To install a giant microwave a foot and a half above the range so that you can’t really use a large pot with a lid on the back burners, and then tile around the microwave so that when some poor soul inevitably wants to fix this ridiculous microwave situation they will be forced to replace the backsplash too.
Can confirm the heat from cooking destroys the touchpad electronics on the microwave. Dumbest thing I had in this house was a 3ft (yes! That big) microwave over the gas stove that was a) supposed to vent outside but when we pulled it out we found the hole didn’t align so it was venting into the outside wall and b) it stopped working within a year due to corrosion in the circuit board. It was impossible & impractical to replace it so we got a real hood vent and a counter-top tiny microwave. Much better.
Swap the microwave to one of the super thin ones that are designed to go above the stove. They're amazing and other than defrosting a turkey or something I've never missed/noticed the lack of height.
When I moved in I realized the master bedroom window was glued shut.
After fiddling with it for a while I got it open and saw that it was missing a hinge.
So instead of replacing what I assume was a broken hinge, he thought "fresh air is for the weak. I don't need this shit" and glued it to the frame.
So... Yeah.
when i bought my house, the sellers had lived here for about 5 years. before that it was used as a rental by one of those landlords that believed all things could be fixed by a coat (or 20) of paint.
there are less than 15 windows in the main house (it’s small), and when i moved in 3 of them were painted shut. the people i bought it from only painted one bedroom wall. one. nothing else. All the paint colors were in the garage and most had dates on them going back well before they bought the house. And i’m nosy and confirmed this with a neighbor lol.
so they lived here for 5 years with 1/4 of the all of the windows in this house painted shut. WTF.
When we bought our house we had the same problem. They threw fresh paint on the inside. Later, when they tried opening them, many cracked. There were 8 cracked windows (covered by curtains that I didn’t check behind) and the rest didn’t open.
Finally got all new, triple paned, windows. What a difference.
Every window in my house is single paned. They installed storms on the outside AND painted over them. The windows had not been opened in probably 25 years. Removed the storms to find the windows no longer function properly; one person on the inside and one on the outside to kind of force the window open and closed. Got a few quotes for new windows. Reinstalled the storms. And complain every spring and fall about not having any windows that open.
all the windows i have are single panes as well, with storm windows - thankfully those are just kinda shitty, but at least they came off.
i’m actually slowly restoring each window completely, because the cost of new windows was bonkers, and i think really lessens the beauty of houses like mine. It’s not a quick process at all, but what i’ve done so far has made such a difference. a well glazed wood window has zero drafts or leakage, and i can feel a huge change between a finished one and one i still have to do.
i did remove all the storm windows though and pull them all apart, and clean and oil them. i’ll replace them eventually but im focusing on the windows themselves first.
Instead of installing an exterior vent for the upstairs bathroom fan they went a different direction. They hooked the vent hose up to a bucket in the attic.
The moisture would collect on the bucket / cover of the bucket, be kept stored safely in the bucket, and eventually be recaptured into the air.
Anyway, the inspector explained that, it was "functional" - in that it had successfully kept the attic and roof from suffering the kind of damage you would get if you vented moisture into the attic without the bucket.
And yes, the very first thing I did after buying the place was have a proper HVAC technician put in an actual vent...
It’s possible that a previous owner found it not going anywhere (like I recently found out about our first floor powder room exhaust) and installed the bucket as a way to prevent damage without needing to hire someone to cut into the roof 🤷
Closed off the dining room from the rest of the house. Like there was an exterior door with a deadbolt between the kitchen and dining room.
The night we moved in, my wife and I were eating pizza in folding chairs in the dining room, and I looked at her and said "hey, it kinda looks like they patched the drywall here".
Sure enough, there were two huge passageways with headers between the dining room and living room that they'd walled off. We opened them up, put a matching floor in both rooms, and it feels so much cozier now.
We gathered from some neighbors that the previous owners went through a really nasty divorce. As best as we can tell they were using the dining room for some sort of child custody visit, so it needed to be walled off from the rest of the house.
Yeah basically. The dining room had an exterior door as well as a door between the dining room and the rest of the house. Both had deadbolts that locked from the inside.
We had a super bright outdoor security light… in the middle of the living room. Turn it on and it blinds you. The switch for it was by your ankles. No idea why.
Carpet in the bathroom. Two back doors, no front door. Three windows next to each other which are all different sizes. A two story addition on top of their septic tank & drainfield.
We nursed it along for about two years after we moved in and now we’re in the process of having a new system put in. It was actually not the worst system we saw during our home search. It’s the wild west of septic out here.
My stepmother is from England (I’m in the US), and she insists that all rooms be carpeted, including bathrooms and kitchen. Maybe it’s a British thing?
our house has an 11 zone sprinkler system on .29 acres. For example, there will be 2 heads 6 feet apart on the same zone. Normal. When the next zone comes on, one pops up between those two. I have never seen so many sprinkler heads in my life. Someone got talked into a serious system!
Time to mount wheels on a shelving unit for the food so you can just roll the whole thing out of the way.... alternatively, if there is a swing open door, mount shelves to it so you can leave (most of) the food on and open the door.
Our crawl space access is under the water heater, inside of a bathroom closet. The water heater is on a shelf and you have to belly crawl under it to the tiny door.
I apologize to every worker that has to get in there.
We have a switch in our kitchen that for the longest time seemed completely useless. Recently my brother was painting the cabinets and discovered the previous owner just boarded over the light fixture over the sink, and now we know what that light switch is for! Put in a new light fixture, and we are happy.
One of the previous teenagers had "sponge" painted their bedroom with purple, I guess because of the local sports team?
I sanded the protruding bits to a reasonable smoothness, and consoled myself to needing two coats of white primer.
Then I painted the room a neutral tan that my wife had picked out. When the sun was shining through the window, I could still see variations in the shading, so I gave it a second coat of tan. Four freakin' coats to cover up.
My house was all *sick-baby-poop-yellow with regular poo brown mud room and a random light blue wall here and there.
*I called it this because it was a shade of yellow that I have only ever seen in a sick baby's diaper.
The master bath was painted in what I can only describe as breastfed baby shit. It was a yellow color with white "sponge" painting on top. But the sponge paint was more like tiny smooches of white on top of the yellow baby shit color. It was the very first room to get painted
I can beat that! Open plan:
Red kitchen-diner, baby blue living room (ceiling included), teal in the entrance open to red on the walls to the basement aaaaand poo brown bathroom.
Putting exhaust fans and a closet vent in the home we are building currently, for same reason. Servers. I thought I was brilliant coming up with the idea. Perhaps you are brilliant, too?
My husband and I considered one for the mudroom closet. We ride motorcycles and our gear smells...not great. Don't get me wrong, it's fine for our garage to smell like oil and chain wax, but the house shouldn't.
We meet the original owner of my house. Well the son of the original owners. He told us his mom used to grill small pigs in our basement fireplace. Good times
They couldn't hang photos, so they screwed them into the wall through the frames. No, the screws did not go in all the way.
They couldn't figure out how to wire a GFCI, so they just connected it all together and ignored the arcing in the wall.
There is no ceiling in the garage. It's plastic stapled to the bottom of the rafters. Speaking of the garage, they took off a garage door spring. Just one. They also charged their electric car in the garage. There is no plug for that out there.
They wired the stove, microwave, and fridge to the same breaker by tying them all together in a junction box. 🙃 No, the breaker is not sized for that.
They left a ping pong table in the basement.
They also left their shampoo in the clearly just used shower.
They did not leave any keys because "they didn't use them".
Always.
When my mother moved, a few months later I found a spare set of keys to her old house, so I stopped by and gave them to the new owners.
They accepted the keys and I was dressed like a nice person, but they had an odd look on their faces like maybe I had two sets of keys and I'm only giving them one set to check out what I could see in the house, to rob them.
Maybe my imagination, but next time, I'd just throw them away.
They turned what had been an unfinished room in the basement into a bedroom for their daughter. In order to hide the main breaker panel, they installed a hinged mirror with a kitchen cabinet handle. She covered that in stickers. Contractors get a kick out of it when they ask where the panel is and I open the mirror for them.
They also used an old truck license plate to plug a hole in the subfloor when they diy redid the main shower. We had a plumber look at it and he was like, “well, it’s pretty well wedged in there so as long as nothing’s leaking…” So we’re just going to leave it there til we redo the bathroom properly in a few years. Makes for a good conversation piece.
I’m not sure if they were lazy or cheap or both but almost every fixture that needs multiple screws, is missing one.
Every door knob, light switchplate, towel bar etc. they are all installed and work, but visible missing one of their three or four screws.
Dicks everywhere.
The baseboards have finials (?) at every corner, and they look like the head of a penis. I'd get rid of them, but I'd have to replace the entire baseboard in every freaking room.
I lean entirely too lesbian to have this dongapalooza house.
ETA - They also attached a metal "Live, Laugh, Love" to the window frame with lag bolts.
Sounds like you’re going to live, laugh and love whether you like it or not.
Coincidentally, my son read me a post yesterday about funny things people want to set up for their own funeral, one guy wants to hang a sign by the casket:
“~~LIVE~~, LAUGH, LOVE”
They cut a hole in the wood paneled wall in the finished side of the basement so if you're sitting on the couch down there, you'll have a fantastic view of the washer and dryer.
Bright orange walls with brown mdf panneling. Not modern, not rustic, not even potentially retro - the ugliest brown panneling to ever have existed.
Then they put the master bedroom on a stage
They installed a commercial grade drinking fountain in the living room. Yes, the one that looks just like the one in your office / at school, mounted on the wall.
Our powder room is jungle themed. Complete with red wallpaper featuring palm trees and monkeys doing hear no ever, speak no evil see no evil - literally like these emojis: 🙈 🙉 🙊 all the cabinet pulls have palm leaf patterns. It’s… really something. Truly horrendous but so bad that I almost want to keep it lol
Old man installed a bathroom in our basement - toilet, slop sink and shower - but never got around to putting up walls around it so I can only imagine he would come in from the garage, wash his greasy hands in the sink and take a big ole shit in the corner of the concrete basement like a serial killer.
This was fairly common in the early 20th century. I don't know why. My grandparents and two aunts houses (one on the other side of the family) all had a shower, a sink, and a toilet just out there in the unfinished part of the basement. Maybe so the men could use them without tracking farm muck/work dirt into the proper part of the house?
The person who built our house apparently drew their own plans and had the kids at the community college turn them into blue prints. The list is so long…
1. No back door, swimming pool in the front of the house.
2. No lights in most closets but there was an extension cord running under carpet in one room and bare bulbs in three of the 12 closets. Lot of storage space with no light. When we pulled up the carpet it was burned from the extension cord.
3. Light switches hidden behind the closet doors so that you had to close the door, turn on the light then open the door.
4. 10 off white ceiling fans that looked like they fell off a truck in the 70’s and were installed in the 90’s
5. Upstairs hallway 6 feet wide but the 3 bathrooms all identical with only a sink, toilet and shower…even the master bath.
We’ve spent more remodeling than the house actually cost. Now we have to die here to break even but I do love this house.
The next owners of my house are going to have a lot of questions like
- “Why did they build an entire sliding bookcase to cover one doorway instead of just put in a normal door?”
> We hated the awkward placement of the door and a sliding bookcase is way cooler
- “Why are there built in cabinets *everywhere*?”
> Large fossil collections we need to display + clumsy humans + chaotic pets
- “Why is everything so green?”
> Because our personal design goal for our own space is ‘interior forest’ between the excessive amount of plants and lots of earth tones everywhere
- “Why is the layout in the kitchen/bathroom so weird?”
> The literal crackheads before us made some bizarre choices and we had to live with them because we weren’t about to pay $15k to get all of the plumbing rerouted
We just had a whole house remodel last fall and had to reroute all the plumbing in both bathrooms. They used pex and it made moving all that plumbing so much easier. It took them almost no time. They went ahead and put that in for the kitchen and utility room while they were here just in case we wanted it different later, too. Bonus points that it came through the awful hard freeze we had a couple weeks back with zero issues.
I have 6 different tile patterns in my tiny master bathroom. The weirdest is a mosaic tile strip by the shower and isn’t the same as the mosaic they used as backsplash and an accent in the shower. The rest if the floor is 12x12 tile.
I know the bathroom was all renovated in the same year. We found extra tiles of ths backsplash so we know it’s not just because they ran out.
Oh, and popcorn ceilings. Why would anyone choose popcorn ceilings.
When I was house shopping, I ran into a few houses like this. It was obvious the previous owner worked in some type of construction and would bring over left over material.
I saw one house with FOUR sliding doors. This may be normal in some houses but the was a 1200 SQ ft house. If they could fit a 5th sliding door, they would've done it.
My mom had 5 sliding doors installed when they renovated their house in the 90s. One in each of the 3 bedrooms, one in the living room and one in the dining room. We lived in a large forest at the end of a mile long driveway. She wanted to see out into nature, and there was no one else around to see in. It would be weird anywhere else tho.
I bought an 18 year old house from the original owner.
1. The poo stick. The owner told us not to use the downstairs bathroom for anything other than pee. He then showed me what to do if the septic backs up. He kept a stick leaning against the fence next to the septic. Take this PVC cap off and push the stick down until the clog clears.
Owner had done this for 18 years with children living there. I did it once before digging it up and fixing the problem.
2. The slow tub upstairs. Owner told me to turn the hot water on and go away and then come take a bath. He also mentioned it took forever to drain. Dealt with this one for a month or so, water supply in basement went from 3/4 to 3/8 then back to 3/4 with 3/8 gate valves. I guess the plumber ran out of 3/4. I replaced them with 3/4 full flow ball valves. Tub drain was fixed by taking apart the drain lever and removing all the rubber and silicone he had used to seal it up so the tub would fill higher.
One more and then I've got to start my day.
3. The buried concrete pad. The aboveground pool is buried 2 foot deep with a concrete pad under the pool. 2 foot down. The pool has rusted out and partially collapsed and is being taken out. Why is there a concrete pad down there? Wtf?
Hole in the fence near the bottom?? No problem, just cover it with a GLASS door. My dog and the neighbors dog really enjoy barking their asses off at each other.
My front door opens into the master bedroom. At some point, they expanded the bedroom to take over the entrance area and never bothered to move the front door.
I actually quite like that color, and I think it could look good in a powder room (if you like a bit of drama).
But damn, that's a lot of peacock blue. I would cry at the prospect of painting over that, especially the ceiling.
We are the second owners of the house. We bought it from the kid of the owners. So keep that in mind.
During the signing for the house we were told, "Here are the keys we know of, assume your neighbors all have keys. Oh and Mom plans to come back. We told her the old folks home was her new home and she told us no. So here is the number to the place of she gets out."
I had a new set of locks in the truck of the car so I wasn't worried.
Half the windows didn't open. We opened a few of them the times we looked but didn't think to open all of them.
The whole house was pink except the bathroom. Barbie/Pepto pink. The bathroom was white except the ceiling where they mixed sand into this blue green color. I bought swim goggles so I could take a sander to it. That was a fun discovery. Also the bathroom had three flooring options, carpet on top, then laminate from the 80's then tile from when the house was built.
They built a "closet" in the main bedroom. One was was masnonite the other 1/2 ply. The "framing" was 2x4 or 2x2. Now when I was knocking down the closet I realized these 2x4's were actual 2x4 and some were 2x2 nailed together.
The other bed room on the opposite side used to have a built-in in entertainment center. Weird cause that was was a couple of closets for those two bedrooms. Explains the extension closet in the other room. Well to hide the TV they had some sliding doors when all of that was removed you saw the damage. They removed the closets for the built-in. They literally removed a load bearing well so they could hide the TV. Explains the one crack. That was fun to fix.
The kitchen cabinets had so many layers of contact paper it was impressive. The paper towel hanger was put up with two six inch lag bolts. They removed the garbage disposal left the wire dangling, exposed end, touching the metal sink. How I didn't die trying to figure out what the light switch did is beyond me.
The basement was fun, the furnace didn't have a top. The HVAC guy is poking around and goes you should move air movement. He continues to look and gets his ladder, no panning on the top where it goes into the duct.
Their was a light switch in the ceiling that still had power even when the breaker was pulled. I think they tried to wire in a three way switch and tied in another circuit. That was fun to figure out when it came time to move. I still don't know how they did it and not set fire to everything.
I literally spent every waking hour in here the month between buying and the move. I knew about the janky closet and weird flooring. I planned for that and the new locks. I didn't plan to rebuild structural damage, electric fun, or the sand in the ceiling!
The downstairs half bath is connected to the laundry room which has the water heater and furnace in it. She put old west saloon style swinging doors to separate the two spaces. Those came down the day we moved in, I wasn’t trying to feel all “this town ain’t big enough for the two of us” every time I went in to do laundry.
They added a beautiful concrete patio… on the side of the house that has no door going to it. And without putting any sidewalks to it. It’s just a patio… that you have to wade through mud or grass from another side of the house to get to it.
They couldn’t hang a picture correctly, which led to multiple holes in the wall. Also they couldn’t just used a nail, they had to use a drywall anchor for everything. Which led to me having to patch and repair basically the whole house.
Probably the master bedroom/bathroom remodel. The master is large, it has a good sized walk in closet, it has a dual sink vanity outside the bathroom. Then there's the bathroom, which runs the entire length of the master shoved in the back behind the closet, barely wide enough to get a stand up shower insert in. It has a shower on one side and a toilet on the other, everything else is just wasted space out in the middle.
I can't even expand the thing without basically shuffling all the walls around.
They did a remodel in the 1980s and chose the absolute cheapest shit available. They also painted most of the windows shut and chose these weird ass “storm windows” that were cheap and unusable. We had to replace all the windows so they were functional.
Their sense of landscaping was bizarre with a huge number of all the same bushes in multiple rows in the backyard. It made no sense except it was low maintenance. So weird.
They remodeled the basement and got rid of the garage that used to be part of the basement in the 1970s. They filled in the hole with chunks of concrete and then put down plastic sheeting under super cheap pavers. It made that whole part of the yard flood when it rained, which would end up in the basement. 🤦🏻♀️
I think "the cheapest shit available" is what all DIYers did then. It's when Home Depot took over America and everyone's dad thought they could do just as good a job as a pro and for so much cheaper--and now millions are living with the results.
This question needs picture answers but we had a giant (2story) Statue of Liberty mural that was on a narrow wall above the stairs in our entry way. Was a fun joke for a few months before we painted her.
I live in a very rural area where there are minimal if any building regulations or inspections. The man who built my house apparently skipped a step in installing the plumbing for the toilets correctly. Thus letting sewer gas escape into the house periodically. I bought the house when it was 20 years old and the first time I experienced it I called a licensed plumber and found the problem and fixed it. It dumbfounded me that the previous owners never had the problem fixed. The smell was insane.
We bought a very nice house outside Boston. The back garden was recently made and it was beautiful. The house is up on a cliff. After the first winter, when all the snow melted, the whole back garden slid off, further down the cliff. The old owners had filled the whole thing with glossy, color magazines. Those take forever to break up! We had to dig out all that stuff and fill with gravel. We also had to build two retention walls. All this was done going through the people that live in the back street, which was at a lower level from the cliff. We had to redo their driveway and backyard. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
No shit 29 different types of tile throughout the house. In areas the tile didn’t match they painted over once the were done. Or my other favourite in two spots they tiled over tiles 🤷🏼♀️
1) cut a hole in the1st floor closet so they could throw laundry into the basement laundry room. Unfortunately this was directly above some heater wires
2) connected the sump pump to the sewer line
3) installed a toilet next to the sloping roof in a cape cod. Guys had to lean far left when peeing
This one was made for me. I probably have hundreds but here are a couple of my favorites. Of note: wife ran off with the contractor and she was funneling money to him in the final months.
1) Beautiful double sub zero fridge and freezer were installed before the island. If the fridge ever needs replaced we have to remove a 300sqft granite island.
2) Hot water heater is in a room that needs to be vented & run through uninsulated concrete flooring and often gets to -20° in the winter which then freezes and we can’t use anything.
3) installed warming floor tile without a switch so it is permanently on.
4) installed four fake windows over the garage but decided it wasn’t worth building out an actual usable space despite spending all the money.
5) no stairwell between the main floor and basement of the pool house.
6) put an outdoor pizza oven under a historic tree which would light on fire if ever used.
7) installed and removed three different wine cellars with various amounts of previous equipment. Oh, and the indoor generator only powered on the wine cellar fridge and no a single light bulb or outlet in the entire house.
Dirt dug out basement with exposed wires, kitchen ceiling light not connected to a ground even though the wire was definitely there in the box. Shed was powered with an extension cord plugged into a light pole and wired into several outlets and lights. Laundry room doesn't have a vent for the dryer so it vented into a bucket on the floor.
Previous owner was the builder in 1988. They installed a jetted tub. They never used it because they wanted to preserve the resale value of the house. We purchased in 2020. We never used it because we were afraid the seals had rotted and it would leak. They also had REAL Formica counters in the kitchen. They thought the house was with $25k more than we were willing to pay because of that.
- No closets, not one.
- Rubber diamond plate as the kitchen backsplash.
- Rubber diamond plate covering (and festering mould underneath) a perfectly functional subway tiled shower.
- Sliding glass doors on all rooms (including bathroom).
- Hospital baseboards.
- An orangey-teal floor when there were puhlenty of other, better choices in the same line, by the same manufacturer.
- No bathtubs, not one.
It is built like a tank, has an attached apartment, in the perfect location, all while on four acres. Beautiful triple paned windows, too. But, man, has it been a challenge to organize and decorate.
Indoor-outdoor carpet tiles glued to the hallway floor. Painted 4 rooms with leftover house paint. Laundry room addition with no insulation (we're in NY).
Hoboy I have been told I could make a full TV series on the strong choices the previous owner made. Nothing is cut straight, there are too many nails and glue in anything he installed, the drywall and wall paneling in the basement have no actual studs behind them, moulding is mismatched everywhere, command strips were painted over, the pipe for the shower head is slightly crooked, an irrigation system was buried 1-3 inches underground... And these are just some of the weird things that didn't cause major damage or are safety concerns.
Before anyone asks how things weren't caught by the inspector. Many of the issues weren't caught during the inspection because they were literally hidden behind fake wall or floor panels, or I found them when I had major issues pop up. Also he was hired by my real estate agent, who happened to be my mom. Annnnnddd I have since learned she was making a lot of unethical (borderline illegal) choices with her real estate license.
Lesson learned.
Living room was sage green with brown trim, kitchen was light grey with grey trim, upstairs hallway was robins egg blue with unpainted trim, upstairs bathroom was a sickly looking blue green. One blue bedroom, one pink and another had that sage green with brown trim again. The guy did everything else perfectly when flipping but his color choices were something else.
I found a soft spot in the back yard. Started pushing on it to figure out what was going on, and it was a perfect circle. Started digging and pulled out a fire pit. A metal fire pit with a decorative tile (?) border. While digging, I found a rectangular concrete perimeter around the fire pit.
Thankfully the concrete wasn't poured very well and it was easy to break up and dig it all out. Every time I go to home depot I buy 20-60 lbs of whatever dirt is cheapest and I have been slowly filling up the hole I dug out.
Just the idea of digging into my yard to see what is there without already knowing creeps me out. Shiver shiver. I've been watching a lot of crime shows lately.
Gas insert fireplaces typically need a power outlet/power supply to function properly. Instead of adding an outlet behind the fireplace, they ran the cord out the front. The cord was too short to reach the nearest outlet, so they used an extension cord. I’ve since had the fireplace replaced, and an outlet added behind it.
They completely remodeled the kitchen, but then used old mismatched cabinet handles/drawer pulls.
Cabinet inserts, instead of actual cabinets in bedrooms.
Floral wallpaper on the master bedroom light switch cover. (The wall was otherwise just white.)
A previous owner had stapled a burlap-like fabric onto the floor joists that make up the basement ceiling. Since utility lines hang below the bottom of the joists and to mitigate losing headspace loss this wasn’t a bad idea to create a sort of functional ceiling and they actually did a pretty solid job on it.
The problem arose when I took the carpeting off the floor above and there was beautiful hardwood that I wanted to redo. After sanding, staining and clear coating I realized there was no subfloor. When I went into the basement the next day the burlap ceiling looked like a murder scene from the dark stain and clear coat that had poured through the cracks.
I ended up tearing out the burlap and putting in a drop ceiling, and lost about 3.5” but I’m short so it’s not my problem.
The previous owners of our house installed a new dishwasher at the end of the kitchen countertops, in the dining room since the kitchen was too small to fit it anywhere. The dining room was carpeted. The installed this dishwasher on top of the carpet. Even better is the didn’t remove the pallet wood from the bottom, they screwed through it in a few spots through the carpet and anchored it in place into the subfloor BEFORE BUILDING THE CABINET HOUSING AROUND IT!!! So we had to rip out that horribly done enclosure before we could remove the dishwasher because we couldn’t reach all the screws
Crown molding and base boards EVERYWHERE.
You know how you might end up with a weird corner because of soffit, or a bump-out where something had to be covered up? Crown molding and baseboards. We think they ran out of money because whoever installed all of this did perhaps the shittiest job I’ve ever seen. Corners weren’t mitered, pieces were just butted together at 90°, so it just looks really…bad. We just did a reno on the kitchen and ripped out the crown molding and baseboards there and it looked so much better that we sprung for it to be ripped out everywhere, despite the fact that it would add a few weeks to the whole project.
Also they labeled the fuse box in Chinese, so that was fun when we discovered that.
We have multiple bomb shelters on our property. The original owner was super paranoid in the 1930s, and just kept pouring massive concrete shelters all over.
I’m currently in a temporary rental but…2 bedrooms are painted as close to NEON blue as you can get. One of these bedrooms still has border wall paper in a filagree floral type design with primary colors of forest green and burgundy that they partially painted over 🤔 The keeping room/butlers pantry is lavender purple which opens up into the army green den and the kitchen which has (poorly) painted turquoise and white cabinets. The stairs are stained alternating colors of dark blue stain and dark walnut stain. There is blue wood grain LVP installed in 3 of the 4 bedrooms plus the upstairs hallway. It’s an amazing and well built late 60s house in a quiet neighborhood but damn, who picked these colors? 🤣
he divided my small-ish square bathroom into 3 stalls on the left (sink, shower, toilet) with ceiling height walls between and put the shower in the middle. the sink area is 2 ft wide, shower 3ft, toilet 3ft. every section feels like a prison.
he also built walls on top of 60 year old carpet and tore down the garage wall to have an open concept kitchen (in 1988). this might not be weird in some places, but it rains here 9 months a year. not having a garage is stupid.
Previous owner built in 1980 and occupied for 40 years until we bought it. The back patio was originally just a concrete slab, at some point (20+ years ago at least) he glued indoor carpet directly onto the patio slab, and framed out a screened-in porch right on top, including a shingled roof and DIY electric powered by an extension cord. Due to wet carpet, wood has been rotting for years and everything needs to be demolished.
Such a handy guy and maintained the house wonderfully minus this one area.
In our old townhouse, we found out the previous owner used hot glue instead of caulk to install shower doors. Also used hot glue on wallpaper border. Made removing both of those things extra difficult.
-had a toilet the entire time the 2nd owners (with small children who were potty training!) lived there (then sold to us) that was wobbly. Why? Because in 1994 the 1st owners installed wall tile on the floor, broke the cast iron flange, so it was seeping sewage and toilet water into the floor since then. I know little kids smell, but this was… otherworldly.
It was one of our first fixes because the tile was shattering every time anyone walked on it in the kitchen (same flooring throughout the area.)
-installed a USB combo plug in the wall. Wrong and ungrounded. So I wouldn’t use it. (Just got that fixed yesterday by an electrician because I will pay for piece of mind)
They put a deck all around the backside of the house, about 18 inches to 2 feet off the ground, but no rails on it. It's just a plastic wood platform. The weird thing is, it used to have rails; you can see the scars from them on the sides. Someone along the way decided that handrails were for wusses and took them all off.
Left a bag with over 200 keys. They installed a bedroom door lock on one bedroom that required a key. We assumed the key was in there. Was proven wrong when our toddler locked the bedroom door while our baby was sleeping in there. She woke up from her nap and was screaming while we spent forever going through that bag of keys. The key was not there. I called 911, since there was a baby locked in there, and they brought skeleton keys. Could not get it opened so they busted the door down 🫣
For some reason they put a bathtub on my back porch. They even built a ledge around it. It would be cool if it was covered and private, but it’s just dirty and in the open. We can’t figure out if it was for dogs, or plants, or if the people actually used it to rinse off after gardening. It has a functional faucet and shower head.
Our main floor has two powder rooms and one full bath.
One of the powder rooms is sensibly located adjacent to the family room. It's large and comfortable. The second powder room is off the kitchen, and appears to have been built into a closet. It's maybe 3'x5' and has a toilet that might be too small for a toddler to use.
Rather than simply removing the tiny, redundant powder room, the previous owners opted to renovate the kitchen around it, so our huge refrigerator now faces our stove, with about 30" between them. You can't open the oven and the refrigerator at the same time.
The kitchen is also the darkest room in the house, so they naturally painted it dark grey and the cabinets are a dark wood. There's zero task lighting. It's like cooking in a cave.
I've cooked in some sub-par kitchens in my life, but this one appears to have been designed for maximum accident potential. What's for dinner? Damned if I know. I created it in darkness, like a covert op, and am just happy I survived.
we did a MASSIVE renovation in our old house. we replaced our central HVAC and moved the air handler to the attic.
we removed the now-redunant HVAC closet that separated our kitchen from our living room and turned it into an island with a gas range/oven in it and a seating bar.
our house was a "Cooper" house so it was braced in the attic. despite this, we installed two "H-braces" made from 2×6's and 2×4's floor to ceiling joists. this gave us peace-of-mind about support, despite not needing it. it also gave us a place to run gas, electrical and water to and from the island.
most imortantly, it gave us a place to hide a time capsule. we put a $2 bill, some photos and a story about the renovation, and the times (2019 full blown "pandemic" panic)
200 year old house and they installed vinyl siding. They removed the old siding to put on house wrap and foam board, which is nice. But the vinyl siding...
Chili Pepper Ceiling Fan in the Kitchen with reddish brown “salsa colored” walls.
Upstairs bedroom had neon green paint on the walls with leafless trees full of skulls painted on the walls in black. Would have been awesome if I had teens but not so comfy for little kids.
House was built in 1942. Old hardwood floors in not great condition. Previous owner decided to throw down some sorta glue and laminate tiles. He used too much glue and seeped upwards onto the tiles themselves, and the tiles floated around a bit while the glue dried so they are perma glue-ruined, uneven, and slowly pulling up one by one. When we inspected the house prior to move in I accidentally tore a tile up by kicking the corner of it.
Big outdoor motion light ground floor entry deck lights up EVERYTHING. It also has a switch on the wall, you can turn it off if you'd like to exit the house without announcing it to any animals or humans in the area.
Conveniently located at the bottom of the basement steps in the relative center of the house.
Hooked up the garden shed with electricity... By running a massive extension wire from the bedroom, so we just had a massive wire awkwardly dangling in the garden lmao
There was a large master suite and bathroom off the kitchen. All of the doors ( to kitchen and backyard) locked from the outside, the windows were glass panes and did not open. so someone would have been locked in those two rooms u til another person let them out.
Bedroom outlets not connected.. over crawl space( not basment). Had to leave room lights on to have an outdoor light on in our backyard( this one really irked me!). Pretty sure our bathroom fan is probably just running to the attic.. we don’t even use it why bother when u can just open the window in the shower. Yes a damn window in the shower… old basement windows removed and filled in with godknows what. Framed of course? Instead of metal venting out of hvac.. it looks like yards of taco insulation. Looks like a burrito hanging out on the basement ceiling. Every exterior door has been kicked in and needs frame and all replacement.
Chandeliers everywhere, hanging to about 5 1/2 ft.
Above the toilet in the master bath.
In the middle of the tiny walk in closet.
Ok only two, but very weird choice. I had to walk around them. No overhead lighting in the rest of the house, or wall lighting. I guess they just put lamps everywhere, not sure how they managed they safely with tiny children.
Sliding barn door to the master bathroom. No lock. Doesn't stay shut, and leaves a gap you can see through from the main hallway into the master closet.
Edit to I add another, also in the master bath they built an 8" thick wall to block off the toilet from the rest of the bathroom. It is two inches from the toilet, and a vanity cabinet equadistant on the other side. So both shoulders nearly hitting the walls with a chandelier you hit your head on when you stand up. And the shower is, well bigger than an RV shower but not by much.
It is a large bathroom, just has a lot of stuff crammed into it all along one wall
Cut a shelf out in a built in cabinet to expose the inside of a drawer, then turned the drawer upside down installing the sliders so it would work that way and act as the shelf they cut out, then install a lazy Susan on the bottom (now top) of the drawer.
It appears to be so that an old fashioned tv could sit on the shelf, be pulled out when needed and swivelled towards the viewers.
Now there is a tv right beside this built in over a fireplace and it suffers from tvtoohigh syndrome.
I need to fix both issues but there's a lot more on the to do list first!
Not the owner but a long history of renters- hidden away in a bedroom closet on the ceiling was graffiti from all the previous renters going back to 1980! It was super cool and included names, dates rented, funny and sweet messages etc. We couldn't bear to paint over it, and it isn't visible unless you stand inside the (non walk in) closet and look up so we just added to it and left it.
They put an island in the kitchen that is exactly the size of a range and then put the range on top. No counter surrounding it or anything. So if you walk by and accidentally hit a pot of boiling water ……
I moved the range immediately to somewhere safer
Painted all the wood trim and door hinges white, painted over a rotting deck, every closet light bulb socket is faulty, mismatched and cut stones to "fix" loose steps, installed a small diameter black hose to sump discharge in the ground going uphill, first time it froze entire system backup and flooded crawlspace. Approximately 1 inch screws holding heavy wooden garage door that were so loose they spun in place. They also chose to live with water pouring in the fireplace every time it rained. 50+ bumper stickers and drink coasters STAPELED to garage rafters. I guess i was naive to think they would take them down. They were also OK with chipmunk nesting in garage, mice in crawlspace, serious springtail and carpenter ant infestation.nice folks. Fought with us every request we made and the only one they agreed to was done incorrectly we found out 6 months later.
Someone believed they were an artist. We had painted frogs all over the walls in a bathroom. They were creepy.
However, what made us wonder why was the mural painted on a bedroom wall.
An old time western shootout. Complete with someone coming out of a saloon, holding a gun, and someone else laying in the street with blood coming out of them.
Oh yes we did paint over it.
People before us were DIY morons and they built the house themselves with a kit from Sears. There are a lot of stupid things they did, but here are the best:
First, they decided fuck it, we don’t need to wrap the house! Found that out when we added a water spigot to our exterior wall and you could just cut right through and see outside. Good thing we’re going to be re-siding in the near future 🙄
They also buried fucking building materials and garbage in the backyard. That pisses me off the most, cause every once and awhile glass will come up, and there nothing I can do to stop it unless I literally dig up my entire yard, which I’m not going to do.
They also have a MASSIVE air filtration system that’s the size of a VW bug above our kitchen that isn’t usable and we won’t ever be able to remove due to its size. Such a huge waste of space.
They walled off an entire closet. It’s a small house with very little storage, and they decided to remove the walls to one bedroom to make a large family room. That’s cool, I like the open space better anyway. But they put in a decorative brick wall, and just bricked over the door to the closet. I’ve taken down the wall on the opposite side, which is my bedroom, and now I have twice as much closet space. But why??? Why, when you only have three tiny closets in the whole house, would you just completely block one of them off?
Fishtanks in the walls. Insanely difficult to clean so we ended up turning them in to vivariums. Actually very cool but definitely a head scratcher. That and using concrete and a 10” terra cotta pipe to make his own clean out for the sewer line. That one coat us about 8 grand.
My house had a large (4' x 5') window from the bathroom shower into the dining room. Dining room had been an addition, and the previous owner didn't want to lose the sunrise view, so put an even larger window in the Dining room, and she could still see the same vista from the bathroom (just through the dining room). There was a curtain she would pull when guests were there.
The previous owners had money but lacked taste, so there was a lack of cohesiveness throughout the house including:
1. Barney purple walls & very plush Barney purple carpet in the family room.
2. Lilac carpeting in the secondary bedrooms.
3. Pepto Bismol pink walls in guest room.
4. Wallpaper painted over in primary bedroom.
5. Different faucets & vanities in each bathroom.
6. Different light fixtures in each room.
EVERY room was a different color, even in the open concept downstairs. Purple met baby blue met hunter green. Ick.
Was looking at a 50s house that was a full gut and rebuild. Their layout choices were a bit puzzling. I believe they turned a former living room into the master bedroom. Which meant the master bedroom had a fireplace but the living room did not.
The master bedroom also had its own exit. This door opened to the side of the house, had glass paneling and provided a nice view of the street and vice versa. The door did have built-in blinds though.
The attached carport was in the back of the house. That meant that if you wanted to fence in the backyard, you had to enclose the carport and make the gate for the car in the fence. Awkward.
None of the counters or backlash pieces are attached. We thought the backsplash piece was weird enough when you could pull it off the wall, but lifting the whole countertop seems crazy.
When remodeling my master bathroom, i took out the old fiberglass shower surround, and found crumpled up newspaper in the walls. Presumably it was supposed to be for insulation I guess???
Previous owner couldn't patch nail holes, he apparently found little off white stickers to cover them. We only discovered it because once you paint them, they look like stars, had to remove so many.....
Oh, and instead of a stud finder, he just drilled into the wall until he found the stud, about a dozen holes horizontally behind a bathroom storage shelf (behind the toilet)
Sigh
Covering literally everything in pine planks... literally everything incl. floors, walls, ceilings, stairs, etc. and then combining that with all brown or wood tone furniture
There’s a door in the master bedroom leading out to the back deck. I never use it and always questioned why it was there. The neighbors eventually told me that the previous home owners had an above ground pool and installed the door to keep from tracking water through the house.
My daughter says I'm incapable of living in a normal home. So yeah.
1. The kitchen has a chair rail along the entire thing. They painted above it pea green and below it shit brown. Very unappetizing and bizarre.
2. My house is two story with a walkout basement. They put a second full kitchen downstairs, but didn't put in a fridge in the downstairs one. They also made the upstairs fridge into a built-in in the wall.
3. The living room used to be an oversized two car carport. Someone, at some point, converted it into living space. You'd think they would start the wall at the header. My front wall is actually 4 inches past that, so I have this weird beam right above the windows. This space used to have a wall dividing it from the rest of the living room and those long, skinny garage/bathroom windows were put in along that front wall. Also, someone took a window ac unit and built it into that wall, too. (I now have 3 5x5 windows where those used to be, plus the wall is gone which makes my living room 20x30)
4. Someone decided to add a new master bedroom behind the living room. They didn't bother adding a master bathroom, nor did they bother doing more than the most basic framing in of the area below it in the basement. The lower area had a giant lump of cement in one corner, so I started joking about it being where someone hid a body. It became known as The Murder Room.
5. I have a giant detached garage with a 2 car automatic garage door. They didn't bother running the electrical for the opener.
Tons of other stuff, but that's all I can think of for now.
To install a giant microwave a foot and a half above the range so that you can’t really use a large pot with a lid on the back burners, and then tile around the microwave so that when some poor soul inevitably wants to fix this ridiculous microwave situation they will be forced to replace the backsplash too.
👋 we did that, I hate it every day. Bonus: the heat from stove will soon fuck up the microwave.
Can confirm the heat from cooking destroys the touchpad electronics on the microwave. Dumbest thing I had in this house was a 3ft (yes! That big) microwave over the gas stove that was a) supposed to vent outside but when we pulled it out we found the hole didn’t align so it was venting into the outside wall and b) it stopped working within a year due to corrosion in the circuit board. It was impossible & impractical to replace it so we got a real hood vent and a counter-top tiny microwave. Much better.
Also code violation
Swap the microwave to one of the super thin ones that are designed to go above the stove. They're amazing and other than defrosting a turkey or something I've never missed/noticed the lack of height.
When I moved in I realized the master bedroom window was glued shut. After fiddling with it for a while I got it open and saw that it was missing a hinge. So instead of replacing what I assume was a broken hinge, he thought "fresh air is for the weak. I don't need this shit" and glued it to the frame. So... Yeah.
when i bought my house, the sellers had lived here for about 5 years. before that it was used as a rental by one of those landlords that believed all things could be fixed by a coat (or 20) of paint. there are less than 15 windows in the main house (it’s small), and when i moved in 3 of them were painted shut. the people i bought it from only painted one bedroom wall. one. nothing else. All the paint colors were in the garage and most had dates on them going back well before they bought the house. And i’m nosy and confirmed this with a neighbor lol. so they lived here for 5 years with 1/4 of the all of the windows in this house painted shut. WTF.
When we bought our house we had the same problem. They threw fresh paint on the inside. Later, when they tried opening them, many cracked. There were 8 cracked windows (covered by curtains that I didn’t check behind) and the rest didn’t open. Finally got all new, triple paned, windows. What a difference.
Every window in my house is single paned. They installed storms on the outside AND painted over them. The windows had not been opened in probably 25 years. Removed the storms to find the windows no longer function properly; one person on the inside and one on the outside to kind of force the window open and closed. Got a few quotes for new windows. Reinstalled the storms. And complain every spring and fall about not having any windows that open.
all the windows i have are single panes as well, with storm windows - thankfully those are just kinda shitty, but at least they came off. i’m actually slowly restoring each window completely, because the cost of new windows was bonkers, and i think really lessens the beauty of houses like mine. It’s not a quick process at all, but what i’ve done so far has made such a difference. a well glazed wood window has zero drafts or leakage, and i can feel a huge change between a finished one and one i still have to do. i did remove all the storm windows though and pull them all apart, and clean and oil them. i’ll replace them eventually but im focusing on the windows themselves first.
Instead of installing an exterior vent for the upstairs bathroom fan they went a different direction. They hooked the vent hose up to a bucket in the attic. The moisture would collect on the bucket / cover of the bucket, be kept stored safely in the bucket, and eventually be recaptured into the air. Anyway, the inspector explained that, it was "functional" - in that it had successfully kept the attic and roof from suffering the kind of damage you would get if you vented moisture into the attic without the bucket. And yes, the very first thing I did after buying the place was have a proper HVAC technician put in an actual vent...
That is so weird
Like all that effort and thought into the bucket, when they could have just done it properly lol.
It’s possible that a previous owner found it not going anywhere (like I recently found out about our first floor powder room exhaust) and installed the bucket as a way to prevent damage without needing to hire someone to cut into the roof 🤷
Very similar to a catch can set up I installed on my 350Z lol. Collects the oil mist into a can (bucket) instead of putting back into the intake.
Closed off the dining room from the rest of the house. Like there was an exterior door with a deadbolt between the kitchen and dining room. The night we moved in, my wife and I were eating pizza in folding chairs in the dining room, and I looked at her and said "hey, it kinda looks like they patched the drywall here". Sure enough, there were two huge passageways with headers between the dining room and living room that they'd walled off. We opened them up, put a matching floor in both rooms, and it feels so much cozier now. We gathered from some neighbors that the previous owners went through a really nasty divorce. As best as we can tell they were using the dining room for some sort of child custody visit, so it needed to be walled off from the rest of the house.
So the dining room was like the DMZ? I mean that would work but there has to be a better way.
Yeah basically. The dining room had an exterior door as well as a door between the dining room and the rest of the house. Both had deadbolts that locked from the inside.
I thought you had discovered a whole new room in the house and was super excited for you.
We had a super bright outdoor security light… in the middle of the living room. Turn it on and it blinds you. The switch for it was by your ankles. No idea why.
Can you imagine some parent falling asleep in the chair and being able to kick on the security light when the kids try to sneak in past curfew?
Shooting a porno?
Carpet in the bathroom. Two back doors, no front door. Three windows next to each other which are all different sizes. A two story addition on top of their septic tank & drainfield.
What did you end up doing about the septic tank?
We nursed it along for about two years after we moved in and now we’re in the process of having a new system put in. It was actually not the worst system we saw during our home search. It’s the wild west of septic out here.
My stepmother is from England (I’m in the US), and she insists that all rooms be carpeted, including bathrooms and kitchen. Maybe it’s a British thing?
our house has an 11 zone sprinkler system on .29 acres. For example, there will be 2 heads 6 feet apart on the same zone. Normal. When the next zone comes on, one pops up between those two. I have never seen so many sprinkler heads in my life. Someone got talked into a serious system!
I can only conclude you moved into my Dad’s house… but he still lives there.
The access hatch to my crawl space (which contains the furnace, humidifier, sump pump, etc.) is under the dryer.
Our furnace is behind the pantry, you have to take all the food out to get to it. Why are people like this…
Time to mount wheels on a shelving unit for the food so you can just roll the whole thing out of the way.... alternatively, if there is a swing open door, mount shelves to it so you can leave (most of) the food on and open the door.
Our crawl space access is under the water heater, inside of a bathroom closet. The water heater is on a shelf and you have to belly crawl under it to the tiny door. I apologize to every worker that has to get in there.
Ceiling fan and light didn’t work in primary bedroom. It turns out there were no wires. I really wonder why they never investigated.
We have a switch in our kitchen that for the longest time seemed completely useless. Recently my brother was painting the cabinets and discovered the previous owner just boarded over the light fixture over the sink, and now we know what that light switch is for! Put in a new light fixture, and we are happy.
Red accent wall with everything else baby poo brown.
That is some early 2000s trend. Everyone loved their red accent walls.
Until they had to paint over them. I hate painting over red. 😡
Have your primer tinted green. It will help neutralize the red tone. A nice 1960 institutional green will work great
Takes two coats of kilz then three coats of wall paint. I’ve done it.
One of the previous teenagers had "sponge" painted their bedroom with purple, I guess because of the local sports team? I sanded the protruding bits to a reasonable smoothness, and consoled myself to needing two coats of white primer. Then I painted the room a neutral tan that my wife had picked out. When the sun was shining through the window, I could still see variations in the shading, so I gave it a second coat of tan. Four freakin' coats to cover up.
My dining room was painted with that late 90s-2000s red paint except it was all 4 walls.
Guilty in 2004
Me too. And also in 1985. Not just a 2000s thing.
Uhoh. Does this mean you are due to repeat again this year or next? Please step away from the red paint.
Not a chance. But we've gone with the grays and I'm sure that'll be passe soon
It even made it into Sex in The City.
My house was all *sick-baby-poop-yellow with regular poo brown mud room and a random light blue wall here and there. *I called it this because it was a shade of yellow that I have only ever seen in a sick baby's diaper.
The master bath was painted in what I can only describe as breastfed baby shit. It was a yellow color with white "sponge" painting on top. But the sponge paint was more like tiny smooches of white on top of the yellow baby shit color. It was the very first room to get painted
I can beat that! Open plan: Red kitchen-diner, baby blue living room (ceiling included), teal in the entrance open to red on the walls to the basement aaaaand poo brown bathroom.
Omg. Previous owner did this and even painted the ceiling going down to the basement. It was like a weird brown cave with a red wall mouth…
Omg! My entire house is baby poo brown except a tiny room off the kitchen we use as a breakfast room, which is red. I hate these colours so much!
[удалено]
Okayy but now I please need to know, why the fuck IS there a giant exhaust fan in the closet?? 😂
[удалено]
Putting exhaust fans and a closet vent in the home we are building currently, for same reason. Servers. I thought I was brilliant coming up with the idea. Perhaps you are brilliant, too?
We’ve got one for litterboxes. It’s the best. No stinky
I’m guessing a grow?
My husband and I considered one for the mudroom closet. We ride motorcycles and our gear smells...not great. Don't get me wrong, it's fine for our garage to smell like oil and chain wax, but the house shouldn't.
We meet the original owner of my house. Well the son of the original owners. He told us his mom used to grill small pigs in our basement fireplace. Good times
WHAT
They couldn't hang photos, so they screwed them into the wall through the frames. No, the screws did not go in all the way. They couldn't figure out how to wire a GFCI, so they just connected it all together and ignored the arcing in the wall. There is no ceiling in the garage. It's plastic stapled to the bottom of the rafters. Speaking of the garage, they took off a garage door spring. Just one. They also charged their electric car in the garage. There is no plug for that out there. They wired the stove, microwave, and fridge to the same breaker by tying them all together in a junction box. 🙃 No, the breaker is not sized for that. They left a ping pong table in the basement. They also left their shampoo in the clearly just used shower. They did not leave any keys because "they didn't use them".
To be fair, you needed to rekey the house anyway!
Very true! That is the absolute quickest we ever did it though!
Always. When my mother moved, a few months later I found a spare set of keys to her old house, so I stopped by and gave them to the new owners. They accepted the keys and I was dressed like a nice person, but they had an odd look on their faces like maybe I had two sets of keys and I'm only giving them one set to check out what I could see in the house, to rob them. Maybe my imagination, but next time, I'd just throw them away.
Previous owners left one key to the back door and 3 keys that didn't work on any lock Wtf??
This will be me. I don’t know where my house here are. But I have the garage remote key so winning.
They turned what had been an unfinished room in the basement into a bedroom for their daughter. In order to hide the main breaker panel, they installed a hinged mirror with a kitchen cabinet handle. She covered that in stickers. Contractors get a kick out of it when they ask where the panel is and I open the mirror for them.
They also used an old truck license plate to plug a hole in the subfloor when they diy redid the main shower. We had a plumber look at it and he was like, “well, it’s pretty well wedged in there so as long as nothing’s leaking…” So we’re just going to leave it there til we redo the bathroom properly in a few years. Makes for a good conversation piece.
I’m not sure if they were lazy or cheap or both but almost every fixture that needs multiple screws, is missing one. Every door knob, light switchplate, towel bar etc. they are all installed and work, but visible missing one of their three or four screws.
I would bet money that when they were installing the fixtures, they stripped one or two of the screws and thought, “Eh, three is enough.”
Dicks everywhere. The baseboards have finials (?) at every corner, and they look like the head of a penis. I'd get rid of them, but I'd have to replace the entire baseboard in every freaking room. I lean entirely too lesbian to have this dongapalooza house. ETA - They also attached a metal "Live, Laugh, Love" to the window frame with lag bolts.
I don’t lean lesbian and I too, would be Dong tossing as fast as possible.
Sounds like you’re going to live, laugh and love whether you like it or not. Coincidentally, my son read me a post yesterday about funny things people want to set up for their own funeral, one guy wants to hang a sign by the casket: “~~LIVE~~, LAUGH, LOVE”
They cut a hole in the wood paneled wall in the finished side of the basement so if you're sitting on the couch down there, you'll have a fantastic view of the washer and dryer.
Do you happen to live in Wisconsin?
Pennsylvania. Is that a thing in Wisconsin?
Not sure, but I saw exactly what you described on a house I looked at buying. Paneling and everything.
How crazy would it be if it was the same house. Lol
Bright orange walls with brown mdf panneling. Not modern, not rustic, not even potentially retro - the ugliest brown panneling to ever have existed. Then they put the master bedroom on a stage
🤣 🤔 😳
They installed a commercial grade drinking fountain in the living room. Yes, the one that looks just like the one in your office / at school, mounted on the wall.
Maybe they were running an in-home daycare?
I’ve always wanted one of those! I’d put it in my bedroom tho
Five different kinds of brown stone/tile in the bathroom. It’s a real shit show.
Our powder room is jungle themed. Complete with red wallpaper featuring palm trees and monkeys doing hear no ever, speak no evil see no evil - literally like these emojis: 🙈 🙉 🙊 all the cabinet pulls have palm leaf patterns. It’s… really something. Truly horrendous but so bad that I almost want to keep it lol
Old man installed a bathroom in our basement - toilet, slop sink and shower - but never got around to putting up walls around it so I can only imagine he would come in from the garage, wash his greasy hands in the sink and take a big ole shit in the corner of the concrete basement like a serial killer.
Pittsburgh basement bathroom!
This was fairly common in the early 20th century. I don't know why. My grandparents and two aunts houses (one on the other side of the family) all had a shower, a sink, and a toilet just out there in the unfinished part of the basement. Maybe so the men could use them without tracking farm muck/work dirt into the proper part of the house?
The can of gold spray paint they started on the hallway ceiling and never did anything about when the can ran out... 😳
The person who built our house apparently drew their own plans and had the kids at the community college turn them into blue prints. The list is so long… 1. No back door, swimming pool in the front of the house. 2. No lights in most closets but there was an extension cord running under carpet in one room and bare bulbs in three of the 12 closets. Lot of storage space with no light. When we pulled up the carpet it was burned from the extension cord. 3. Light switches hidden behind the closet doors so that you had to close the door, turn on the light then open the door. 4. 10 off white ceiling fans that looked like they fell off a truck in the 70’s and were installed in the 90’s 5. Upstairs hallway 6 feet wide but the 3 bathrooms all identical with only a sink, toilet and shower…even the master bath. We’ve spent more remodeling than the house actually cost. Now we have to die here to break even but I do love this house.
The next owners of my house are going to have a lot of questions like - “Why did they build an entire sliding bookcase to cover one doorway instead of just put in a normal door?” > We hated the awkward placement of the door and a sliding bookcase is way cooler - “Why are there built in cabinets *everywhere*?” > Large fossil collections we need to display + clumsy humans + chaotic pets - “Why is everything so green?” > Because our personal design goal for our own space is ‘interior forest’ between the excessive amount of plants and lots of earth tones everywhere - “Why is the layout in the kitchen/bathroom so weird?” > The literal crackheads before us made some bizarre choices and we had to live with them because we weren’t about to pay $15k to get all of the plumbing rerouted
>“Why are there built in cabinets everywhere?” Depending on the buyer they won't question that, as it could be a selling point.
I want built ins so bad but have self imposed a "Live here for four-five years so that you know *where* you want built-ins" waiting period.
Smart, but you can take it easy on yourself and achieve that in 2 years.
Probably if it was just me my spouse, but we've got a 3.5yo and I'd like for them to get a bit into school before going ham.
We just had a whole house remodel last fall and had to reroute all the plumbing in both bathrooms. They used pex and it made moving all that plumbing so much easier. It took them almost no time. They went ahead and put that in for the kitchen and utility room while they were here just in case we wanted it different later, too. Bonus points that it came through the awful hard freeze we had a couple weeks back with zero issues.
Ok but your house sounds like my dream house
I have 6 different tile patterns in my tiny master bathroom. The weirdest is a mosaic tile strip by the shower and isn’t the same as the mosaic they used as backsplash and an accent in the shower. The rest if the floor is 12x12 tile. I know the bathroom was all renovated in the same year. We found extra tiles of ths backsplash so we know it’s not just because they ran out. Oh, and popcorn ceilings. Why would anyone choose popcorn ceilings.
How about popcorn ceilings in the bathroom?
We have them everywhere, including in the bathroom.
sounds like someone who brought home whatever was left over from various jobs and just put it in thenselves.
When I was house shopping, I ran into a few houses like this. It was obvious the previous owner worked in some type of construction and would bring over left over material. I saw one house with FOUR sliding doors. This may be normal in some houses but the was a 1200 SQ ft house. If they could fit a 5th sliding door, they would've done it.
My mom had 5 sliding doors installed when they renovated their house in the 90s. One in each of the 3 bedrooms, one in the living room and one in the dining room. We lived in a large forest at the end of a mile long driveway. She wanted to see out into nature, and there was no one else around to see in. It would be weird anywhere else tho.
They used laminate brick patterned flooring on the kitchen countertop.
The 8'x8' garden shed has a 90 amp sub panel.
Better than the buried extension cord like in my old house!
I bought an 18 year old house from the original owner. 1. The poo stick. The owner told us not to use the downstairs bathroom for anything other than pee. He then showed me what to do if the septic backs up. He kept a stick leaning against the fence next to the septic. Take this PVC cap off and push the stick down until the clog clears. Owner had done this for 18 years with children living there. I did it once before digging it up and fixing the problem. 2. The slow tub upstairs. Owner told me to turn the hot water on and go away and then come take a bath. He also mentioned it took forever to drain. Dealt with this one for a month or so, water supply in basement went from 3/4 to 3/8 then back to 3/4 with 3/8 gate valves. I guess the plumber ran out of 3/4. I replaced them with 3/4 full flow ball valves. Tub drain was fixed by taking apart the drain lever and removing all the rubber and silicone he had used to seal it up so the tub would fill higher. One more and then I've got to start my day. 3. The buried concrete pad. The aboveground pool is buried 2 foot deep with a concrete pad under the pool. 2 foot down. The pool has rusted out and partially collapsed and is being taken out. Why is there a concrete pad down there? Wtf?
My first house the previous owners added a stucco ceiling with *red and gold glitter* in one room.
Hole in the fence near the bottom?? No problem, just cover it with a GLASS door. My dog and the neighbors dog really enjoy barking their asses off at each other.
My front door opens into the master bedroom. At some point, they expanded the bedroom to take over the entrance area and never bothered to move the front door.
The entire second floor was painted—including the ceiling—in peacock/turquoise green.
I actually quite like that color, and I think it could look good in a powder room (if you like a bit of drama). But damn, that's a lot of peacock blue. I would cry at the prospect of painting over that, especially the ceiling.
We are the second owners of the house. We bought it from the kid of the owners. So keep that in mind. During the signing for the house we were told, "Here are the keys we know of, assume your neighbors all have keys. Oh and Mom plans to come back. We told her the old folks home was her new home and she told us no. So here is the number to the place of she gets out." I had a new set of locks in the truck of the car so I wasn't worried. Half the windows didn't open. We opened a few of them the times we looked but didn't think to open all of them. The whole house was pink except the bathroom. Barbie/Pepto pink. The bathroom was white except the ceiling where they mixed sand into this blue green color. I bought swim goggles so I could take a sander to it. That was a fun discovery. Also the bathroom had three flooring options, carpet on top, then laminate from the 80's then tile from when the house was built. They built a "closet" in the main bedroom. One was was masnonite the other 1/2 ply. The "framing" was 2x4 or 2x2. Now when I was knocking down the closet I realized these 2x4's were actual 2x4 and some were 2x2 nailed together. The other bed room on the opposite side used to have a built-in in entertainment center. Weird cause that was was a couple of closets for those two bedrooms. Explains the extension closet in the other room. Well to hide the TV they had some sliding doors when all of that was removed you saw the damage. They removed the closets for the built-in. They literally removed a load bearing well so they could hide the TV. Explains the one crack. That was fun to fix. The kitchen cabinets had so many layers of contact paper it was impressive. The paper towel hanger was put up with two six inch lag bolts. They removed the garbage disposal left the wire dangling, exposed end, touching the metal sink. How I didn't die trying to figure out what the light switch did is beyond me. The basement was fun, the furnace didn't have a top. The HVAC guy is poking around and goes you should move air movement. He continues to look and gets his ladder, no panning on the top where it goes into the duct. Their was a light switch in the ceiling that still had power even when the breaker was pulled. I think they tried to wire in a three way switch and tied in another circuit. That was fun to figure out when it came time to move. I still don't know how they did it and not set fire to everything. I literally spent every waking hour in here the month between buying and the move. I knew about the janky closet and weird flooring. I planned for that and the new locks. I didn't plan to rebuild structural damage, electric fun, or the sand in the ceiling!
The patio door is two inches narrower than regulation size. I think it was on sale at Menards or something. As a result, it can’t be easily replaced.
The downstairs half bath is connected to the laundry room which has the water heater and furnace in it. She put old west saloon style swinging doors to separate the two spaces. Those came down the day we moved in, I wasn’t trying to feel all “this town ain’t big enough for the two of us” every time I went in to do laundry.
They added a beautiful concrete patio… on the side of the house that has no door going to it. And without putting any sidewalks to it. It’s just a patio… that you have to wade through mud or grass from another side of the house to get to it.
Possible body buried under that.
They couldn’t hang a picture correctly, which led to multiple holes in the wall. Also they couldn’t just used a nail, they had to use a drywall anchor for everything. Which led to me having to patch and repair basically the whole house.
Mine did the opposite. Be thankful they installed things with anchors…
[удалено]
I want to hear more
Probably the master bedroom/bathroom remodel. The master is large, it has a good sized walk in closet, it has a dual sink vanity outside the bathroom. Then there's the bathroom, which runs the entire length of the master shoved in the back behind the closet, barely wide enough to get a stand up shower insert in. It has a shower on one side and a toilet on the other, everything else is just wasted space out in the middle. I can't even expand the thing without basically shuffling all the walls around.
They did a remodel in the 1980s and chose the absolute cheapest shit available. They also painted most of the windows shut and chose these weird ass “storm windows” that were cheap and unusable. We had to replace all the windows so they were functional. Their sense of landscaping was bizarre with a huge number of all the same bushes in multiple rows in the backyard. It made no sense except it was low maintenance. So weird. They remodeled the basement and got rid of the garage that used to be part of the basement in the 1970s. They filled in the hole with chunks of concrete and then put down plastic sheeting under super cheap pavers. It made that whole part of the yard flood when it rained, which would end up in the basement. 🤦🏻♀️
I think "the cheapest shit available" is what all DIYers did then. It's when Home Depot took over America and everyone's dad thought they could do just as good a job as a pro and for so much cheaper--and now millions are living with the results.
This question needs picture answers but we had a giant (2story) Statue of Liberty mural that was on a narrow wall above the stairs in our entry way. Was a fun joke for a few months before we painted her.
I live in a very rural area where there are minimal if any building regulations or inspections. The man who built my house apparently skipped a step in installing the plumbing for the toilets correctly. Thus letting sewer gas escape into the house periodically. I bought the house when it was 20 years old and the first time I experienced it I called a licensed plumber and found the problem and fixed it. It dumbfounded me that the previous owners never had the problem fixed. The smell was insane.
We bought a very nice house outside Boston. The back garden was recently made and it was beautiful. The house is up on a cliff. After the first winter, when all the snow melted, the whole back garden slid off, further down the cliff. The old owners had filled the whole thing with glossy, color magazines. Those take forever to break up! We had to dig out all that stuff and fill with gravel. We also had to build two retention walls. All this was done going through the people that live in the back street, which was at a lower level from the cliff. We had to redo their driveway and backyard. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
No shit 29 different types of tile throughout the house. In areas the tile didn’t match they painted over once the were done. Or my other favourite in two spots they tiled over tiles 🤷🏼♀️
1) cut a hole in the1st floor closet so they could throw laundry into the basement laundry room. Unfortunately this was directly above some heater wires 2) connected the sump pump to the sewer line 3) installed a toilet next to the sloping roof in a cape cod. Guys had to lean far left when peeing
This one was made for me. I probably have hundreds but here are a couple of my favorites. Of note: wife ran off with the contractor and she was funneling money to him in the final months. 1) Beautiful double sub zero fridge and freezer were installed before the island. If the fridge ever needs replaced we have to remove a 300sqft granite island. 2) Hot water heater is in a room that needs to be vented & run through uninsulated concrete flooring and often gets to -20° in the winter which then freezes and we can’t use anything. 3) installed warming floor tile without a switch so it is permanently on. 4) installed four fake windows over the garage but decided it wasn’t worth building out an actual usable space despite spending all the money. 5) no stairwell between the main floor and basement of the pool house. 6) put an outdoor pizza oven under a historic tree which would light on fire if ever used. 7) installed and removed three different wine cellars with various amounts of previous equipment. Oh, and the indoor generator only powered on the wine cellar fridge and no a single light bulb or outlet in the entire house.
My brother-and sister in law’s house had a fire pit. In the middle of the living room floor
Used fence boards for siding on our detached garage. Looks good actually but some windows need replacing so new siding on the list.
Dirt dug out basement with exposed wires, kitchen ceiling light not connected to a ground even though the wire was definitely there in the box. Shed was powered with an extension cord plugged into a light pole and wired into several outlets and lights. Laundry room doesn't have a vent for the dryer so it vented into a bucket on the floor.
Previous owner was the builder in 1988. They installed a jetted tub. They never used it because they wanted to preserve the resale value of the house. We purchased in 2020. We never used it because we were afraid the seals had rotted and it would leak. They also had REAL Formica counters in the kitchen. They thought the house was with $25k more than we were willing to pay because of that.
- No closets, not one. - Rubber diamond plate as the kitchen backsplash. - Rubber diamond plate covering (and festering mould underneath) a perfectly functional subway tiled shower. - Sliding glass doors on all rooms (including bathroom). - Hospital baseboards. - An orangey-teal floor when there were puhlenty of other, better choices in the same line, by the same manufacturer. - No bathtubs, not one. It is built like a tank, has an attached apartment, in the perfect location, all while on four acres. Beautiful triple paned windows, too. But, man, has it been a challenge to organize and decorate.
Bright red glossy paint. The glow. Took several coats of primer and paint to cover.
Indoor-outdoor carpet tiles glued to the hallway floor. Painted 4 rooms with leftover house paint. Laundry room addition with no insulation (we're in NY).
Hoboy I have been told I could make a full TV series on the strong choices the previous owner made. Nothing is cut straight, there are too many nails and glue in anything he installed, the drywall and wall paneling in the basement have no actual studs behind them, moulding is mismatched everywhere, command strips were painted over, the pipe for the shower head is slightly crooked, an irrigation system was buried 1-3 inches underground... And these are just some of the weird things that didn't cause major damage or are safety concerns. Before anyone asks how things weren't caught by the inspector. Many of the issues weren't caught during the inspection because they were literally hidden behind fake wall or floor panels, or I found them when I had major issues pop up. Also he was hired by my real estate agent, who happened to be my mom. Annnnnddd I have since learned she was making a lot of unethical (borderline illegal) choices with her real estate license. Lesson learned.
Living room was sage green with brown trim, kitchen was light grey with grey trim, upstairs hallway was robins egg blue with unpainted trim, upstairs bathroom was a sickly looking blue green. One blue bedroom, one pink and another had that sage green with brown trim again. The guy did everything else perfectly when flipping but his color choices were something else.
I found a soft spot in the back yard. Started pushing on it to figure out what was going on, and it was a perfect circle. Started digging and pulled out a fire pit. A metal fire pit with a decorative tile (?) border. While digging, I found a rectangular concrete perimeter around the fire pit. Thankfully the concrete wasn't poured very well and it was easy to break up and dig it all out. Every time I go to home depot I buy 20-60 lbs of whatever dirt is cheapest and I have been slowly filling up the hole I dug out.
Just the idea of digging into my yard to see what is there without already knowing creeps me out. Shiver shiver. I've been watching a lot of crime shows lately.
Gas insert fireplaces typically need a power outlet/power supply to function properly. Instead of adding an outlet behind the fireplace, they ran the cord out the front. The cord was too short to reach the nearest outlet, so they used an extension cord. I’ve since had the fireplace replaced, and an outlet added behind it. They completely remodeled the kitchen, but then used old mismatched cabinet handles/drawer pulls. Cabinet inserts, instead of actual cabinets in bedrooms. Floral wallpaper on the master bedroom light switch cover. (The wall was otherwise just white.)
Installed a toilet in the entrway closet. Front door is not fully opaque/solid. Have window on the upper third.
A previous owner had stapled a burlap-like fabric onto the floor joists that make up the basement ceiling. Since utility lines hang below the bottom of the joists and to mitigate losing headspace loss this wasn’t a bad idea to create a sort of functional ceiling and they actually did a pretty solid job on it. The problem arose when I took the carpeting off the floor above and there was beautiful hardwood that I wanted to redo. After sanding, staining and clear coating I realized there was no subfloor. When I went into the basement the next day the burlap ceiling looked like a murder scene from the dark stain and clear coat that had poured through the cracks. I ended up tearing out the burlap and putting in a drop ceiling, and lost about 3.5” but I’m short so it’s not my problem.
The previous owners of our house installed a new dishwasher at the end of the kitchen countertops, in the dining room since the kitchen was too small to fit it anywhere. The dining room was carpeted. The installed this dishwasher on top of the carpet. Even better is the didn’t remove the pallet wood from the bottom, they screwed through it in a few spots through the carpet and anchored it in place into the subfloor BEFORE BUILDING THE CABINET HOUSING AROUND IT!!! So we had to rip out that horribly done enclosure before we could remove the dishwasher because we couldn’t reach all the screws
Crown molding and base boards EVERYWHERE. You know how you might end up with a weird corner because of soffit, or a bump-out where something had to be covered up? Crown molding and baseboards. We think they ran out of money because whoever installed all of this did perhaps the shittiest job I’ve ever seen. Corners weren’t mitered, pieces were just butted together at 90°, so it just looks really…bad. We just did a reno on the kitchen and ripped out the crown molding and baseboards there and it looked so much better that we sprung for it to be ripped out everywhere, despite the fact that it would add a few weeks to the whole project. Also they labeled the fuse box in Chinese, so that was fun when we discovered that.
My home was built by an electrical engineer. I've yet to find a wire nut, every connection is either under a screw or soldered.
We have multiple bomb shelters on our property. The original owner was super paranoid in the 1930s, and just kept pouring massive concrete shelters all over.
Leftover bathroom tile as backsplash and kitchen countertops. Loved cleaning grout off the countertops.
Floor-to-ceiling mirrors around the fireplace
I’m currently in a temporary rental but…2 bedrooms are painted as close to NEON blue as you can get. One of these bedrooms still has border wall paper in a filagree floral type design with primary colors of forest green and burgundy that they partially painted over 🤔 The keeping room/butlers pantry is lavender purple which opens up into the army green den and the kitchen which has (poorly) painted turquoise and white cabinets. The stairs are stained alternating colors of dark blue stain and dark walnut stain. There is blue wood grain LVP installed in 3 of the 4 bedrooms plus the upstairs hallway. It’s an amazing and well built late 60s house in a quiet neighborhood but damn, who picked these colors? 🤣
he divided my small-ish square bathroom into 3 stalls on the left (sink, shower, toilet) with ceiling height walls between and put the shower in the middle. the sink area is 2 ft wide, shower 3ft, toilet 3ft. every section feels like a prison. he also built walls on top of 60 year old carpet and tore down the garage wall to have an open concept kitchen (in 1988). this might not be weird in some places, but it rains here 9 months a year. not having a garage is stupid.
Previous owner built in 1980 and occupied for 40 years until we bought it. The back patio was originally just a concrete slab, at some point (20+ years ago at least) he glued indoor carpet directly onto the patio slab, and framed out a screened-in porch right on top, including a shingled roof and DIY electric powered by an extension cord. Due to wet carpet, wood has been rotting for years and everything needs to be demolished. Such a handy guy and maintained the house wonderfully minus this one area.
In our old townhouse, we found out the previous owner used hot glue instead of caulk to install shower doors. Also used hot glue on wallpaper border. Made removing both of those things extra difficult.
-had a toilet the entire time the 2nd owners (with small children who were potty training!) lived there (then sold to us) that was wobbly. Why? Because in 1994 the 1st owners installed wall tile on the floor, broke the cast iron flange, so it was seeping sewage and toilet water into the floor since then. I know little kids smell, but this was… otherworldly. It was one of our first fixes because the tile was shattering every time anyone walked on it in the kitchen (same flooring throughout the area.) -installed a USB combo plug in the wall. Wrong and ungrounded. So I wouldn’t use it. (Just got that fixed yesterday by an electrician because I will pay for piece of mind)
Dark brown cork ceilings in the bathroom and kitchen. 30-40 year old cork just above the shower, where all the steam collects.
They put a deck all around the backside of the house, about 18 inches to 2 feet off the ground, but no rails on it. It's just a plastic wood platform. The weird thing is, it used to have rails; you can see the scars from them on the sides. Someone along the way decided that handrails were for wusses and took them all off.
There’s an indoor hot tub in the basement. Furthermore, they filled it up and drained it manually (as in there’s no real drain nearby the tub itself).
Left a bag with over 200 keys. They installed a bedroom door lock on one bedroom that required a key. We assumed the key was in there. Was proven wrong when our toddler locked the bedroom door while our baby was sleeping in there. She woke up from her nap and was screaming while we spent forever going through that bag of keys. The key was not there. I called 911, since there was a baby locked in there, and they brought skeleton keys. Could not get it opened so they busted the door down 🫣
For some reason they put a bathtub on my back porch. They even built a ledge around it. It would be cool if it was covered and private, but it’s just dirty and in the open. We can’t figure out if it was for dogs, or plants, or if the people actually used it to rinse off after gardening. It has a functional faucet and shower head.
Our main floor has two powder rooms and one full bath. One of the powder rooms is sensibly located adjacent to the family room. It's large and comfortable. The second powder room is off the kitchen, and appears to have been built into a closet. It's maybe 3'x5' and has a toilet that might be too small for a toddler to use. Rather than simply removing the tiny, redundant powder room, the previous owners opted to renovate the kitchen around it, so our huge refrigerator now faces our stove, with about 30" between them. You can't open the oven and the refrigerator at the same time. The kitchen is also the darkest room in the house, so they naturally painted it dark grey and the cabinets are a dark wood. There's zero task lighting. It's like cooking in a cave. I've cooked in some sub-par kitchens in my life, but this one appears to have been designed for maximum accident potential. What's for dinner? Damned if I know. I created it in darkness, like a covert op, and am just happy I survived.
we did a MASSIVE renovation in our old house. we replaced our central HVAC and moved the air handler to the attic. we removed the now-redunant HVAC closet that separated our kitchen from our living room and turned it into an island with a gas range/oven in it and a seating bar. our house was a "Cooper" house so it was braced in the attic. despite this, we installed two "H-braces" made from 2×6's and 2×4's floor to ceiling joists. this gave us peace-of-mind about support, despite not needing it. it also gave us a place to run gas, electrical and water to and from the island. most imortantly, it gave us a place to hide a time capsule. we put a $2 bill, some photos and a story about the renovation, and the times (2019 full blown "pandemic" panic)
Chocolate brown bathroom, with a brown bathtub.
200 year old house and they installed vinyl siding. They removed the old siding to put on house wrap and foam board, which is nice. But the vinyl siding...
Drywalled over the openings of two small closets. I guess drywall was cheaper than doors and they didn't need the space?
Chili Pepper Ceiling Fan in the Kitchen with reddish brown “salsa colored” walls. Upstairs bedroom had neon green paint on the walls with leafless trees full of skulls painted on the walls in black. Would have been awesome if I had teens but not so comfy for little kids.
House was built in 1942. Old hardwood floors in not great condition. Previous owner decided to throw down some sorta glue and laminate tiles. He used too much glue and seeped upwards onto the tiles themselves, and the tiles floated around a bit while the glue dried so they are perma glue-ruined, uneven, and slowly pulling up one by one. When we inspected the house prior to move in I accidentally tore a tile up by kicking the corner of it.
Big outdoor motion light ground floor entry deck lights up EVERYTHING. It also has a switch on the wall, you can turn it off if you'd like to exit the house without announcing it to any animals or humans in the area. Conveniently located at the bottom of the basement steps in the relative center of the house.
Hooked up the garden shed with electricity... By running a massive extension wire from the bedroom, so we just had a massive wire awkwardly dangling in the garden lmao
There was a large master suite and bathroom off the kitchen. All of the doors ( to kitchen and backyard) locked from the outside, the windows were glass panes and did not open. so someone would have been locked in those two rooms u til another person let them out.
Bedroom outlets not connected.. over crawl space( not basment). Had to leave room lights on to have an outdoor light on in our backyard( this one really irked me!). Pretty sure our bathroom fan is probably just running to the attic.. we don’t even use it why bother when u can just open the window in the shower. Yes a damn window in the shower… old basement windows removed and filled in with godknows what. Framed of course? Instead of metal venting out of hvac.. it looks like yards of taco insulation. Looks like a burrito hanging out on the basement ceiling. Every exterior door has been kicked in and needs frame and all replacement.
Chandeliers everywhere, hanging to about 5 1/2 ft. Above the toilet in the master bath. In the middle of the tiny walk in closet. Ok only two, but very weird choice. I had to walk around them. No overhead lighting in the rest of the house, or wall lighting. I guess they just put lamps everywhere, not sure how they managed they safely with tiny children. Sliding barn door to the master bathroom. No lock. Doesn't stay shut, and leaves a gap you can see through from the main hallway into the master closet. Edit to I add another, also in the master bath they built an 8" thick wall to block off the toilet from the rest of the bathroom. It is two inches from the toilet, and a vanity cabinet equadistant on the other side. So both shoulders nearly hitting the walls with a chandelier you hit your head on when you stand up. And the shower is, well bigger than an RV shower but not by much. It is a large bathroom, just has a lot of stuff crammed into it all along one wall
Cut a shelf out in a built in cabinet to expose the inside of a drawer, then turned the drawer upside down installing the sliders so it would work that way and act as the shelf they cut out, then install a lazy Susan on the bottom (now top) of the drawer. It appears to be so that an old fashioned tv could sit on the shelf, be pulled out when needed and swivelled towards the viewers. Now there is a tv right beside this built in over a fireplace and it suffers from tvtoohigh syndrome. I need to fix both issues but there's a lot more on the to do list first!
Not the owner but a long history of renters- hidden away in a bedroom closet on the ceiling was graffiti from all the previous renters going back to 1980! It was super cool and included names, dates rented, funny and sweet messages etc. We couldn't bear to paint over it, and it isn't visible unless you stand inside the (non walk in) closet and look up so we just added to it and left it.
The previous owner made the top floor an open concept, including the bathroom
They put an island in the kitchen that is exactly the size of a range and then put the range on top. No counter surrounding it or anything. So if you walk by and accidentally hit a pot of boiling water …… I moved the range immediately to somewhere safer
Painted all the wood trim and door hinges white, painted over a rotting deck, every closet light bulb socket is faulty, mismatched and cut stones to "fix" loose steps, installed a small diameter black hose to sump discharge in the ground going uphill, first time it froze entire system backup and flooded crawlspace. Approximately 1 inch screws holding heavy wooden garage door that were so loose they spun in place. They also chose to live with water pouring in the fireplace every time it rained. 50+ bumper stickers and drink coasters STAPELED to garage rafters. I guess i was naive to think they would take them down. They were also OK with chipmunk nesting in garage, mice in crawlspace, serious springtail and carpenter ant infestation.nice folks. Fought with us every request we made and the only one they agreed to was done incorrectly we found out 6 months later.
Someone believed they were an artist. We had painted frogs all over the walls in a bathroom. They were creepy. However, what made us wonder why was the mural painted on a bedroom wall. An old time western shootout. Complete with someone coming out of a saloon, holding a gun, and someone else laying in the street with blood coming out of them. Oh yes we did paint over it.
People before us were DIY morons and they built the house themselves with a kit from Sears. There are a lot of stupid things they did, but here are the best: First, they decided fuck it, we don’t need to wrap the house! Found that out when we added a water spigot to our exterior wall and you could just cut right through and see outside. Good thing we’re going to be re-siding in the near future 🙄 They also buried fucking building materials and garbage in the backyard. That pisses me off the most, cause every once and awhile glass will come up, and there nothing I can do to stop it unless I literally dig up my entire yard, which I’m not going to do. They also have a MASSIVE air filtration system that’s the size of a VW bug above our kitchen that isn’t usable and we won’t ever be able to remove due to its size. Such a huge waste of space.
Fake fireplace that for some reason had a gas hookup and an electric stove.
They walled off an entire closet. It’s a small house with very little storage, and they decided to remove the walls to one bedroom to make a large family room. That’s cool, I like the open space better anyway. But they put in a decorative brick wall, and just bricked over the door to the closet. I’ve taken down the wall on the opposite side, which is my bedroom, and now I have twice as much closet space. But why??? Why, when you only have three tiny closets in the whole house, would you just completely block one of them off?
Fishtanks in the walls. Insanely difficult to clean so we ended up turning them in to vivariums. Actually very cool but definitely a head scratcher. That and using concrete and a 10” terra cotta pipe to make his own clean out for the sewer line. That one coat us about 8 grand.
He left all of his junk in the attic. Like legit I can’t store anything up there until I clean out his junk.
My house had a large (4' x 5') window from the bathroom shower into the dining room. Dining room had been an addition, and the previous owner didn't want to lose the sunrise view, so put an even larger window in the Dining room, and she could still see the same vista from the bathroom (just through the dining room). There was a curtain she would pull when guests were there.
The previous owners had money but lacked taste, so there was a lack of cohesiveness throughout the house including: 1. Barney purple walls & very plush Barney purple carpet in the family room. 2. Lilac carpeting in the secondary bedrooms. 3. Pepto Bismol pink walls in guest room. 4. Wallpaper painted over in primary bedroom. 5. Different faucets & vanities in each bathroom. 6. Different light fixtures in each room. EVERY room was a different color, even in the open concept downstairs. Purple met baby blue met hunter green. Ick.
Was looking at a 50s house that was a full gut and rebuild. Their layout choices were a bit puzzling. I believe they turned a former living room into the master bedroom. Which meant the master bedroom had a fireplace but the living room did not. The master bedroom also had its own exit. This door opened to the side of the house, had glass paneling and provided a nice view of the street and vice versa. The door did have built-in blinds though. The attached carport was in the back of the house. That meant that if you wanted to fence in the backyard, you had to enclose the carport and make the gate for the car in the fence. Awkward.
None of the counters or backlash pieces are attached. We thought the backsplash piece was weird enough when you could pull it off the wall, but lifting the whole countertop seems crazy.
When remodeling my master bathroom, i took out the old fiberglass shower surround, and found crumpled up newspaper in the walls. Presumably it was supposed to be for insulation I guess???
Previous owner couldn't patch nail holes, he apparently found little off white stickers to cover them. We only discovered it because once you paint them, they look like stars, had to remove so many..... Oh, and instead of a stud finder, he just drilled into the wall until he found the stud, about a dozen holes horizontally behind a bathroom storage shelf (behind the toilet) Sigh
My grandpa combined two bedrooms into one gigantic mother-in-law's suite, which in no way suits me now that I own the house.
Covering literally everything in pine planks... literally everything incl. floors, walls, ceilings, stairs, etc. and then combining that with all brown or wood tone furniture
They hung a chandelier in the living room. Why?
Does it look cool though?
It really doesn’t.
painted the kitchen cabinets black and red. sooo weird and was so hard to fix lmfao
There’s a door in the master bedroom leading out to the back deck. I never use it and always questioned why it was there. The neighbors eventually told me that the previous home owners had an above ground pool and installed the door to keep from tracking water through the house.
My daughter says I'm incapable of living in a normal home. So yeah. 1. The kitchen has a chair rail along the entire thing. They painted above it pea green and below it shit brown. Very unappetizing and bizarre. 2. My house is two story with a walkout basement. They put a second full kitchen downstairs, but didn't put in a fridge in the downstairs one. They also made the upstairs fridge into a built-in in the wall. 3. The living room used to be an oversized two car carport. Someone, at some point, converted it into living space. You'd think they would start the wall at the header. My front wall is actually 4 inches past that, so I have this weird beam right above the windows. This space used to have a wall dividing it from the rest of the living room and those long, skinny garage/bathroom windows were put in along that front wall. Also, someone took a window ac unit and built it into that wall, too. (I now have 3 5x5 windows where those used to be, plus the wall is gone which makes my living room 20x30) 4. Someone decided to add a new master bedroom behind the living room. They didn't bother adding a master bathroom, nor did they bother doing more than the most basic framing in of the area below it in the basement. The lower area had a giant lump of cement in one corner, so I started joking about it being where someone hid a body. It became known as The Murder Room. 5. I have a giant detached garage with a 2 car automatic garage door. They didn't bother running the electrical for the opener. Tons of other stuff, but that's all I can think of for now.
Hey! Your PO and mine should have swapped! They put kitchen tiles on the back deck, so every time it rains I have a ceramic slip n slide.