" We bought a house that was built back in 1947 and were enchant to death with what we then saw as ' role ' … "
1.“First time homeowner, bought from an older couple that inherited and then sort of half-flipped the house. Everything was mostly great for a few months, then the brand new dishwasher stopped working mysteriously. Asked my dad to check it out, he was mystified. He called in his electrician/general fix-it wizard buddy, who was also mystified, and this guy fixes up appliances he finds in roadside trash for fun. We wind up buying a new dishwasher, the old one is hauled away. They install it. It’s not working. They’re losing their minds because this CANT BE HAPPENING TO THEM. Every tool that’s ever been invented is strewn across the kitchen. I’m just kind of around trying to be helpful but out of the way and at some point turned on a different light switch.”
2.“I’ve lived in some crummy apartments in Copenhagen during my time. Old and small but cozy. However, in one apartment the bathroom was so small that I had to shower with the toilet inside the shower curtain. The kitchen was huuuuuge though — pretty normal for 1930s places.”
— leab4e4c406db
3.“My mother purchased my great aunt’s house when she died. This was in the late ’90s and my great aunt was widowed a long time and a bit of a recluse. The only person she readily welcomed into her life was one of my uncles. She was fiercely independent and lived in a home I’d say was built around the the ’30s. I can’t say for sure but my mother says my aunt had the home long before she was born and it wasn’t brand new then. When my mom moved in, it was like a museum of my aunt’s life. Very interesting but no repairs had ever been done on the home. One thing that stuck out the most is lighting fixtures on the actual walls (with very old wall paper and drywall underneath) were attached to the gas lines.”
" Meaning you ’d turn a valve , the flatulence would do out , and you ’d alight it to really light the way . I could n’t believe such an obvious fire hazard ever existed . You could see discoloration on some of the walls from burn ! There were so many out-of-date thing in that rest home — too long to put here , but it was quite an adventure for our kinfolk . "
— mizztina
4.“The first night I slept in my home I was woken up in the middle of the night of a train horn that sounded like it was coming through my house. That happens every night several times a night.”
5.“My first house, built 1913, had two closets added later. I ripped up the ugly ’70s shag carpet to refinish the wood floors underneath, and discovered that the idiot who added the closets built them on top of the carpet.”
— kbbpll
6.“We’d never lived anywhere close to a busy road so we didn’t know to look out for it, and I think the realtor always booked showings at non-busy times just to minimize our chance of noticing it. I love everything else about our house, but that is a constant source of annoyance for me.”
— axj66
7.“We bought a house that was built back in 1947 and were charmed to death with what we then saw as ‘character,’ as well the ‘improvements’ that had been made by the former owners. One of these features was a spiral staircase they installed to connect one room to the converted attic. Eventually, I realized the staircase was not actually value added; it was where I would certainly meet permanent disability or death, which I found to be a less-than-charming prospect.”
8.“I rent a supposed luxury apartment in an upscale neighborhood. Well, first the breakfast bar only has a four-inch overhang. It’s impossible to sit under. Have to sit sideways. Then, the bedroom doesn’t get much heat nor AC. Have to leave the bedroom door open. Then, window screens had tiny holes letting tiny bugs in. The cable jack in the bedroom and the living room were completely bypassed, not even connected. The parking garage roof leaks terribly despite paying for a parking space.”
" The dishwasher was leaking behind the scenes make sheetrock to decay and kitchen floor to bubble up . The accelerator pedal logarithm gave off fumes made me sick yet the built in CO detector never went off . Former neighbour in adjacent building grilled illegally on their balcony . A neighbor ’s safeguard dog attacked me in the common hallway . "
— mpotter1024
9.“We bought on a beautiful wooded lot with a two-lane country road deep in the rear. After putting in a pool and a wonderful screen porch, we realized the hill behind was the main street for all the developing going on. Trucks shifting gears uphill all day. School busses. Could not hear the TV on the porch or have peaceful conversation at the pool and gazebo. I sat and listened for hours for noise before buying this house.”
— jewp1405
10.“The last house I owned was light switch central. Never knew what half of the switches did. Like, every room had a two-switch panel, but only one was hooked up to anything. The other switch did nothing. The kitchen and living room both had three-switch plates, and again, most didn’t seem to do anything. I just imagined I was shutting off my neighbor’s home dialysis machine or something.”
11.“Let me tell you about a bad kitchen sink. Ours is divided into three parts: a smaller-than-average left side, a tiny, square sink with a disposal in the middle, and a smaller-than-average right side. The combined footprint is probably a little bigger than a traditional double sink, but the overall effect is so much less practical! For starters, the house predates the city being incorporated, so the builder kind of freestyled the building rules and the sink only has one trap. If you’re doing something soapy in one basin, the other two will back up with suds.”
" And you well hope you do n’t want to launder anything big , like large pots / genus Pan or removable - for - cleaning role of the fridge , because you have to use the sprayer , and you ’ll be mopping up the counter and flooring afterwards . I ’ve been perish to recast this kitchen since day one . "
— chisti
12.“My parents added an addition onto a 3-bed/1-bath one-story home that my dad designed and built with the plan for a five-person family one day. Someone explain to me why this man built two floors with two identical communal rooms on top of each other with no additional bathrooms or personal living space. We still lived on top of each other in the original house while half of the addition sat unused for years.”
— goldenlion71
13.“This is part of a long drawn out story, but, in 2006, I purchased a three-level three-bedroom rooftop ‘former model’ penthouse at auction for 2/3 of the original purchase price. I did not have much time to peruse the unit. After purchase, I realized that I heard the stopping and starting of the elevator. Just so happened that the elevator machine room was just adjacent to my top floor and shared a slab of concrete (where the elevator motors were bolted). That slab served as a SPEAKER!! There turned out to be no way to quiet that elevator noise throughout my tenure there.”
14.“I bought a 1970s home and the guest bathroom toilet must have been for little kids. I feel like I’m sitting on the floor when I use it!”
— sillysealion42
15.“We immediately fell in love with our 1916 Victorian; it was perfect, checked all our needs/wants boxes and the price was fantastic! Six months after moving in, suddenly realized our living room has no natural light/windows and no way to create space for any (room is basically in middle of home after prev owner added a primary suite rite off the living room).”
" Also , the original ramp up ins in the support elbow room that we get laid during walk thru , we now want to tear out . The living elbow room is small as it is , and built atomic number 49 take up cherished real estate so it ’s either them or the puritanical hearth / mantle ( we do n’t use the hearth but it ’s too gorgeous to demo ! ) . This living room is our Achilles heel . "
— georgiajaymes
16.“Ugh, the dearth of outlets in old homes! Our house was built in 1929, and yes, things were quite different during the Depression Era. Closets were tiny, doors were minuscule, and — yes — outlets were MAYBE one per room. Having to overhaul the whole electrical system in order to accommodate a lamp AND a computer, was not quaint or cutesy. It was $$$!”
17.“So many things, where to start? The light fixture going down to the basement is placed over the steps, not the landing at the top of the stairs. Changing that light is a death defying feat. And the basement has multiple rooms on either side of the staircase. The light switch for the basement light is on the back left side of the basement room to the right. You have to walk through the basement in the dark to turn on the light.”
" The kitchen light fixture is a fluorescent tube light fixture . To switch a medulla oblongata , it read two people as the cover has to be unscrewed at either oddment has there is no way to keep it in place or keep it from falling . Takes two to hold it in place and rescrew it on . And who in their correct intellect commit pale beige carpet throughout a house that has hard Sir Henry Wood level ? "
— grouchycoach226
18.“Every single outlet in our 1964 house is upside down. Like in the hospital. I am sure it’s some grounding thing, but it’s so annoying. I have to flip it every time. Still haven’t gotten the hang of it!”
— nurseynurse
19.“Those dang trees! We loved the yard with the shade, little did we realize the amount of leaves, plus the cost of maintaining them! 12 big paper bags of leaves every week for a month, $4,000 to have two trees trimmed last fall! Never again!”
20.“The light switches in this house. Two bedrooms have switches that are not wired to anything. The others have weird placements, like around a corner after you enter a room, instead of right next to the door, or several feet away from the entry so you have to walk into a dark room to turn it on.”
— fabtooth34
21.“Our old house had a laundry closet, situated directly behind the only place you could put a TV in the living room. If you wanted to hear the TV, don’t do laundry. There was also an air vent in the floor directly in front of where the washing machine went. Meaning it only cooled the washing machine. Even worse, if you needed to drain the filter (we had a front loader), you had to be insanely careful or you’d drain water directly into the vent.”
" Our newfangled house has only one air vent in both my son ’s room and our home spot . Even with a Modern HVAC it ’s like a sauna in those rooms in the summer because they confront the front of the house and we have a metallic element overhang . Meanwhile the closet in my chamber has THREE air blowhole . Three . We call it the meat locker . "
— j4287b3497
22.“When we bought our house, there was a nice pergola over the back patio. Unfortunately, when the previous owner built the pergola, they put a hole in the roof to secure it to the house. Now our roof leaks and we need a new roof.”
23.“The thing I hate about where I live is the lack of storage space. It has three bathrooms, but no closets. The attic has one tiny patch that can have things sitting on it so that’s where our small amount of Christmas stuff stays. There’s a desperately narrow cupboard that’s supposed to be a linen closet, but it’s only big enough to store towels alone, so I got an ottoman bed so I could store bedlinen and winter coats.”
" If I owned the house , I would fully floor the attic and exchange the downstairs bathroom into a pantry / awesome computer storage area . The company who build up these house must have thought people opt multiple toilet locations rather than plaza to put our things . Come on , there ’s not even anywhere to store a dustpanful and brush ! "
— laurarosek
24.“My current neighborhood is in the middle of open country with few trees. The back of the house faces the setting sun and it raises the temp in the house drastically. I have foil covered cardboard in the big picture window of my living room ‘cuz the sun literally burnt and melted my blinds. My kitchen door wall is covered with blackout curtains. I can barely get any natural light on the house because of it.”
— bloobeebloobeeblooblooblooo
25.“I love my apartment, but I missed a ton when I came to check it out twice! I have like four closets, but they’re very narrow so my hangers don’t fit in them. The kitchen cabinets are pretty high up. I can’t reach the top two shelves so they’re just empty, and then the bathroom vanity is so low! Giants in the kitchen and little people in the bathroom. Also, the floors are tilted so my office rolling chair will just start rolling if i don’t have my feet down. I still love it, but how did I miss all of that?”
26.And finally, “The fridge in my kitchen is right next to the door leading in from the hall. As in the fridge door and the hall door bang against each other. Constantly. And what makes it worse is that for some eerie reason all the doors in the house swing open if you so much as breathe on them. I have to keep the kitchen door open when I cook so I can hear and see my young kids. I’ve ended up with a door stop but then I still can’t open the fridge door fully. Who decided that was a good design for a kitchen?!?!? (Fridge is in a specific recess so I’d need to redo the whole kitchen to fix things).”
— emmac4cd1af4e7
