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Post by melanell on Apr 19, 2023 1:30:49 GMT
Taking down all of the darn walls! And this was waaaaay before it was a trend. They previous owners took down 2 walls in the early 70s or late 60s, and someone before them took down a 3rd smaller wall. And the thing is, the rooms were a fine size as is. Now, they are bigger than needed, so we're using "one" room for two different function, but with no barrier between them, which is a huge pain. The irony is that the French doors that came down with the wall, have been tucked away in the attic for all of these decades. Now, we plan to eventually have new walls built again, so we'll restore & finally put back those doors, but it does surprise me that they took down the entire wall, and kept the doors. So I'll give them points for that, at least. And not only does it make the rooms less useful, but that very first wall that came down means that upstairs, there's a spot where we have to be careful about how much weight we allow, which stinks because it's the perfect place for a bookcase. And in fact, it was the previous owner who warned us about that issue, because she had a bookcase there until she noticed the ceiling downstairs starting to sag where the wall was removed.
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Post by melanell on Apr 19, 2023 1:34:20 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. We have both of these. In one room the walls were pink. The previous owner left a huge dresser in the room, and we moved that to find that before the pink, the walls were white. The white was painted onto wallpaper. We've counted 5 layers of wallpaper in there before they started layering on paint. They did the same with ceilings & floors, too---layer after layer of different coverings. Some of the ceilings were papered and then painted as well. We joke that the house must weigh one and a half times its original weight from all of these layers. Sorry this quote is missing it's info, but it's from the OP. It was a trend. 30 years from now someone willing be asking the same thing about the stuff we've been doing in homes lately.
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peppermintpatty
Pearl Clutcher
Refupea #1345
Posts: 3,873
Jun 26, 2014 17:47:08 GMT
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Post by peppermintpatty on Apr 19, 2023 12:09:43 GMT
We toured a house in our neighborhood that had tile on the bathroom floors. Not horrible, right? Then they continued the tile on the walls. Again, not horrible, right? Then they put the damn tiles on the ceiling! I kid you not.
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Post by Spongemom Scrappants on Apr 19, 2023 12:25:48 GMT
In a previous home, we had an in-law suite for my mother. The doctor who owned the home originally had added onto the former garage end of the house with a bedroom, sitting room, fireplace, bathroom, and private entrance. Really nice, right?
Then why could you only turn on the outside lamp posts (on the driveway posts and at the front gate) by flipping the light switch that also lit up the inside of one of the closets in that suite? All that renovation and they decided to live with that crazily inconvenient detail. It always baffled me.
By the way, what a fun thread!! I’m loving all the quirks people are sharing.
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Post by liya on Apr 19, 2023 12:30:11 GMT
We toured a house in our neighborhood that had tile on the bathroom floors. Not horrible, right? Then they continued the tile on the walls. Again, not horrible, right? Then they put the damn tiles on the ceiling! I kid you not. We just stayed at a hotel in NYC that had this in the bathroom. DH liked it so much he took photos. He wants to redo our main bathroom at home like this. Maybe not the ceiling, I can't remember. LOL.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 19, 2023 13:43:59 GMT
At our old house the previous owner put up the most hideous orange and gold Contact paper on some of the kitchen walls. It was so hard to get that crap off! They also took down the archway in the livingroom between what should have been a livingroom and dining room, making one weird, awkwardly long room with windows in odd places. I will never understand why they replaced what had to be hardwood cabinet doors with particle board. Also two words: shag carpeting. Why? Just why? In my current house, I’ve puzzled endlessly why the previous owners didn’t just make the two stand alone showers in two of the bathrooms an extra foot bigger? There is easily room for both to be bigger and there is an odd dead space in both of those two bathrooms at the back end of the showers. It’s not big enough to put in a shelf or bench or something, it’s just a big enough empty space to look weird. I also don’t understand pitted, textured tile on a kitchen floor. Anything that gets slopped on the floor is so much harder to wipe up because it goes in all the tiny little pits. Thankfully I have a steam mop that does a pretty decent job on it but I hate having to drag that mop out all the time for every little thing.
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Post by sideways on Apr 19, 2023 14:19:15 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. We haven’t seen a house built in the last 20 years that had 4” square tile. The house we had it in was built in 1993. Our first house had it, but it was built in 1957. We lived there 1994-2000. We’re in our fifth house, so we’ve looked at a few houses over the years.
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twinsmomfla99
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,013
Jun 26, 2014 13:42:47 GMT
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Post by twinsmomfla99 on Apr 19, 2023 17:53:52 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. That’s what we had for countertops in our first “married home” in 1992,
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Post by cmhs on Apr 19, 2023 18:44:27 GMT
Our house was built in 1950 by Jake, the first owner. Apparently, Jake did all the work himself except the electric and plumbing (per his daughter whom I connected with on FB). Jake also owned a hardware store (think unlimited access to all the nails you could possibly use). Dh and I joke whenever we do a house project and have to undo Jake's handy work -- why use two nails when you can use 40?
The kitchen was hideous when we bought the house -- brown appliances and brown indoor/outdoor carpet. Fortunately, we were able to redo it quickly.
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breetheflea
Drama Llama
Posts: 6,029
Location: PNW
Jul 20, 2014 21:57:23 GMT
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Post by breetheflea on Apr 19, 2023 19:34:26 GMT
My house was built in 1978 and updated in the 90s and there isn't a tile to be found anywhere. Pink carpet, burnt orange shag carpet, orange linoleum that will survive the apocalypse, wood paneling (real and fake), but not a single tile and no wall paper. How did I get so lucky?
Either the builder or the owner (we are the second people to live here) put the light switch for the kitchen (the ONLY) light switch for the kitchen behind the fridge though... Not near the dining room doorway, or six inches away around the corner in the hallway, but behind the fridge... and no, that is the only place the fridge goes, so it's not because the fridge used to be somewhere else... So dumb!
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Post by peasapie on Apr 20, 2023 0:40:02 GMT
I took down the LR curtains in my first home and they were literally disintegrating in my hands. Apparently they hadn’t been laundered in years.
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Post by Spongemom Scrappants on Apr 20, 2023 1:13:02 GMT
I took down the LR curtains in my first home and they were literally disintegrating in my hands. Apparently they hadn’t been laundered in years. Ha! I had the same experience in the home I described previously with the weird lighting situation. The very ornate draperies in the formal living room and dining room had been "done" by the pre-eminent interior designer in that town... easily 25-30 years prior. They had basically dry-rotted where they hung. Once I got them down, it took a dedicated effort to clean up all the dust and fiber bits that had flown all over the rooms.
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Post by katlaw on Apr 20, 2023 14:43:46 GMT
We bought a fixer upper for a really good price in 2000. The bathroom sinks had leaked for years, the cabinets underneath were rotten right through to the floor boards. The carpet had dog pee on it that had soaked through to the floor boards. The bathroom on the second floor had had a water leak at the bathtub at some point and they cut a hole in the ceiling below to fix the plumbing. Instead of fixing that hole they screwed a piece of plywood over it and painted it to match the popcorn ceiling colour. But the house was structurally sound and we were younger and thought it would be a challenge.
They installed wallpaper over new drywall without painting it first. They painted the basement walls black, installing knotty pine panelling over the black basement walls and then painting that panelling black. There were hooks on the panelling. The basement looked like a room from Silence of the Lambs. When we took down the panelling we found some "toys" hidden in a secret cabinet. They painted one bedroom in the basement a brilliant blue. Like we have an adult party room at one end and a kids play room at the other. We spent 7 years renovating and making it our dream home then sold it because we had another baby and it just did not have enough room.
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Post by peasapie on Apr 20, 2023 15:55:52 GMT
We bought a fixer upper for a really good price in 2000. The bathroom sinks had leaked for years, the cabinets underneath were rotten right through to the floor boards. The carpet had dog pee on it that had soaked through to the floor boards. The bathroom on the second floor had had a water leak at the bathtub at some point and they cut a hole in the ceiling below to fix the plumbing. Instead of fixing that hole they screwed a piece of plywood over it and painted it to match the popcorn ceiling colour. But the house was structurally sound and we were younger and thought it would be a challenge. They installed wallpaper over new drywall without painting it first. They painted the basement walls black, installing knotty pine panelling over the black basement walls and then painting that panelling black. There were hooks on the panelling. The basement looked like a room from Silence of the Lambs. When we took down the panelling we found some "toys" hidden in a secret cabinet. They painted one bedroom in the basement a brilliant blue. Like we have an adult party room at one end and a kids play room at the other. We spent 7 years renovating and making it our dream home then sold it because we had another baby and it just did not have enough room. I think people who do this have no concept that someone else will have to live in that house one day. I have a friend who moved into a house with velvet fabric glued to the walls in lieu of wallpaper.
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finaledition
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,896
Jun 26, 2014 0:30:34 GMT
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Post by finaledition on Apr 20, 2023 16:01:46 GMT
They spent a good chunk of money upgrading the lighting so it can be controlled by your phone. Sounds like an upgrade, right? Well the most used light rockers have cracked over the years and every time we would turn the light switch on or off we’d get a little zap. So we had to call a company to come out and replace the outer portion-$400 apiece!! It’s almost worth not fixing them and getting zapped on occasion.
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maryannscraps
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,742
Aug 28, 2017 12:51:28 GMT
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Post by maryannscraps on Apr 20, 2023 21:26:30 GMT
LOL, we built our house 26 years ago, so I only have myself to blame. Sometimes I have to ask "What was I thinking?" The electrical stuff I blame on the jerk electrician who spent all his time on the phone talking with his girlfriend about planning their wedding. Oh, and the carpenter who decided to have a burn pile in the back yard and almost burned down the barely framed house.
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