What annoys you the most about your current house?

[Anonymous]

DH. Eight days a week.

[Anonymous]

1. Insanely creaky 100 year old wooden floors. It's really a love / hate thing, though. We love the way they look and feel under the foot, but hate that they creak so loudly that w/ 2 light sleeping toddlers who wake up if we walk by w/o tiptoing.

2. Inconsistency in temperature of rooms. B/c house is so old, and poorly insulated in many rooms (I.e. front bedroom exposed to 3 exterior walls, w/ plaster walls) the insulation is basically non-existant and when it's cold, it's COLD, whereas the interior rooms are HOT b/c we crank up the heat to try and keep the exposed rooms from being too frigid. We even put a new boiler in, and 2 zones, last year, for $10K. Still have the issue. Sigh.

3. Lack of central A/C. It would cost us $20K to put it in, and we put in the new boiler/heating zones, so we haven't put in central A/C yet. That's only a PIS for 3 mo's out of the year, though.

[Anonymous]

Our yard is basically a "short cut" for the neighborhood teens. When we seeing them cutting through, we tell them not to...but who knows how often it goes on when we just don't see it. It annoys me. I sometimes even see "tracks" in the summer from bikes! The problem could be solved (or at least greatly decreased) by installing a fence, but for some wierd reason, Dh won't even consider a fence.

[Anonymous]

white carpet and narrow hallways and entryway. Would it have hurt to make them two inches wider? Uggh!!!! Also, small bathrooms and crappy cabinets.

[Anonymous]

We have a lovely yard... that we can't see from the house because of window sizes/placement. But we do have a gorgeous picture window in our family room... that looks directly across five feet of cement to the siding of an addition the former owners put on.

[Anonymous]

Not enough STORAGE. The house has over 3000 SF of living space but very little "unfinished" space to store extra crap. Only a small part of the attic is usable and there's no garage. The bedroom closets are decent-sized, but there's no place to put all the random stuff like suitcases, sports equipment, baby stuff between babies, holiday decorations, etc. We have a shed but it's filled with lawnmowers, bikes, etc. We are probably going to end up walling off a portion of our basement to make it into a closet, but this will also block off a window so it bums me out. And we honestly are not hoarder types at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:lack of mudroom

+1

[Anonymous]

Hate that our laundry room/mudroom is off of the kitchen and garage. It's visible to all of our guests so I have to keep it clean and decluttered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hate that our laundry room/mudroom is off of the kitchen and garage. It's visible to all of our guests so I have to keep it clean and decluttered.

Is there a door on it? I'm interested in your response because lack of a mudroom is one of my pet peeves. Right now the door from our garage opens into the eat-in area of our kitchen. I wish you had to go through a mud room first before you got to the kitchen. That way, coats, muddy shoes, backpacks, etc. could be deposited there, and muddy clothes (we have boys!) could be deposited directly into the washing machine. I often tell my DH that someday when I get to build the house I want (in my dreams), I will have a mudroom right off the garage and not have to stare at piles of shoes and backpacks in my kitchen!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The master bath, a 1952 original with horrific pink tile in poor shape, a pink sink in a laminate vanity, and nasty-looking shower doors. We need to re-do it but have been delaying (for 10 years!) because of the money involved.

At least this house has a foyer/front hall. Our last house, a 1940s postwar colonial (they are ubiquitous in this area), had no foyer at all - you walked in the front door, right into the living room, with the stairway a couple of feet in front of you. It made me nuts not to have a place to put backpacks, shoes, coats, etc.

This is us! 1940 house, walk straight into the living room. We have a bookcase at the door to store shoes, but everything else goes into the tiny coat closet. The horrible pink bathroom is ours too, and looks awful. We have no dishwasher, no pantry (at all, just a tiny 2-shelf cupboard), no linen closet, and only 1 bathroom. The worst thing is actually not any of those things, but the fact that the bathtub is unusable because the previous owners cut out part of the side to make it handicap accessible ... but did not add a door. So we can only use it as a shower, no baths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our front hall closet is too small, too. It is the only closet on the main level, so between the various coats/jackets for our whole family, we can't offer to hang up coats for guests - we usually end up just laying them out across a bench we have near the front door.

You know you can move your coats out of the closet temporarily when you have people over. Maybe a PITA but much nice to your guests than laying thier coats on a bench.

[Anonymous]

No mudroom and no garage.

[Anonymous]

PP again: also no laundry room (W & D are stacked in a closet.)

[Anonymous]

New neighbors and their ever-barking dogs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four levels. Kids bedrooms on the top floor, laundry in the basement. At least the kids are getting old enough to carry their own laundry baskets (if I can stand waiting for them to actually do it!)

This is why I love our laundry shoot. We live in a 3-story house and we actually did not mind having washer and dryer in the lower level. Now, if only I can stop my 2 yo from throwing toys down there.

Chute. Although "shoot" is a particularly fitting malapropism for a 4-story house.