How broken is your house? Make me feel better.

My list of things that need doing around the house is growing and it bores me. All takes time and money for little reward. But I know others will have much bigger lists so I am am hoping to make myself feel better by knowing others are worse off. I know, I know.

So, the condensed version of my list:
– Decorating – the whole house was painted at the same time, so every room is ageing and needing redoing
– Tumble Dryer – Overheats and I have to remove rear panel to reset a fuse. Needs repair / replace
– Shower/bath sealant – needs replacing, horrible job that I always do badly
– Bathroom extractor, not extracting
– Oven at end of life, needs replacing
– One double glazed window has blown seal, needs replacing
– Patio and paving, need new one
– Summer house, needs new roof

I could make a start this weekend, or I could ride my bike.

Most of those are minimal Hassel.

I finished the plastering and decorating then the next day the lighting went. No idea where the issue is and can’t access from above so total rewire of the lights.

Cue double angle grinder up each and every newly plastered wall for the wire runs from the floor.

The floor remains uninsulated.

I pulled a bit of tarmac out round the door step to plant some flowers, discover there is a 300mm void under the step which is effectively cantilevered off the wall with no idea how it has been or even is attached.

In all honesty the electrics are mostly pre-war but replacement as a whole is cost prohibitive. Just make do with spits and spots replaced as needed. Having the dishwasher and oven on at the same time would be nice.
Small garden i have needs major work.
Bathroom was done, but a wet room would be an ideal future investment.

You bloody fairy. I’m £40k down and I’ve got damp problems that give me sleepless nights still. 9 years on.

And I don’t even have a kitchen, just a damp hole where a kitchen should be.

I’ve a nice watch and two cars though.

I could make a start this weekend, or I could ride my bike.

Last year sometime I was on the beach about to pack up my kitesurfing kit, I said to my mate I had to go to do some house stuff (can’t even remember what it was). He replied with “Will anything bad happen if you don’t?” I carried on kitesurfing the rest of the day.

House stuff now rarely takes priority, we do have a bit of a list though.

I live in a van.

My biggest current concern is getting the MOT (German equivalent at) done in a month’s time.

Life is cheap.

Just remember you’re a long time dead 😉 Contrast and context always kept our house up together the complete opposite of our neighbours gardens a mess don’t reckon he’s ever had the windows cleaned he’s happier working on the 3 old pile of crap cars he’s got 🙄 🙄
2 houses have sold or up for sale in our road recently. One an old lady who hadn’t / wasn’t able to keep up or modernise the other has been rented for a few years . That one has had rewiring , new roof all gas up together etc etc as needed to rent ready to move in ..The old lady’s house is being gutted and worked on for the last month yet hers sold for £5K more than the other one is on the market for 🤔
So from that I conclude if you did all those jobs and kept yours up together is it worth any more ?
Food for thought on your ride this weekend 😁

The list at my old house was a lot, lot longer than that!

I moved house (genuinely)!! 🤣🤣

Mainly because after 27yrs in the same house I was ruddy bored of working on it. I needed new walls to paint.

My OH quit her job in December, went traveling for 2 months then came back and started DIYing.

To her credit she’s re-decorated 3 bedrooms (almost) solo (I only have to do the heavy lifting, plumbing and electrics).

And we’ve agreed the garden we’ll pay someone to build the raided bed and patio in the front garden, and lay the concrete shed base.

And last night I only had to move 256kg (yes, I’m sad, I counted it) of rubble from one end of the garden to the other.

My biggest gripe is her absolute lack of any ability to project manage. I can get over the £50 I spent on materials to de-moss and re-seed the lawns. I’m pissed off that it took a weekend of hard work out of my life that could have been spent doing something fun and now she wants to patio over it. Similarly she’s paid a tree surgeon to come and take down a small leylandi type tree, from the summerhouse area, which would have taken minutes to cut down and the builder could have dug the roots out anyway.

That, and when left to her own devices she either get’s bored, falls out with, or gets pally with tradesmen. The shear number of jobs that get left half done boils my piss.
– New doors hung, except they didn’t do any of the filling/making good they were supposed to (and some are simply hung really badly).
– New bathroom has a big area that’s untiled bare concrete behind the sink, fitter offered to fix it but “no it’s fine, we can sort that” (no we can’t, not without ripping out the entire fitted sink/cupboard/toilet unit).
– Her coked up friend from school who took 3.5 days to plaster 6 ceilings and then billed 5 full days + materials (he didn’t turn up Monday, had to be coaxed into doing more than one ceiling a day, and considered coming round to tidy up and collect his stuff on Friday and drop of the invoice a days work. And did a crap job.

Pretty much identical.
Except the tumble drier which died ages ago and I won’t be replacing, it’s cheaper to use the local laundry one.

Four items get added to my list for every one that I remove.

I live in rural Croatia….. Bought a fally down rambling old farm 10 years ago. Put a new roof on it when we moved in and made some windows both of which are not finished 10 years later but it’s dry (if the wind doesn’t blow while it’s raining) and warm…… My business workshops are very ‘al fresco’ and all the outbuildings are ongoing building sites.

It’s all certainly more fally down then when we got here but, well, **** it…. Spend 9 months of the year outside anyway and it’s a house that works for our families needs. It’s our home, we are all happy and healthy and that’s what matters.

I gave up making lists years ago and now just fix things when they are totally broken….

No idea where the issue is and can’t access from above so total rewire of the lights.

Putting that one off really but it’s hiding waiting to jump out on me again

My list is much shorter (thank you for making me feel a little less bad).

• Main bathroom needs repainting (peeling/flaking paint everywhere thanks to three teenagers showering like they are bloody mermaids) – this is actually getting done at half-term
• The loose tiles in the same bathroom need re-laying and grouting up. Also being done at half-term
• En-suite – ceiling needs doing (but nowhere near as badly as the main bathroom)
• Our bedroom – desperately needs redecorating and decluttering
• Soffits and facias – need replacing entirely but can’t stomach the cost
• Guttering – not as bad as the above but makes sense to do it at the same time
• Mock-Georgian woodwork – needs ripping off and burning in hell just for existing (but it is also very tatty)
• The paving stones I put down as a temporary measure when we moved in 10 years ago on the drive – need ripping out and replacing with block paving to match the rest of the drive
• Decking – despite only going in five years ago needs remedial fixing as some of the wood is rotting already
• Utility room – after doing up the entire of the house since we moved in (it was all mid-1980s decor) we lost the will to live and this still needs updating. It will still be in the same state in another 10 years I am sure
• The rest of the house could do with a lick of paint but that can wait

Actually it’s pretty long – shit, now I am feeling bad all over again

How broken is your house? Make me feel better.

You’re not my mortgage lender are you?

Suffice to say I’d happily swap.

Tumble Dryer – Overheats and I have to remove rear panel to reset a fuse. Needs repair / replace

well that one could burn the house down and sort the rest of the list in one…

^ Very true. And tumble driers aren’t exactly expensive so just buy a new one.

Decking (quite a big area) collapsed two weeks ago so ripped it up last Monday as I thought I had someone lined up ready to replace it – he came took one look at it and said no thanks

Every window on the front of the house (10 panels, 5 in a bay) is blown

Conservatory leaks – spent hours trying to work out where from but no luck

Central heating has a blockage which even one of those mega flushing machines couldn’t shift – I’ll move before the floors have to come up to sort that one out.

The exhaust flue on the boiler has rotted through and you can’t get replacements for it so it needs patching with adhesive foil every month or so. Replacing it will likely need the gas main re-routing so again I’ll try to keep it alive until we move.

Walls facing the west have to be redecorated every other year as they get mouldy due to poor heating and exposure to prevailing wind.

Render on the back of the house is all crumbling where it was in contact with the rotten decking so will need patching up.

French doors need replacing as the hinges have dropped and run out of adjustment because the frame is bowing

Oh the electrics are just ridiculous – we still have bakelite sockets in the skirting and light switches in door frames in 1 room, wiring a light fitting will often mean an unscheduled dismount from the ladders and the bulbs upstairs blow at a rate of at least 1 / week. Washier and dryer on at same time? Pffft not unless you want to trip the circuit and then spend an hour getting the Sky boxes and routers to all play nicely again.

Lath and plaster ceiling in living room is being held up by lining paper and paint. I’m not sure we could get the furniture out of that room now as it’s bigger than the remaining doorway, the other other bigger doorway got bricked up a few years back, the window units would probably have to come out to get it all out.

Smokey-jo wins. 🤯

Reading this thread makes me happy. I have a fair few jobs from the lists above but not as many. Shower, ceilings, plastering, electrical bits, some plumbing, insulation and eventually decorating and carpets. I’m not a fan of Victorian housing.
Maybe a few years of work to go?

Garden- Top has been cleared/membraned but needs leveling with sand and flagging. Bottom patio is pretty knackered too.

House- Replace the downstairs doors with some nice Oak ones (current ones are 80’s tastic) Repaint most of the woodwork/bathroom (I’m a decorator so it never gets done) Boilers on its way out too. Get the garage cleared/sorted out and belfast/utility sink plumbed in. Usually work 6 days a week so dont want to sacrifice riding days.

I could make a start this weekend, or I could ride my bike.

Sums up me too.

Not broken at all, spent Covid lockdown doing all the jobs after I gave the TV and booze up after the first week. Choices choices.

after I gave the TV and booze up after the first week. Choices choices.

Christ!

I feel a lot better after reading this 🙂

@smokey_jo

Sound like my old house!! 🤣🤣😬😬

Looks at your lists. Looks at notepad on desk entitled ‘house’

I have lists of lists. I’m 6 years in and I’d say about half way through and finding new things as I go. Cracked lintel found when new window installed was the latest unforseen thing added.

Got to love a doer upper

I would have loved to get out on the bike today, I did manage a 5k run first in a week so proud I did something other than work and DIY

300 years old but heavily converted from a single storey rural farmstead, post office and store in 1982.

Walls desperately need insulation.
Windows are poor insulators and so rotten you can push your fingers through the rotten wood on most of them. Thankfully they are not blown…because you can’t blow single glazing.
In the winter most rooms are single figure temperatures in the morning no matter how warm you had the fire the night before.
No wall or peice of wood has had new paint on it this millenium, most since the original conversion in ’82.
The carpets are the same age.
The water in the kitchen is from a private supply and not fit for human consumption so every drop we use for drinking or cooking needs carrying in from another room at the other end of the house that has a mains tap.
We are way outnumbered by mice – we are the tenants, they are the masters.
They don’t get the run of the loft….because of the bats.
The stove is central to remaining warm in winter but is terminally cracked. But the setup is so far from modern building regs it would need a stupid amount of work doing before a new one could be installed.
There is a crack down one of the walls from gable to foundation – I try not to look at it.

We sunk all our cash into our side business – we don’t have a bean to sort it.

Sorry, drifted off for a moment, you were saying?

Some of these barely register! I’m crap at DIY and also have no real interest in it. Here goes.

Rendering is falling apart and dropping off. This was aided by a drunk driver crashing in to the corner of the house and putting a big hole in it just before lockdown. Repair is a different colour and texture to the rest of the house.

Roof is crap and needs replacing. It’s stone slab and double joisted. Leaks when there is heavy rain and the wind blows in certain directions. Leak is always somewhere different to keep you on your toes. Cost of repair/replacement is the GDP of a small nation.

Damp on all external walls and main bedroom ceiling. See render issues^^

Driveway is an amateur block paving affair and has sunk in places. Patio ditto and also has man traps in the form of edging that looks sound but flips up if you approach from the wrong angle.

Bathroom roof (flat) sprung a huge leak a couple of years ago. External roof repaired, internal not. Bathroom in general looks like a set from Hostel.

Bath leaked in to kitchen. Created a stain that genuinely looks like a penis. Makes me laugh every time I look at it. Kitchen floor tiles installed badly and as a result have cracked and sunk.

Door to boiler/airing cupboard falls off when opened. Can’t close our bedroom door or you get trapped in. Kitchen door handle is broken on one side so you can get stuck in dining room. Bathroom door is bowed and almost falling off.

Thing is, the house has been standing since 1898 so is probably fine. The rest, I can just think of much more fun things to do with my time and what little money I have. Also have two young kids so a nice house isn’t happening.

This is turning into a Monty Python sketch! 😂

1979 David Wilson estate house.

Still has the original internal doors. But if we tried to replace them the frames probably aren’t square.

Upvc windows and doors all now 22-30 years old.

Bath taps need replacing, but due to poor planning we’d have to go in through the other side of the wall.

Most rooms could do with redecorating.

2 sheds and garage could all do with clearing out.

Garden is superficially tidy.

Behold! Dick stain!

Also forgot leak from bathroom sink that has been repaired twice already. Also, huge crack in the same sinks bowl because small children.

My house is finished at the moment! 😁

Garden is one the way to being sorted as well. Although do need to relay a load of slabs and re joint loads of it…..

I might run out of jobs soon!! Might even be able to ride my bike again….

OP – for your shower and bath sealant buy some of the Cramer Fugi silicone tools and then watch how to use them on YouTube. For something so simple they are a total game changer. Gives a very consistent bead shape and the flexi material they are made of cleanly scrapes off ALL of the excess.

I have one internal door in my house that closes properly, every single other one is a combination of warped , no latch,no hole in the frame for the latch, no handle,or handle facing wrong way.

Got a patio that needs repointing,but this is being done next week.

I did have a perfectly reliable ,but hideously expensive to run boiler from 1992, I recently had it and the vented hot water cylinder replaced with a new modern condensing boiler and invented cylinder,which broke within 2 weeks of being fitted.

Well… It’s 14 months since my house had power and we’re living in a lined ‘shed.’

Job list includes everything except 90% of the external walls and windows and the slab.

House looks like this inside at the moment:

I’m pissed off that it took a weekend of hard work out of my life that could have been spent doing something fun and now she wants to patio over it.

You keep on moaning, you’re gonna be under that patio…

I live in rural Croatia….. Bought a fally down rambling old farm 10 years ago.

I would love pictures and to hear more about your “journey” (without outing yourself, obviously).

Hold my beer….

Boiler (triggers broom) – every year something happens and I fix it,  currently don’t know what’s wrong but intermittently craps out and no hot water.

Roof – leaks in a couple of places,  flashband holding it together.

Chimney – both need re-pointing as they leak in windy rain.

Drains –  part finished new patio needs connecting to drainage.

Patio – needs finishing.

Septic tank soak away – in really wet weather it percolates up to the surface and floods the bottom of the garden. Currently has a flat pump keeping the level down,  pumped into our field.

Damp – several patches around the skirting showing through, need to strip the plaster and inject some dpc.

Kitchen door – handle broke a couple of we dogs as ago,  won’t always open.

Dishwasher – wont drain again, cba to pull the hose off and clean it.

Oven – can’t use the top oven as it trips the mains,  needs replacing.

hob – been cracked since we moved in, need a new one.

Garage – falling over slowly, every so often when I open the door there is a bit more rubble on the floor where its shifted.

Floor – fitted a new floor when we moved in,  but the door thresholds are crap and don’t match,  never got round to putting new ones in.

Guttering – joints are leaking, need looking at.

Shed – current one falling down with stuff still in it.

Dead tree – still standing so needs dealing with before it falls over.

And that’s before any new projects….

Since moving in 4 days before Christmas we’ve worked out we need to replace:

The wiring
4 bathrooms
The insulation in many of the walls
All the pointing
All the guttering (66m)
Every downstairs window glazing unit (13 panes)
Two complete velux units, the glazing in at least 6 of the other 12.
The kitchen.
The kitchen patio doors.
All the carpets.

Oh yes and the entire roof.