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This thread is so fun!
The rental we're in was built in 1996 by the only owner, who was an elderly lady and had it built just the way she wanted it. Her son is our landlord.
There's no dishwasher, which DH and I think is absurd for a 1996 house. The light switches are in weird places, and there's a tiffany lamp hanging about 5 feet away from a fan/light in the kitchen, completely off centered. We can't even see what the point of that was.
We're about to move into a house we're buying, so maybe I'll have some new ones to report.
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We just have a few from our rental right now but we move in two weeks so I'm sure we'll come across something!
Our landlord has never put overhead lights in in the living room or the bedrooms. It's just so weird to me to have the spots to put lights in and not to put at least a basic one in.
Also, our plumbing system is connected weirdly. A few times the front toilet has gotten clogged which also clogs the garbage disposal? Sometimes the garbage disposal gets clogged and clogs the toilet. I think they just clog each other.
Then one thing that drives me nuts about our downstairs is that there isn't even a small window near the front door to let light in from that side. I don't know why but that bothers me.
@Dandelion: I'm glad you guys found a house!
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The previous owners (who lived there for 12 years before we bought the house) kept things pretty neutral. Except for the guest bathroom downstairs which had this terrible maroon and green striped wallpaper, plus a floral border and matching green bathroom hardware. It was like they used up all their decorating prowess in one room and got tired out so kept the entire rest of the house neutral.
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A few things come to mind...
1. Every bedroom had wallpaper along with each bathroom. The part that was weird was they were so meticulous, they wallpapered the switch plates and outlet plates and lined them up perfectly to match. That's some OCD...
2. The master bath had wallpaper, but they removed it to help sell the house. They didn't remove the curtain rod brackets before they removed the wallpaper. So when we removed them, there was still wallpaper underneath!
3. Pink carpeting in the master bath. Around the toilet...ick.
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When we first moved in, the dining room was raspberry pink "suede" paint. I swear that was a reason it took so long for it to sell!
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@preggomeggo82: Ew, I didn't even know that was a thing! Was it hard to paint over?
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@twodoghouse: We had to sand the walls like crazy. It was like sponge paint on steroids. It ended up being easier to replaster!
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@Mrs.Someone: That is amazing.
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The living room had this awful green trim, while the rest of the trim in the house was white. It took sooo many coats to get rid of the green. Thank goodness it was just that one room.
They wallpapered over huge holes in the dining room. The horsehair plaster was basically crumbling down in huge sections when we were trying to get rid of the wallpaper.
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@mamimami: OMG!!! That is scary!
ETA: now that I've read the whole thread, I feel like we got lucky with our house! I don't really have anything weird to report!
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Our apartment was newly renovated when we moved in, but it seems pretty typical here that owners don't install light fixtures, not even in the kitchen, hallway, bathroom, etc. We ended up buying a few fixtures, but still have a lot of naked bulbs.
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When we moved into our place, we went to paint the master bedroom because it was this terrible pale green color. I thought that was bad until I opened one of the closets. Now empty, I realized the entire inside was painted periwinkle. I called the closet purple purgatory. It was so gross to repaint so I hope I don't end up with asbestos poisoning...
We've also had some Holmes on Homes style electrical problems lately. Always an inexpensive fix...
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We just closed on our house Friday, and we knew going in that it was a bit unusual. For one thing, the master bedroom and bath are later additions that were added on to the back of the house. So they stuck a bookshelf in the hole where the back door used to be, and then put the back door in the master bedroom. That's going to be interesting when we have people over and want to grill out on the deck.
The master bath is a jack and jill. Handy since we're making the other room the nursery, but weird. We'd like to close it off later, but at this point the only two doors into the master bedroom are the one through the nursery, through the bathroom, or the one that goes through the kitchen, through the laundry room. I mean, it's great that the laundry room is so convenient to the bedroom, but it's so weird having it off the kitchen!
Every switchplate is crooked, and there are at least 10 different colors/styles. The black ones in the kitchen still have the off-white plugs/switches in the middle, and the off-white ones in the dining room have dark brown plugs/switches.
The whole house is at least somewhat updated, except the dining room, which is horrendous wood paneling (poorly done to boot) and ratty laminate flooring. Also, in that room they apparently painted the ceiling white recently and when they did they painted part of the crown molding. So there's white on just part of it, the rest is wood colored. And the wood trim around the doors/floors is a completely different color/style from the wood paneling and crown molding.
The upper kitchen cabinets are so low that you can't even fit a microwave on the counter. We're having them raised. Apparently 18 inches is standard, these are 14. The previous owners had no appliances (like a mixer or coffee maker), and their microwave was in the laundry room.
There's a built in sort of desk in the corner of what will be the nursery, but I guess there used to be carpet on top of the hardwood there because it doesn't actually reach the floor. Just a gap between the bottom and the floor. The closet doors in that room are also weirdly high off the floor.
I think that's all, but we haven't moved in yet, so I'm sure we'll find more when we do! Most of it we're fixing, and some of it we decided was okay.
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When we bought our house, we knew the previous owners had been not-so-great DIYers. Our favorite (if you can call it that?) was the random shelves installed EVERYWHERE. Like, a foot-long shelf in the corner of the spare bedroom, a two foot-long shelf under the living room window, a foot-long shelf right where the headboard should be. When we were removing them, my husband walked around the house going "Oh! Sometimes when I drink coffee, I stand in this spot. I should have a shelf to put my coffee on!" and "Oh, at night I should probably have a shelf instead of a headboard in case I need a snack or something in the middle of the night" and "Huh! I find that sometime I stand right here and have things in my hand. Maybe I should install a shelf so I can put them down!"
Seriously, we took down so.many.shelves.
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This is Chloe's bedroom before we closed on the house.
The whole house was updated with white carpeting except for this room. We later had new carpeting installed.
But, after we installed Chloe's carpet we discovered that every room in the house had a different shade white. It drives me INSANE.
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My entire master bathroom is a wtf. Unfortunately it still looks like this! I spray painted the vent white and have new door knobs, but that's all so far. One day we will gut the entire thing.
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THis is the best thread EVER
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btw carpet in bathrooms makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit
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Our house was built in 1880, so it's hard to tell what's unusual and what's just characteristic of the time. However, sometime along the way an extension was built to make a full bathroom. It's so narrow that you have to sit sideways on the toilet. Also the floor of the half bathroom was redone. Tile was laid down, but no grout in between the tiles!
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@Mrs. Jump Rope: That's like our house! Except in the SAME ROOM. (see pic on last page!)
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@Leialou: OMG I've seen that bathroom before. Okay, one that looks like it.
Saw a similar bathroom when we were house hunting and it had VELVET WALLPAPER.
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Omg almost everything! We just moved in January and are trying to tackle things as fast as possible. The basement is finished and used to be a separate apartment. They gutted it and made it part of the house. The bathroom has an exterior door and sink in front of the window so you have to reach down and behind the sink to open it. There was a full length mirror across from the toilet. Basement walls and ceiling are textured and theres wall to wall carpet (seems weird for a basement). Their decor was also...interesting. Sponge painted walls, fireplace was painted pink, one room had safari animal valances. Horrible orange wallpaper on two walls that wrapped around a corner so that it was in both the kitchen and living room. All the trim and walls painted same color and only one coat so you can see that everything used to be painted a dark Burgundy. Every single wall, piece of trim, door, etc was dark red. They left really old wiring on one floor and one outlet in the basement but upgraded the rest of the house. They replaced all but 4 windows - 3 out of 4 in the dining room and 1 in the future nursery. They opened up the wall between two bedrooms and one has carpet the other ugly laminate and never updted one of the rooms with new trim or drywall so it still looks like separate rooms. Overall just really bad taste and only partially completed their projects. Why not just finish something before moving on to the next project? The most baffling thing was why they would replace some windows in a room but not all of them. Why not replace all of them in one room and hold off on the other?
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The worst thing about our house was the previous owner's paint choices. Each room was a different color with a horrible textured wall in the foyer. The basement was a bright big bird yellow with one purple accent wall. Needless to say we did a lot of painting before moving in and had new drywall installed in the foyer. Sometimes it is just easier to start over.
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@Leialou: That looks so much like our bathroom, except we had green and purple wallpaper. I removed all the wallpaper last February while on maternity leave... and haven't done anything in the last year... haha
SO many problems with out house. We can tell the original owners used the cheapest home builder they could find. All our subfloors are comprised of tiny plywood scraps.
All of our exterior windows weren't secured to the house at all - we were able to just push them out when we went to replace them!
Something about our fireplaces where the smoke vents into the house.
TONS of wallpaper, but that's a style element, I guess, not shoddy (sp?) workmanship
Carpet in the master bath?! Ugh, it's got to be nasty under there... Worst thing is that now DH loves it and doesn't want to replace it with tile!
Hardly any insulation in the exterior walls. We were replacing some rotten subfloor, and there was cold air just gushing into the house! -
@swurlygurl: is your fireplace flew (flu? Not sure how that is spelled lol) open on the inside? If it is then your chimney is probably blocked.
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@Dandelion: I'm probably going to say this all wrong, but: When the smoke rises, it has several outlets - the chimney, a hole to the outside and it leaks into the house. We'd have to rip out the fireplace/part of the chimney to fix it (so says DH, I hate the stupid thing so I just avoid it). I know you're supposed to close the flu when you're done with your fire, and we've made sure it's completely open when we light a fire, but it doesn't make a difference.
THEN, our basement fireplace isn't even hooked up to the chimney??!! But it's not even one of those fireplaces/stoves that's supposed to be vent into the room! (I don't know if I said that right, maybe I meant blow heat into the room, but still vent outside?). So, we have 3 beautiful fireplaces and can't use any of them
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@swurlygurl: that's weird!
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This thread is amazing! The previous owners put lots of work into the house before putting it on the market. It was clean with nothing major that needed to be done....however, I think the previous owners must have been giants. All of the counters are really really high. Kitchen, 2 counters in the bathrooms, etc. When pregnant, I literally had trouble reaching the sink to wash my face, and I almost needed a step-stool in the bathroom. Also, the upper cabinets in the kitchen start almost at my highest reach. You can imagine how high the upper shelves are! I can also barely reach the switch for the kitchen garbage disposal -- I ended up using a chopstick for extra length while pregnant!
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@TemperanceBrennan: we have the exact same sink/vanity/outlet issue. I hate it SO MUCH. who thought that up!? seriously. OH, and there is no light over the vanity side of the counter so I have to do make up over the sink... what is the freaking point of that side of the counter???
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This bathroom. I know pink bathrooms were super popular so the previous owners must have thought they were really trendy, but gosh. The picture shows the second layer of pink wallpaper, after I had already removed the first layer of pink glitter wallpaper.
ETA: We gutted this bathroom last summer and now it is glorious!
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structural things like closet space, shower placement, etc.
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@pregnantbee: Haha, this is going to be our house if we ever put it on the market. I'm 6' and DH is 6'5 so we got extra tall counters in the kitchens and bathrooms, tall cabinets, and even extra tall toilets.
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This is the first home we bought, the lady was an interior decorator but I really questioned these color choices in the master bedroom!
I really wish I still had a photo of the 3rd bedroom, it was pepto bismol pink ontop and lime green on the bottom.
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Wood paneling of every color. In the hallway upstairs they must have just used all the leftovers bc there were 5 different colors of wood paneling in a tiny hall.
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DH bought our house we live in now when he was 19 and renovated it. The previous owners had the living room and hallway painted pepto bismol pink. Their kids had also glued pictures to the bedroom walls.
I think they were drug dealers. Regardless they got their house repossessed and DH got it at a steal and fixed it up!
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@TemperanceBrennan: my parents have a tall toilet in their house and I hate using it. My feet don't touch the floor!
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@Mrs. Jump Rope: Our kids are going to need a step-stool to get to the toilet!
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The previous owners took a mirror they were supposed to leave behind, and we found a hole that had been duct-taped and then painted over.
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love this thread! we lucked out and love the house we just bought but......there are NO CLOSET DOORS IN ANY BEDROOMS. That's right. Zero. What happened was they re-did the floors a couple years ago (put in lovely wide plank hardwood) and in order to do that, they took out all the closet doors (they were the sliding ones with tracks on the floor). Well, they just never got around to installing doors/tracks after the floors were done. So everything is...exposed. Thankfully the master bedroom closet has really nice built-ins so at least it looks organized...but I can see all of our clothes, all the time......
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The first owner of our house added on to the original floor plan. Pretty much anything he did himself was pretty awful and we've had to fix many weird random things.
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