OH Dear I understand this one and we even did it to ourselves.

The cabinet shelf problem I solved with the wire self supporting shelves from Walmart or?? Anywhere I guess . There are all kinds of configurations and I actually like them better. I do not have dishwasher ,by choice. Sometimes I am in a hurry to put glasses and dishes away and no problem with the wire racks the cups and glasses upside down continue to dry.

The hose thing we also did. Did not even consider most of the yars would be on the other side. Sooooooooooooooooooo I bought a hose manifold and attached that long hose to it all the way to the other side. Not so bad as I thought. I just used an old 100 foot hose and I do not ever move it. Then I used splitters where needed to add other hoses. All with turn on/off valves on them. Actually it has not been a problem. I have it down to start at the faucet . Turn it on and work my way around the yard. back to the faucet to turn it off.

We only had the faucet on the one side to keep all the plumbing on the one side of the house. So DH keeps apologizing for doing it but it really is not a problem the way I worked it out. We do not have great water pressure and can only run one sprinkler at a time anyway. We have a half acre to water.

The PO probably put the upper cabinets higher to make room for under cabinet mounted appliances or more open feeling at the counter. That was a thing to do awhile ago. I even think our cabinets are higher then usual too.

Hate the fridge next to the stove too. And low ceilings also bug me.

Some day some one will scratch their heads over why did we put a door to outside in the master bathroom. We did it to be able to let the dogs out easy at night. And WHY are there four doors to the outside? Because this is a manufactured home built to HUD rules and there is a silly rule no outside door can be more then 35 foot from a bedroom. EVEN though the master bathroom has a door 10 foot from the room it potentially could be locked so we had to have another door added.

This will be a big head scratcher for next owner and was my idea and I totally love it.I did not want them to build in the upper wall above bedroom closet in my room I use for my studio. The reason was so I could put easily accessible shelving up there and it has worked out really well. I have curtains up there now and some day will make better matching ones. This was one of those get some thing up there now and I kind of forgot it needed some thing better. Good I love to sew and any excuse to buy some more fabric. LOL

And here:
http://shadesofidaho.multiply.com/photos/album/15/Fleetwood#photo=62
This is before we moved in.

Here is a link that might be useful: Picture #10.

I've had lots of those head scratchers. why didnt the people who built this house bump all the external walls out a few feet so the rooms were a good useable size instead of cramped?

why didnt the PO take down the light fittings to paint instead of smearing paint all over the lights?

why did they enclose the back porch and make it a narrow room instead of bumping it out a bit further to make it a good size?

why did they put bits of paving everywhere but create no where big enough to put a couple of chairs?

I could go on and on but I think it just comes down to not thinking things through and just doing things on the cheap hodge podge, whether or not they work or function well :/

I totally get what shades_of_idaho says about dog-friendly doors...we think alike! One of the most important things to me in a floorplan is that the master needs to have outdoor access for the dogs. I've also planned for a covered dog potty area at our next home, since our girls HATE going out in the rain. :)

One peculiar thing that strikes me about our house (that we don't live in...we just bought it and will add-on and remodel soon) is that it has a shared walk-in "jack-and-jill" type closet between the only 2 bedrooms in the house. Not only that, but it's so narrow that by the time you actually hang clothes there, you'd pretty much have to walk sideways to get to the other end.

Maybe that was a common design back in 1952? I dunno. :)

My only head-scratcher was the built-in closet storage cubby in my bathroom.

The shelves in the cubby (they were original 1942 installs) were built in top-to-bottom and spaced out uneven and in odd proportions. It looked ugly. It didn't function right. It was weird. Never came up with ideas on the WHY of it all.

I pulled out and re-built the shelves in only about 3 hours, so fortunately, I could fix it and move on with life.

For the most part, the house itself hasn't been messed with by previous owners, so not much weirdness aside from the response, "that's how they did things back in the day".

I posted somewhere else that I have the pleasure of knowing the man who owned this house for 50-some years before me. He is able to explain the why's of the outside yard mysteries (brick pile, rock pile, fence placement, etc). That helps.
Gayle

Fun thread! :o)
We've found many of these in our place over the years. I think the worst has been electrical wires 'spliced' and then held together with masking tape in the walls. I would think that even someone who hasn't a clue about electrical code would know that masking tape of all things presents a fire hazard.
I could go on, and on, and on ..
~Missy

Our house is a typical 80's tract home, and all of the houses around here have the same 'feature'- they dropped the ceilings in the bathrooms and in the kitchen. Why? The kitchen in particular feels very low and cramped. They put a big square recessed lighting fixture (read: ugly) in the middle of the room. I'm still puzzling over how to make this look better. There is no structural reason for the dropped ceilings; in fact, it was extra work.

The other common feature in FL houses that I hate is the big huge garage being the most prominent feature of the front of the house. Ugh! Why not build the house narrower so the driveway can go past the house, and put the garage in the back, like they did in the old days?

Fifty_two....the Jack and Jill walk in closet AND a similar bathroom was in the kit house on the river that I rented from a friend the year after I sold MoccasinLanding. It was the only closet in the house, and there was a built-in ladder up to the attic access also. Since it was just me there and using only one bedroom, I had no problem. But the spare bedroom was used as storage space for things I kept boxed up.

Gayle, I read that post of yours, and thought that whomever buys my DH's house, which he's added on to and improved since he bought it in 1963, would benefit if they knew why the light switches were in such weird places. To him, it all seems logical. To me, it drives me crazy. Switches OUTSIDE the bathroom instead of INSIDE? Yard lights switched on in the DINING ROOM and not by the front or back doors? And the mudroom accessible inside the garage by the oil tank before entering the basement, but now no one enters through the garage. Maybe when we clear out the big tools from the garage and it is possible to park a car in there, it will return to mudroom status, and not a place to store old snow skis.

Yep, Jay, having the garage or carport in the back was a nice use of space. If a carport, it could be a covered patio for those sunny or rainy days. And you could leave the garage door UP without exposing your expensive tools or sports equipment to strangers driving by.

'they dropped the ceilings in the bathrooms and in the kitchen. Why?'

less room to cool? so the ceiling fan would be closer to their heads? they didn't want to repaint the higher up ceiling?

They're the smallest rooms in the house already! You couldn't put in a ceiling fan, not even a low profile one. I just find it odd that the only rooms that will have warm humid air don't allow anywhere for it to go.

ML- It's funny you mention leaving the garage door open. Around here, people always leave them open on the weekends- even garages like mine, that are packed full of stuff. The neighbor across the street leaves his open all night! I can't believe he hasn't been robbed. I keep mine closed unless I have a need to open it.

shades of Idaho... we think alike. I am putting an exterior door in my bedroom for the dog.

And I've got a mismash of cubbies in my loft. They go back forever, all different sizes, so no way to make uniform drawers or baskets for them. I want to tear them out and build new manageable ones.

People will ask of my changes;

Why remove a perfectly good chimney (don't like wood heat, want the space)
Why only three wall cabinets?
(I'm short and about to remove one of them, since I can't reach anything in it anyway)
Why not build the new bedroom larger than 10 by 15? (cheaper to use existing foundation and didn't want a remuddle of out of proportion addition)
Why remove a beautiful old clawfoot tub and put in a tiny, yet deep, japanese box tub? (master bath 5 by 6 feet, 'nuff said)

Ellen

Awwww, Ellen, you are getting a Japanese box tub? How fantastic!!!

Can you show us a picture of your bathroom? I've sort of dreamed of a wooden deep soaking tub for a long time. I remember that in Mother Earth News years ago,, there was an ad for a wood fired hot tub, the stove and firebox sat outside the tub and somehow the water was heated.

I guess this shows that at heart I am still an old hippie?
Ahhh, those were the days......

LOL Ellen the claw foot tub will make a lovely planter or outside tub. Deep box tub sounds wonderful to me.

We really like the outside door in the master bath. The last house was a trip up one side of the house and down the other and back again and again for all of us to do business in the night and back to bed. Nothing like jogging laps in the middle of the night. And it would be great if we ever put a hot tub in the back yard. Dreaming here. I will have an out door shower out there next year. Two summers now and I have not gotten it done. But I did use my big old cow water tank for cooling dip. LOL.

Chris

I didn't catch that you put the door in the bathroom! Great idea. Muddy dogs and garden feet.

I put my box tub in about 8 years ago (and got $200 for the old claw foot). I love it. It's a tiny white acrylic one, 35 by 30 by about 27 inches deep. Heavily insulated, it stays hot for a very long time. I can put my kindle in a ziplock bag and read for hours before it cools off. I did that once on a cold evening when the power was out; read by candlelight until I made a prune look smooth, but I stayed warm.

I tiled the two adjacent walls and made it double as a shower, though it's quite a step to get in.

I would change it a little if I did it again. I should have built out the walls to be even with the inside of the tub, the tub ledge catches water and it's flat so it doesn't drain. It's also hard to get the shower curtain to stay closed because of the ledge pushing it away from the wall. I sort of paste it in place with water. Which is a pain to do every morning. I am trying to think of solutions. Ideas welcome. I'm starting to think of looking into a custom glass wall and door.

The other problem with the tub required some creative thinking by the friend who installed it. It has a 1 inch drain... you can't buy matching fittings in the US. He got around it somehow and I haven't had a bit of trouble with it, aside from one tiny hairline crack that I need to patch. The faucet comes out of the wall above the tub rim.

Shades, I've no desire for an outdoor hottub, but I'm thinking about one of those cattle watering tanks that I saw
on the farm of my neighbor's cousin. It would also be perfect for some koi. Above ground of course. While we have no ROCKS in our soil, we do have humongous TREE ROOTS, and that makes it difficult to dig a clean hole.

When we tackle our kitchen project, we will be adding a doggy door beside the back door. I am also planning to relocate the master bedroom door from the center hallway, to just beside the back door. Then that hall end will become a fairly large utility/broom/vacuum closet. More storage space sounds great to me. And we'll have two more walls in the bedroom with room for the headboard.

Now in my case, the next folks who live in Casa Del Sol will wonder why I put those clerestory windows in the WALK IN CLOSET. When I could have maxxed out the 18' long space with hanging racks? Well, I wanted the northern light coming in those windows to brighten up the bedroom, which is on the north east corner of the house. I now plan to add more space to the bedroom by extending the old back porch (scheduled to become part of the kitchen) all the way across the back of the house which will really make the house have some flow to it. Then they'll be asking, "What were they thinking" ....to the master bedroom door being hidden off the kitchen beside the back door.

My idea is, I'll then have essentially TWO master suites with a bathroom each, but only one will have a walkin closet.

Well, in our area, one tries very hard to stay within the original 4 walls, because approval for the permits is expensive, all your neighbors (even those not directly affected by your remodel) have to agree 100%, and going beyond whatever the current boundaries are requires extraordinarily expensive earthquake retrofitting.

Our neighbors wanted to build over their backyard patio. One story only, one room added. This would permit their daughters to have a 2nd bathroom downstairs, and a shareable bedroom. The small little room the daughters currently use would be added to a much needed larger laundry/storage room. They had a budget of $75K.

By the time they had plans drawn up, paid for a permit, applied for a waiver so they wouldn't have to rebuilt the garage, which was a 1940 original that no longer met minimum code size, it was over a year's time.

We live on the side of a modest hill in earthquake country. The engineering cost (the city does the planning and requirements and just bills you for it) for foundation refit for their project finally arrived after over a year. The cost estimate was $65,000, just for that part of the project. They had already spent $12K of their total $75K budget.

Needless to say, their downstairs remains unaltered!

As for why upper cabs are placed 2" higher, this happened to me during our 1989 remodel. They hung the uppers, but when the refrig I picked finally arrived, it was taller than they had expected. All the uppers had to be rehung.

ML this is the tank I have. I have used it for gold fish, cow water tank and me soaking tub for refreshing cool down in summer. You can fix it to hold a drain hose on the bottom side outlet so refreshing water is not wasted and can be placed wherever you need the water when draining.

I have had this tank over 10 years and so far it is going strong and has been in the weather all that time.

Made a great fish tank. I placed planters around it to hide the sides.

Here is a link that might be useful: Water tank

The first reason I came up with is that none of these home owners checked with the helpful readers of GW! Fun Post!

Corgi-mom, yeppers, there is an awful lot of help available here. I enjoy coming here because someone will come up with a different solution, then another one, and eventually the design is better than it started. The combination of our multiple life experiences is awesome.

"To him, it all seems logical. To me, it drives me crazy. Switches OUTSIDE the bathroom instead of INSIDE?"

our bathroom is the same here lol, I'm so used to the switch being outside the bathroom door it just seems normal to me. I've lived in a lot of old houses that all had that feature and a few old timers have told me that used to do it that way because it was thought to be safer to keep it away from all that water and steam in the room, but Im sure visitors here think it's odd because it's not done that way anymore

I particularly enjoyed finding these high-tech spacers on the ca. 1978 outlets mounted IN our kitchen countertop. This, together with he shoddy drywall work, slightly-off-center fireplace and iffy exterior concrete work all lead me to believe that our home was constructed with the assistance of either residents of the local mental asylum or a pack of cub scouts. I sure hope nobody got a badge for this.

LOL We had a light switch on the wall outside a bathroom too. In our case the bathroom had been a pantry as when the house was built there was no plumbing in it. So the little saying still rings in my head to guests. The light is on the wall in the hall.

Yikes jakabedy. That looks pretty scary.

LOL Jakeabedy. It's so funny that everyone has these little head scratchers.

Here are mine:
1. Why did they put those little doppleganger dormers on the house (they're gone now, but they caused a lot of problems in the eight years we lived with them).
2. WHY did they put hundreds of pounds of drywall compound on the wall as the thickest texture known to man? Again, we got rid of this in most of the house but I still have the hallway, downstairs bath and back room to remind me.
3. When they put that texture on, WHY did they texture around the light fixtures, making it impossible to change them out?
4. Why didn't the PO prime before painting all of the wood in the house?

I would like to know why they felt the need to put dollar store sticky tiles on the floors, kitchen AND bathroom counters, walls, and ceilings. I would also like to know why they nailed hubcaps (yes more than one) to the trees. Maybe the PO thought the trees needed some bling, who knows.

LOL @ tree bling!

This is such a fun thread ...

"I would like to know why they felt the need to put dollar store sticky tiles on the floors, kitchen AND bathroom counters, walls, and ceilings."

OH What a mess that would be to sort out. I remember in my very broker then broke days I used some discounted floor tiles on the kitchen counter. There was nothing else there but a sheet of plywood. I really had no money. Store was going to toss these. Worked out fine for the time I was living there. About a year. The house was torn down later for subdivision. Had been built during WW2.

But ceiling and walls ugh.

Shades, I got lost at the tank website, and forgot to come back and say thanks for the link. If I can possibly find one local, I will try that way first. If not, then your link is on my Favorite Bookmarks list. I enjoy going shopping at the farm supply stores, first exposed to them when I got my little girl chicks. That hay smells marvelous.

DJSAW, oh my, that was just lovely I bet. We have sticky tiles on the kitchen floor now until we redo the place, but not on counters/walls/CEILINGS!!!! The hubcaps are a real nice touch.........bling bling bling......yard art CAN be appealing, but that sounds like something else than ART.
I've seen car tags used as roofing on bird houses, and old tire rims made into mail box posts. Also heavy chain links welded to become a mailbox post. And metal wagon wheels made into decorative fencing or gates. Some items are true collector items, but you gotta have the right attitude to appreciate it.

Yeah, I can laugh about it now but at the time I was cursing my ex for even wanting to buy this house. I just didn't see the potential in it, now I have a really great little house with a huge yard that looks like a park that I love. Ex did all the scraping of the sticky tiles except on the counters. I told him I wasn't going to do it, lol, he was the one who wanted this damn house. LOL.

We had to cut the hubcaps out of the trees with a chainsaw, which is how we met our neighbors. He came over to help us and he pointed at our chainsaw and said "pepito" (I think that means baby) and pointed to his and said "grande" and laughed. We all laughed and he helped us cut down a few small trees that weren't able to get enough sunlight because of the big trees.

A few more what were they thinking is an ugly mustard and white exterior, pink kitchen walls with an orange floor with a blue and white sticky tile accent wall. Carpet, ceramic tile, and a cast iron skillet decorated the yard along with the hubcaps. Absolutely zero lights in the kitchen but he had 2 ceiling fans in there. He patched a hole in the wall with 3/4" plywood. I think the plywood was the hardest to take out he had it in there very well. And for the senile aspect or man with an anger problem aspect, most of the doors interior and exterior had holes in them big enough for a shoe or a fist. He was an old man that originally built the house and he lived by himself the last few years before he passed.

In my new home - a potential buyer would say

Why did she make her driveway so small (short) - coz she screwed up
Why is there no drain in the garage - coz her contractor screwed up
Why did she put ceramic tile in her walk-in closet - coz it's easier to clean
Why isn't there room in the kitchen for a table - coz she downsized and it's about time people started USING thier dining rooms.
Why is the front porch long and almost useless and the interior entry small - coz she screwed up and should have made the porch shorter and the entry larger
Why is the hall from the garage so skinny - coz again she screwed up.

I've made some mistakes in my new build - but, I have learnt from them and will NEVER build again. Unless, it's a big horse barn with a small apt upstairs for me.

ML the tanks are fairly common in any feed store or western store. Mostly sent the link for the picture.

Jeannie I think we all live from previous adventures. I do still hanker for that shop/barn house. Until I consider the stairs.. I had a wonderful plan for a shop house.

the biggest thing we came up with so far in our kitchen renovation has been the fact that corner of the house was held up by 2 2x4s (as we were removing the trim we were pretty sure we had load bearing windows because we couldn't see anything in the corner at first).

Also the random wires we found beneath the first and second floors that didn't seem to go anywhere and why in the world the kitchen ceiling light is on the same circuit as the upstairs lights. Or for that matter why none of the circuits seem to make any sense and every light fixture and outlet seems to have its own wire run to the electrical panel.

What were they thinking when they built an addition on a house for a spacious laundry room, then failed to plumb for a sink in that room? And failed to install an exterior clean-out drain, leaving the next owner (guess who?) to have to lift the toilet to do an emergency cleanout?

I had actually written a blog post about the weird things in our house...

Like the light switch on the opposite side of the kitchen entry (lots of fun in the dark)

And the mysterious really old outlet in the soffit over the sink

And the exterior window in our living room... which looks into the sun room.

And the faucet handles that turn INTO to the wall.

And the cabinet doors that open into the side of the stove.

There's more.

I do love this thread... it makes me realize we aren't the only ones left scratching our heads from time to time.

Here's the entry in case someone is curious

Here is a link that might be useful: our home's oddities

Hi, Make it Home! Welcome!

I believe your "mysterious really old outlet" on the soffit above the sink would have been for an electric clock. Batteries have improved a lot in the last 50 years or so. In the old days, you bought a clock that plugged right into the outlet above the sink.

The light switch on the opposite side of the kitchen indicates that the door it is situated next to was once the primary entrance into the kitchen from the driveway or garage. The builder or owner did not want or could not afford the complication of a double-pole switch, so chose the entrance from outside to be the one that got the light switch. This actually makes sense. You would never leave home with lights burning. If you came home after dark, you would want to be able to turn on the light as you enter the kitchen. If you are already in the house and want to enter the kitchen, you have access to a hall light or lights in other rooms that will let you safely cross the kitchen to turn on the kitchen lights. Convenience was a luxury that came after safety.

I would bet that the sun room started life as a porch or a three-season room. The POs just never got around to taking out the window after they made the sunroom into heated space. My friend's house has a window like this that looks into the utility room from the dining room, except they did take out the glass panes. Otherwise, it still looks like a window. She is looking for a stained glass piece to hang there.

As we speak, my DH is laying porcelain tile in our new walk-in closet. Why? In case YOU buy our house years from now, I have a reason:

The 1.5" wide strips of oak matching the wood of our existing hardwood floors is not to be found. But at least by doing the closet in the same color and pattern of tile of our new master bath, those two floors WILL match.

And WHY do we have clerestory windows in that walkin closet? You might ask that too. Answer: Because when we added the closet along that north wall, we lost the two windows which gave the room a great amount of light. So I asked for the fixed Lexan panes across the top of the north wall. The wide doorway for the closet will have frosted glass French doors so light comes into the bedroom. But no one will see the hanging clothes. So far so good?

I found a wall outlet that only had ONE PLUG. Why would someone wire an outlet for only ONE PLUG? We are still puzzling over that one. My DH changed it out for a double plug outlet. It wasn't an a/c plug, unless they made old window units with a plain plug at some point in the past.

And why should there be in our attic, back over in the corner, the most HUMONGOUS WHOLE HOUSE CEILING FAN you ever saw. Just lying there gathering dust. Well, when I was painting the ceiling in the hallway, in our 1950-built house, I discovered that there was the remnants of a big hole in the ceiling bordered by molding. Instead of removing it and rebuilding the hall ceiling, they just put in a set of folding attic steps and framed around them....without adding any insulation, of course.

And in the center of the hallway floor, which is fairly wide for just a walking space, there is a "rug" shape of the narrow 1.5" oak strips going in a rectangular shape, and it is a wee bit sunk below the level of the rest of the floor. Guess what that was all about?

The repair job was made when they removed the gas floor furnace back in the 80s or maybe 90s when they installed central a/c and ductwork for the heatpump. They also left the old furnace under the house, and the asbestos heat exhaust stack in the closet, inside the wall, which we found when I was demolishing a couple of rotted walls for the old bathroom. The contractor took the asbestos stack away so I never heard what happened to it.

Hopefully we are taking care of the faux pas (fox paws) for this house, but maybe not.

Someone might wonder why the garage will be reroofed with half Lexan and half standing seam metal. Why will there be a metal spiral staircase to theloft in the garage? Why will the garage look like an Irish cottage?

And why will the kitchen pantry be in the dining room on either side of a window seat?

Nancy,

Thanks so much for the insight!

I guess the outlet makes sense, given that that's a very natural place for a clock to go. :) I thought maybe it would have been for an over-the-sink light or something.

As for the light switch, I suppose you are right, but I am surprised. The door you see there leads to a deck... and the deck backs right up to a very steep hill in our back yard. I would never think to make that door the main entrance. I am sure when we do a kitchen reno, we will move the switch to the other side. Currently our garage has NO entrance to the house, which I find odd. I wonder if, before the deck, there was some way that the garage connected to that door?

You are welcome, Make It Home! I wonder if there was a parking pad behind the house before the deck? In some parts of the country the driveway does bring the cars to the back side of the house. I remember looking at houses in the Nashville area online and thinking how odd it was to have half of the backyard be a paved or gravel parking lot instead of the private green backyard area I am accustomed to seeing.

ML, I had forgotten about the floor furnaces in my Baton Rouge home until you mentioned your hallway floor. There were two - one in the den, and one in the living room. Both were covered with padding and wall-to-wall carpet and both were still hooked up to the gas line! Former DH learned that when he went hunting for a gas line to steal and re-route to the clothes dryer. He simply took the one from the living room floor furnace. Shudder. I wonder if anybody ever crawled under that house to disconnect the other one? I know the wall furnaces in the bathrooms still functioned. We had them turned off because open gas flames were not helpful in keeping my asthma under control.

This is my first post but I had to comment on the little things that bother me in my house.

For starters, Why is there a double window over my sink if the sink is only under one window and the kitchen is only 14x10 when there could have been an extra wall cabinet for storage?

Why is there a coat closet on the 2nd floor at the top of the staircase instead of a shelved linen closet and not one on the bottom floor? They put a pantry under the staircase which is accessible in the hall across from the powder room. We resolved to put an over the door coat hanger in it for our winter wear.

Why is the staircase made without a landing where it makes a sharp curve to the right with about a 2 foot drop on the right and if you step off wrong you end up falling down the staircase? My nephew almost flew down the stairs because he wasn't paying attention and our youngest fell but my husband caught him before he was halfway down. Needless to say, they don't go upstairs unless to take a bath or sleep.

Why didn't they put the stove on the interior wall facing the double window and also why have an OTR microwave but no vent for the air to go through the 2nd floor to the outside? There is only a 12 inch counter on each side of the range.

Why have the refrigerator be on the the left side of the countertop when the countertop is not usable because of it being so far from the stove and sink area?

Why did they put the powder room sink closest to the door and not in the middle of a bigger cabinet?

Why is the only exterior electrical outlet on the porch wall so close to the door that you could just run a wire from inside the house?

Why is there only 1 electrical outlet in the dining room that is 12x14?

Why didn't they put the laundry room closer to the walkway to the garage so that we don't enter into our dining room and take off our shoes?

Why is there no doorbell at the back door where all the company comes since the driveway is there and a huge deep ditch in the front of the house with no access to the front door where the doorbell actually is?

Why have a linen tower cabinet built in the wall for towels with the door hinges on the left side if the shower and tub are on the left side of the cabinet?

Why in the world would there not be a faucet near the garage for cleaning cars? We have to drive alongside the house to the front for access to the water. The garage is in the back of the house.

Last but not least, why in the world would you put a house on an acre corner lot and have the house facing the main road while all the houses are facing the cul-de-sac road? Now only that but the living area is on the right side of the lot and the land is all on the left side. The master bedroom is on the left side. We can't watch the kids play outside while we are in the living areas. We want to install a fence but think that it will look crazy being all on once side of the house.

We are wanting to build in another couple of years and know the items we would change or not have.

Sorry to run on about it. There are other nitpicky things that I could mention like AT&T having a white post with red on the top in the front of our yard. We never noticed the little things until we had to live with them.

Sounds like a combo of too many owners making individual changes to suit themselves with no thought to overall function, plus maybe an originally built place with no architect.

TiffanyLA, sure can appreciate the litany of woes you describe. Oh man, I'd sure miss having a view of all that nice yard space!! Maybe one day you can repurpose the existing living room, and turn the focus of your house down the culdesac with a new living room and entry on that street. It would be like moving to a new neighborhood.

Hmmm, maybe a new living room AND a new master suite so you can watch the kids playing.

Welcome to the smaller homes place to talk about our houses.

Well another point I failed to mention since there are so many clusters of failures is that they put the septic system on the side of the house that has the land view as well as the a/c compressor. I don't know how much it is to move a septic system but it sounds expensive.

Tiffany, if your area is like ours, if you make any changes to your septic, you have to go aerobic, and they are a real pain - or so I'm told.

They are a REAL Pain!!! Last month, while I was in the Master Bathroom(the septic tank is only a mere 8 feet from the outside wall), I started hearing a loud buzzing sound. It scared the mess out of me. The buzzer and light were going off on our septic system. Good thing my husband was home, he went immediately unplug it. (When we bought the house, as soon as the electricity was put on, the same buzzing sound was on. My husband saw that the hose was separated from the box to the tank. He plugged it back in and it ran fine. No buzzing.) We bought the house 2 1/2 years ago. Before we moved in, we had to pay a person to clean the tank out. My husband knew that it wasn't a full tank so the buzzing should have not been happening. We are not sure who we have to contact because our old house had the old system(which I definitely miss).

Btw, my aunt and uncle have the same system. When we had to evacuate for a hurricane, we stayed there. The electricity went out and the toilet ran over. It was a disaster. The hurricane didn't damage anything, but the septic ruined their carpet and their vanity.

trancegemini_wa:
"I've had lots of those head scratchers. why didnt the people who built this house bump all the external walls out a few feet so the rooms were a good useable size instead of cramped?"

Amen to that! Two more feet longer and our house would be soooo much better.

And why did they spray the stain and finish on the cabinets with the hinges on? Oh sure, to make it easier, but there are drips under them, and once they opened the hinges and cracked the finish, they all look bad.

LOLOL! This thread reminds me of our old house, where the PO enclosed the back patio to make a family room, but left the window in the bathroom intact. (thank god at least it was glass blocks instead of clear glass!) There was also the small matter of the added bedroom that could only be entered via the bathroom or the utility room (very elegant!)
On the plus side, the house was built in 1930 from parts of 3 older farmhouses... the frame was rough-sawn redwood that actually measured 2" by 4", and every single wall in that place was double braced; even the closets!

I also had a friend who bought a house with one of those built-in vacuum cleaner setups... unfortunately, there was a 12 square foot corner of the living room that the hose could not reach no matter what, so she still had to get out a vacuum cleaner to do that spot; and another spot where the hose coupler was at the end of the hall while the nearest electric outlet (for the carpet beater) was 12' away down the hall, requiring an extension cord...

We are happily settled into our doublewide mobile home which is 200+ sq. feet larger than the Cape Cod we sold! The only thing that really bugs me right now is that not one shelf in this whole house is adjustable!!!

That's why they sell those little wire racks for dishes, etc. :-)!

I think the tiniest house is better than a biggest flat.

All tall bottles, cereal boxes, etc. etc. have to lay on their sides. PITA.

Since adjustable shelves have been around for so long, I just wonder why......

Oh I'm sure the next people in our house will wonder why we did things that seem messed up to them (and possibly to us too).

The PO of our house ran wires through the heat ducts and installed an electrical outlet over the vent in the LR. Scary!

The refrigerator was at one end of the kitchen and the sink at the other end - 18 feet away. We moved the fridge and added a cupboard on the other side to make it look built in.

The joint compound between the wallboards in the basement looked like mole tunnels, they were so thick. Ripped everything out and started over. PO left an old gas stove in the laundry room of all places, and they wanted to sell their freezer but couldn't get it out because the stove was in the way. Our real estate agent made them pay to have it all hauled away.

The worst was the DR light. The original 1938 fixture with bare light bulbs. DH went to change it and found twice the number of wires as required. He has had to do a lot of rewiring.

We still have the old kitchen cupboards from 1938. That wouldn't be so bad, except the PO ripped them out, extended the kitchen, and put them back in on the new wall. One day I hope to at least get the fronts replaced, as they are in bad shape. We did cover the pea soup green with glossy white paint.