In the old days, people loved to say: “My home is my fortress!” And they were not wrong. Since ancient times, home has been kind of a sacred place where we feel protected and confident. A place of power, if you will.
However, any place of power also has its drawbacks. And we, as rational beings, must admit this. Any home, even the most beloved and cozy one, is not without shortcomings. We’re ready to put up with some of them, while other ones we try to correct to the best of our ability. And it’s precisely these shortcomings of their homes that people are talking about in this viral thread in the AskReddit community.
More info: Reddit
However, any place of power also has its drawbacks. And we, as rational beings, must admit this. Any home, even the most beloved and cozy one, is not without shortcomings. We’re ready to put up with some of them, while other ones we try to correct to the best of our ability. And it’s precisely these shortcomings of their homes that people are talking about in this viral thread in the AskReddit community.
More info: Reddit
#1
Flat roof. We had our house inspected twice before we moved in and the roof passed because it was new. What no one told us is that a flat roof in the winter (we bought in August) is a nightmare in Michigan. After 8 years of living with it, we finally had the roofline rebuilt to a normal slope and never looked back. Twenty years later and never had a leak in that room again. Lesson - never ever buy a house with any type of flat roof.
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135points
#2
Open concept! I thought I would love it, but now I would kill for a separate kitchen area. It makes our house feel like an apartment.
123points
#3
I really wish all my lower kitchen cabinets were pull out drawers! I hate having to get down on the floor to rummage around to find that pan at the back of the cabinet.
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113points
Some of the shortcomings of the houses discussed in these stories, collected by Bored Panda, are discovered only after the purchase of the house - and then, after the transaction has already taken place, the new owners have no choice but to accept it or begin repairs. Even if the real estate agent said that there are simply no flaws in this house. After all, it's their job - to say this, isn't it?
#4
I knew what I was getting into.
But at times, a second bathroom would be really nice.
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105points
#5
A flock of turkeys will encircle my car when I pull in the driveway on a semi regular basis. They are decently aggressive, and the only thing that I found to work is to repeatedly open an umbrella in their faces, and continue to scare them until they jump off the cliff next to my driveway.
This sounds made up, but is my life.
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99points
#6
I second not having a pantry. I had no idea how much that would bother me until living with my food in the kitchen cabinets for 8 years.
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95points
A separate category should include various manifestations of the unbridled architectural imagination of the builders or previous owners of the house. Especially when your idea of home comfort is in clear contradiction with the gloomy genius of the architect.
This is how doors appear that prevent each other from opening, extra steps that have no practical meaning (but are a source of constant falls in the dark), or kitchen hoods that exhaust air back into the kitchen. Don't believe me? I didn’t believe it either until I read a couple of similar stories right in this collection!
#7
Hood over the stove that doesn't vent outside, in an otherwise good, functional kitchen. WHY DO PEOPLE TAKE THIS SHORTCUT (especially since in this house, you can see where the old one did vent out)???
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91points
#8
Black. Shower. Tile. and I'm the a*****e who picked it out.
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74points
#9
A pool. We thought, "awesome, a pool!" Always thought we'd like one but didn't understand what goes into it and in all the excitement of house buying didn't really look into it until we got here. The costs outweigh the benefits for us. So now we have to either pay all the maintenance costs of running it to use it only a few times per week for a few months out of the year (in Ohio), or pay a bunch up front to demolish it. Every time I look outside it stresses me out, just a giant behemoth of a problem to solve.
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70points
And, of course, the neighbors. There are many tales about this - and countless more stories will be told. In a perfect world, neighbors are those with whom you BBQ together on the weekends and go to watch football with on Sundays. But this world, alas, is far from perfect... There are also a couple of stories dedicated to the neighbors in our selection, so go through the list, you won’t regret it!
#10
The fact that the sun which should hit our house and garden is blocked out entirely from October to end of March by the building behind us. By 1 meter - my upstairs neighbor is in full sun. Now I know why previous owners put this place up in early spring 🤦♀️.
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64points
#11
Our living room is one step down from the kitchen. Why? Because f**k you, that's why. Can't tell you how many times my kids have tripped up/down that one step.
My house-to-garage door comes in at an angle and with only enough room to open the door. Go left to the kitchen and living room, right to the front door and upstairs, or straight into the bathroom. It's become a huge bottleneck with everybody always running into each other at that intersection. Also makes it hard to bring in furniture.
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59points
#12
We bought this home sight unseen from 2,000 miles away- the first time we saw it was when we pulled into the driveway. My family had toured it for me and helped but a lot of things were a surprise.
Given that, I am remarkably in love with it after living here for 17 years and feel like we did an excellent job choosing it.
Given that, I am remarkably in love with it after living here for 17 years and feel like we did an excellent job choosing it.
BUT there is a side door from the side porch that enters the kitchen and the door/stairway to the basement is right there in such a way that you have to close the exterior door to go down the stairs. You can't walk in the back door and go straight down the stairs to the basement, you have to come in and close the door behind you first even if the door to the stairway is kept open.
It's a small thing that only comes up when we have to move something from outside down the stairs like a mattress. Fortunately it's easy enough to take things around outside and in the basement door.
This home also has what's known as a tuck-under garage.
It is not visible from the front of the house- you have to drive around back and enter it next to the walk-out basement door. The way the patio roof support posts are arranged means there is zero way to ever get a car into it. Which is fine, we likely wouldn't anyway as we use it more for lawn equipment storage.
It is not visible from the front of the house- you have to drive around back and enter it next to the walk-out basement door. The way the patio roof support posts are arranged means there is zero way to ever get a car into it. Which is fine, we likely wouldn't anyway as we use it more for lawn equipment storage.
No one noticed that there was no dishwasher- I don't use one anyway, I just find it funny that no one ever noticed.
And when we moved in we thought the fenced yard was the entire property, but when we had it surveyed later on for fence moving possibilities we discovered that we also owned a huge portion of the woods behind us. We have acreage! It's still untouched but it's wonderful that there can always be woods behind me with no possibility ever of anyone building anything.
It's been interesting.
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50points
And still, no matter what the shortcomings in our homes are, this will not stop us from loving them, will it? Because these are homes where we grew up, or which we bought ourselves - and this gives them some certain sentimental value in our eyes. And, in the end, why not tell us some amusing story about your house? By the way, you, too, may well perceive this as a call to action, so please feel free to share your own tales in the comments here!
#13
No door to the backyard. There is one to the driveway, but its not the same
I too do not have a pantry. Very irritating. No real closets at all actually.
Since my house is over 100 years old, the attic that is now my bedroom gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
No second bathroom and no place to put one!
47points
#14
Our last house... (and many reasons why we moved) had Cathedral Ceilings... love the look, always felt cold! And an open floor plan, there was no way to contain the toys bc everything was open and just out! I realize I like rooms.
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47points
#16
We have a Jack and Jill bathroom that connects the kids rooms and I absolutely hate it. They are younger(4 and 8) so they sneak through it at night and don’t sleep and worse part is we don’t even notice until we hear giggling at midnight🤦♀️. Plus if one goes to the bathroom it wakes the other one up because they don’t like to close the doors and the light wakes them. This is way worse when one is sick and in and out of the bathroom. Usually I make them to the spare room when this happens because it’s easier to have only one up not two kids.
Also I hate our open floor plan. We have two story with a finished basement. When the kids go to bed we can’t even hang in the main level because the stairs are open and you can hear everything(I mean it looks nice but god damn there is no privacy). Also bad when the kids wake early since then everyone’s up since it echos so bad . Only place we can go where they can’t hear us is the basement Luckly we added a door to that area otherwise we have the same issue.
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42points
#17
Having a crawlspace with a dirt floor. My next house will have a basement (I already bought it) and I am so glad I will no longer have the dark mystery under the house. Every major issue I’ve had with this house has been crawlspace related and because it’s dark, scary, and difficult to access, the issues go on longer than they would if they were somewhere you could notice them.
40points
#18
We bought a 1952 built house in West Virginia in 2020. The door from the house to the garage was a normal looking door, but 2/3 sized. It made exiting from the house to the garage (where clothes washer and dryer were installed) a challenge with a laundry basket in your hands. Why 2/3 sized? Never could figure out why. When we remodeled the kitchen in 2021, we had the contractor replace it with a regular, human sized door.
Edited to add: also, the clothes dryer had no vent to the outside. Vented into a 5 gallon bucket with 4" of water in it. The garage is made of concrete block clad with vinyl siding. Took me most of a day to drill a 4 1/8" hole through the concrete block and install a vent to the outside. How had no one thought of doing that in the prior 70 years of the house's existence?
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38points
#19
Our house is nearly perfect, but for a couple of things:
The outside HVAC units (two of them, the 4 ton main one and a smaller unit for the upstairs room over the garage) are both just outside the master bedroom windows. Noise, noise, noise. Who thought that was a good idea?
The other thing is the house is on a hill, so the front yard is very sloped and harder to mow, and has drainage issues due to underground water. This also makes our driveway steep and curved. I didn't realize how much of a pain all of this would be. Box trucks can't get into the driveway for deliveries or repairs, smaller trucks come in the driveway and then can't back out properly without trashing the turf on either side of the driveway. I feel like I spend my life fixing the lawn.
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37points
#20
Not my current home, but I moved in somewhere that only had one drawer in the kitchen. I didn't realise when viewing, because who counts drawers? Anyway it was super inconvenient, and since then when looking at our current home we checked the number of drawers!
Current home: smoke detector is a foot away from the oven.
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37points