hides it. also in the powder room - they added wainscotting but the bit above the vanity...isn't level...very obviously not level they put up rods in closet...but apparently couldn't find the wall studs or work the anchors...they fell down and when dh went to replace them...they were attached to a strip of wood that was hiding a dozen holes (not nail sized - bigger than dollar coin sized) they planted trees directly outside the bay window in the kitchen...the trunks are way less than a foot away from the wall. We're going to have to pay to have them moved before they get much bigger. there is NO landing at the top for the back stairs. You step through the door and directly down to the first step - there are also two additional doors off that step - one to the left and one to the right into the walk in attics and yes, you step up and into the doorway for those also. We call them the stairs of death - there's also no railing and they aren't standard risers. there's more... |
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breetheflea
Drama Llama
Posts: 6,021
Location: PNW
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Post by breetheflea on Apr 18, 2023 17:45:32 GMT
I don't even know where to start...
Don't put laminate wood floor in your bathroom. One, it's a dumb place for laminate floor. Second, when the improperly bolted toilet leaks it will leak under the laminate and three layers of linoleum, and you won't know your subfloor is a pile of squishy mush for who knows how long because laminate doesn't bend.
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Post by katlady on Apr 18, 2023 17:46:51 GMT
WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY WOULD ANYONE PUT 6INCH CERAMIC TILES AS A COUNTERTOP??! Lot of homes, including both of ours, have/had this. We remodeled our kitchen and got rid of them, but we still have 2.5" tiles in the bathrooms (counter top and shower stall). I can't wait to redo the bathrooms. It must have been a trend, but the previous owners of our home put padded cloth valances above the windows in the family room and kitchen. We took them all down. |
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Post by Tearisci on Apr 18, 2023 18:01:10 GMT
Two houses ago. Four inch square white tile in the bathrooms, with white grout. Everywhere. Floor, shower, halfway up the walls. In the kids bath and guest bath, too. I never want to see four inch square tile ever again. In my powder room at my house built in 1989 were teal 4 inch tiles with white grout. It was so dated but we never got around to replacing it. I think we just ended up making peace with it as time went on. |
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Post by ntsf on Apr 18, 2023 18:06:20 GMT
better square tiles than 1 inch round tiles.. the kitchen counter from hell.. and the cabinets nailed into wall..just at the right height to get you in the head every time... and the owner who took out the back foundation without a replacement, and the owner who put electrical lines in conduit, without attaching short pieces of wire to each other.. just a curve at the end of the wire and hooking to the next curved end...
our house really suffered from home handyman special work. took years to correct much of it. about to remodel again using professionals!!
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Post by Spongemom Scrappants on Apr 18, 2023 18:19:25 GMT
Large leaning mirrors behind each sink in what would clearly be used as the children's bathroom in our house. Not only the messiness of splashed water and toothpaste splatters, but the hazard of large sheets of leaning mirrors? We don't have small children anymore, but still. I donated those and hung appropriate mirrors over the two sinks as one of the first things I did.
The original owner of this home was a local architect, and this was his family home. I love almost everything about it. I do not understand though why he configured the driveway the way he did. We're on four-and-a-half acres, but the driveway has several weird little curves up the length of it and then splits at the house -- down a bit to the garage area, or up a little incline to a parking area in front of the front door. Both those areas are defined by large brick walls and landscaping. Both of them require you pull into them at a weird little angle as well. It's a pain to navigate for guests who are unfamiliar. We end up backing some guest's cars out for them because they get daunted by it.
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Post by cadoodlebug on Apr 18, 2023 19:16:51 GMT
WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY WOULD ANYONE PUT 6INCH CERAMIC TILES AS A COUNTERTOP??! Our last house had 4" square tiles. We sold it with beautiful granite countertops. |
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RedSquirrelUK
Drama Llama
Posts: 6,784
Location: The UK's beautiful West Country
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Post by RedSquirrelUK on Apr 18, 2023 19:41:21 GMT
One of the previous owners of our house extended the garage out the front to fix the leaking balcony above - and partitioned the back of the garage off to make a little bedroom. But they built a stud wall over the middle of the inspection pit. So not only can we not use the garage as a garage (not big enough now and not to fire standards) but we have a permanent damp problem in that bedroom.
We adore the house though. It's quirky.
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Post by workingclassdog on Apr 18, 2023 19:46:27 GMT
aka The Money Pit (my parent's home right before we moved out)
doorbell broken
tiles in bathroom tub were taped to the wall by masking tape. I was the first to shower and they all come tumbling down to my horror.
left a garage full of personal stuff
swimming pool wasn't functioning
I am sure there were a slew of other problems.. the house caught on fire and most of it was redone. So that took care of all the little things that went wrong.
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Post by Lexica on Apr 18, 2023 20:40:15 GMT
I’m so glad I’m not alone in having quirks in my new home. This is the first house I’ve purchased that wasn’t a brand new from a builder home. Those came with issues too, but I could just call them and they sent someone out to fix the problem for me free of charge for the first year. In this house, there are the expected things of an older home. Although since they were only here in the summer months, the house was in pretty good shape for its age. But, there are electrical switches that don’t turn anything on. I’ve found 4 of them so far and they don’t operate an electrical plug in in the room either. Spongemom Scrappants, I discovered the mirror in one of the bathrooms was just leaning against the wall. It is a smaller mirror with a wooden frame and I can easily hang it, but I almost had it fall on me the first time I went to clean it. The woman left all the components to her security system in place. I wanted my own system and when I started taking hers down, I realized they didn’t texture the wall behind any of them. They also didn’t texture a large patch in the dining room behind their big cabinet. I put mine in the same location, but I plan to fix that at some point. Mine is a little less wide and you can see where it isn’t textured. Some of the strange configuration wasn’t the latest owner’s doing. Somewhere along the line the people modified this house from a 2 bed, 1 bath, 1 garage home into a 3 bed, 3 bath, 3 car garage home. The house is quite long and they used what would have been their ample side yard to build the 3-car garage. They turned the garage into a second master bedroom. They put in a small bathroom, which is fine, but they picked this weird shower. I’m just not used to it and really don’t even like using it. The back yard is a bit narrow, but they put in a nice water feature that spans 3/4 of the way along the back yard which I think I will love when I get it working. The lady said she didn’t bother to turn it on when she returned from their Arizona home because her husband had passed in Arizona and she just didn’t care. I don’t know how many issues I will find back there. Oh, and along with switches that don’t seem to be connected to anything, there are many outside lights that I haven’t found the switch to turn on. Or maybe I have but the bulbs are out. It’s on my list. |
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Post by littlemama on Apr 18, 2023 21:37:44 GMT
Two houses ago. Four inch square white tile in the bathrooms, with white grout. Everywhere. Floor, shower, halfway up the walls. In the kids bath and guest bath, too. I never want to see four inch square tile ever again. Up until recently, 4" square tile was what everyone had. I would venture to say that most homes still have it. |
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Post by Scrapper100 on Apr 18, 2023 21:42:50 GMT
Contact paper in every drawer and shelf and it bubbled in most places. Removing it even using goo gone left a sticky mess. So many hours and sponges wasted.
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Post by Basket1lady on Apr 18, 2023 22:12:37 GMT
I’m so glad I’m not alone in having quirks in my new home. This is the first house I’ve purchased that wasn’t a brand new from a builder home. Those came with issues too, but I could just call them and they sent someone out to fix the problem for me free of charge for the first year. In this house, there are the expected things of an older home. Although since they were only here in the summer months, the house was in pretty good shape for its age. But, there are electrical switches that don’t turn anything on. I’ve found 4 of them so far and they don’t operate an electrical plug in in the room either. Spongemom Scrappants , I discovered the mirror in one of the bathrooms was just leaning against the wall. It is a smaller mirror with a wooden frame and I can easily hang it, but I almost had it fall on me the first time I went to clean it. The woman left all the components to her security system in place. I wanted my own system and when I started taking hers down, I realized they didn’t texture the wall behind any of them. They also didn’t texture a large patch in the dining room behind their big cabinet. I put mine in the same location, but I plan to fix that at some point. Mine is a little less wide and you can see where it isn’t textured. Some of the strange configuration wasn’t the latest owner’s doing. Somewhere along the line the people modified this house from a 2 bed, 1 bath, 1 garage home into a 3 bed, 3 bath, 3 car garage home. The house is quite long and they used what would have been their ample side yard to build the 3-car garage. They turned the garage into a second master bedroom. They put in a small bathroom, which is fine, but they picked this weird shower. I’m just not used to it and really don’t even like using it. The back yard is a bit narrow, but they put in a nice water feature that spans 3/4 of the way along the back yard which I think I will love when I get it working. The lady said she didn’t bother to turn it on when she returned from their Arizona home because her husband had passed in Arizona and she just didn’t care. I don’t know how many issues I will find back there. Oh, and along with switches that don’t seem to be connected to anything, there are many outside lights that I haven’t found the switch to turn on. Or maybe I have but the bulbs are out. It’s on my list. It’s possible that the switches turn on outside lights? We had that in our Belgian house—there were switches in the bedroom, at the bottom of the stairs, and in the office that turned on outside lights. One stumped us for a while until we realized that an outside light had a bad bulb. The water feature sounds lovely. I hope it works! And yes, tile counters were a big thing in the late 80s. It was also a popular table top option. We bought a kitchen table in 1992 and I had to hunt to find a wooden top table. I knew I didn’t want to keep the grout clean on a kitchen table. And I know I looked at one than one house that had tile counters, including one as recent as 2019 (in Belgium). So the insanity of that is international! |
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Post by katiekaty on Apr 18, 2023 22:20:49 GMT
Don’t know what to tell you, except you bought those messes left by the former owners, so there must have been some redeeming qualities about those homes or were you just plain crazy at the time? And yes that’s just a bit of poking fun at you! We bought this Ouse brand new and had finial say a the last stages of the build-mostly finishing touches. I wish we would have pushed for hardware or laminate downstairs instead of just pushing for tile in the kitchen. We just went with it and let them put upgraded carpet with our choice of color. After for teens it looked like crap anew ha to replace all of it and the upstairs too. And we should have pressed for more landscaping or at least sodding. That backyard has been a pain and so expensive to deal with, it too so many years to just get it to a man eagle maintenance stage that kids never really got to enjoy it and now I only decorate the patio sparingly enough to spend time with the dog out there. These things should have been negotiated at the beginning.
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Post by Linda on Apr 18, 2023 22:26:50 GMT
Don’t what to tell, except you bought those messes left by the former owners, so there must have been some redeeming qualities about those homes or were you just plain crazy at the time? I do love my house but the issues uncovered on our inspection (that we were aware of and had a plan in place to deal with) were NOT all of the issues...we were aware of the back stairs and decided we could live with them until we fixed them since they were secondary stairs but the other issues I mentioned? Those were covered up...and the water heater upstairs that the inspector said was fine...well, he was wrong. |
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Post by Gem Girl on Apr 18, 2023 22:49:32 GMT
better square tiles than 1 inch round tiles.. the kitchen counter from hell.. and the cabinets nailed into wall..just at the right height to get you in the head every time... and the owner who took out the back foundation without a replacement, and the owner who put electrical lines in conduit, without attaching short pieces of wire to each other.. just a curve at the end of the wire and hooking to the next curved end... our house really suffered from home handyman special work. took years to correct much of it. about to remodel again using professionals!! What were they thinking? How would you ever keep the surfaces clean? |
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Post by Gem Girl on Apr 18, 2023 22:53:54 GMT
Contact paper in every drawer and shelf and it bubbled in most places. Removing it even using goo gone left a sticky mess. So many hours and sponges wasted. Purchased by somebody who saw shelf liner somewhere but bought that, not knowing the difference? Yikes, even wrapping paper would have been a better choice. |
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Post by Lexica on Apr 18, 2023 23:21:48 GMT
Basket1lady, anything is possible in this house since some things were original and some things added in the extensive remodel. I discovered there are 2 fuse boxes when I was looking to turn off the power so I could install the new doorbell. I assumed the newer one inside the garage was for the new part of the house but I purchased one of those little power checkers just in case. I know doorbells don’t pack a huge wallop, but I prefer not to add any more pain to my life than I already deal with every day. I will have to wait for my ladders to arrive in another pod and then I will climb up and get out the bulbs so that I’m buying the right kind. Good idea!
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Post by AussieMeg on Apr 18, 2023 23:29:52 GMT
My house was only 12 years old when I bought it, so it wasn't really too badly out of date. I hated the ugly burgundy sink, and said that I was going to replace it as soon as we moved in. Hmmmm, I didn't actually get around to replacing it until we renovated the whole kitchen twenty years later!!
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Post by whipea on Apr 19, 2023 0:18:46 GMT
Our house was a foreclosure. Not too bad but mostly issues related to neglect, like faucets duct taped to repair leaks. I think because of their financial situation the only thing they could do was paint the interior. It seemed every wall was a different color, so awful.
Plus there were upholstered valances and wallpaper borders from the mid-nineties were everywhere. Funny, the foreclosed people bought the house in 2012 and left them up.
The one big issue is when the house was built the contractors never wiped down and primed the sheet rock. As a result, if the paint is chipped or even on it's own the paint just peels right off. We had the whole interior painted when we first bought the house without realizing this issue. We are addressing it room by room.
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Post by hop2 on Apr 19, 2023 0:23:51 GMT
For abusing the house I bought. I feel like I ‘rescued’ the house.
Anything they did they did the lazy way.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Jun 27, 2024 18:36:34 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2023 0:43:31 GMT
The previous homeowners did some updates 30-25 years ago and then didn't touch a thing other than to put some fresh paint on the walls before selling. To their credit, they did replace the furnace and central air in 2020 but didn't really update or replace anything else since the mid-90's. We have had to replace windows, the doors, remove dangerous trees, tear down a play set that was falling apart, remove a huge brush pile that was hiding a big broken up concrete pile.
At least two new trees will be planted this year and the bathroom will hopefully get a small facelift to tide me over until we can gut it.
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Post by 950nancy on Apr 19, 2023 1:18:12 GMT
Our kitchen had 2 inch tiles all over the counters. My son said it looked like a boys' locker room. The grout was 18 different shades of white (caulk) to dark brown or caved into the counter. My husband saved a few tiles for me and gave it to me for a birthday gift. The second thing that irked me was that whoever painted the house did not cut in around the ceiling, windows, doors etc. They just painted up to about 1/4 to 1/2 inch away and let the other paint shine through. They were not the same color/shade. A few rooms they painted the ceiling the same shade as the walls. They looked like caves. Two rooms had popcorn ceilings and they were painted over. I am pretty sure that anyone that worked on this house for the prior owner did not have any experience.
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Post by chaosisapony on Apr 19, 2023 1:24:09 GMT
My mom's kitchen has 4 inch tiles for the counters. It was a big trend here maybe... 20 years ago?
My irritation is the sellers painted the entire interior of the house right when they moved out. It looks like it was their first time with a spray gun. Paint spatter everywhere. All over the windows, trim, etc. I scrape it off of things all the time as I'm redoing stuff. And they only bothered to do one coat so the coverage on the walls is really thin and spotty in some places. I much rather would have just painted it all myself.
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