Our tiny shower's size was determined by the location of the house's main vent. In our recent bathroom remodel, we pushed the wall out, covered the pipe with PVC, and tiled over it. Turning this ugly pipe into a feature gave us a much larger shower (yippie), and the tiled pipe is awesome! A totally unique shower. So yes - turn your imperfections into features!

Sometimes it's like relatives or neighbors, either embrace them or ignore them.

If you can fix them, well, it's better to tackle one at a time...they are a far more permanent issue than, let's say furniture, so a good decision in terms of what to do if crucial.

love it

Depends on the home. In an old home, you can totally get away with embracing your home's imperfections. Or, as I like to refer to them, "patina." In a new home, on the other hand, I'm not sure you can get away with that. One man's patina is another man's unfinished paint job, or broken door hinge, or cracked tile.

P.S. That's why I live in an old house. Gotta love that patina.

We call it 'character'...

Character. I like it.

Living in a 1740's farmhouse, it's the "flaws" that make the house. The ceilings are low, so we have low furniture. The floors rise and fall as much as 8 inches in a room, so some furniture looks likes its on the Titanic post-iceberg. The ceilings rise and fall too, so pictures never look "straight." Its the house of a million angles. I love it to death.

our old building as radiators with paint chipping, door frames that are crooked, imperfect wood flooring and french doors that don't close perfectly...but we love it.

once we get some paint on the walls, i think some of the walls' imperfections will stand out a bit more, which is fine with me.

it's the character embraced in one's home that can shape the experiences that your friends and family feel upon entering.

When you have a view like this:

http://www.carillontowersf.com/property_home_page/home?page_name=floorplans

...you can overlook alot of faults.

Living and working in several old, flawed spaces has taught that if the space is clean and organized, it has character, quirks, and history.

However, if that space is messy and disorganized, the imperfections of the building exponentially amplify the feeling of it being an uncared for, shabby, deteriorating space.

And wow I love that framed gouge.

There is something vaguely sensual in the crack in the plaster. The frame brings it to your attention (or perhaps it is my wild imagination).

I recall the bedroom of my youth. It had water stains on the ceiling that my friends concluded were the image of a man relieving himself.

Haha, I find it much easier to ignore the imperfections, otherwise I'd cry.

Moved in to my studio, and realized I did have a roommate after all - an ugly hot water pipe running through my living room ceiling. It was painted white, assumedly in hopes that that would make it blend in.

So, I repainted it bright yellow (the color was 'nacho cheese' to be specific), and now I love sharing my place with a conversation piece.

Embrace them. But as with a loved one, it takes time and work to grow with and around them. I'm still at work...

I live in a rented apartment with dark brown mid-century particle board cabinets in the kitchen that the owner insists are Victorian era and must not be painted. The floors and doorways are sloped in most rooms making picture hanging a challenge everywhere. But I still love my house! Perfection is so...boring.

I love that only one of the doors inside my apartment actually closes (well, two sometimes. The bathroom door magically fixed itself and mostly closes now provided you slam it or lean on it hard). It makes me laugh. And the "drunkard's hallway" I have is tons of fun when I have new people over. They think they're experiencing vertigo but really, the hall just slants that much.

My apartment building is shaped like a crescent - and each apartment is like a piece of the pie. So literally one end of the apartment is narrower than the other, resulting in a couch/coffee table setup that will never line up with the parquet floors. In Manhattan, if you are lucky enough to have your own place, you learn to love your little corner of the world - flaws and all.

Husband and I moved into a 1959 boring ranch home in the 'burbs. Complete with mauve counter tops, lavender pear wallpaper in the kitchen, yellow linoleum, and country yellow/blue striped wall paper in the master bath. What was supposed to be our "starter" home that we weren't going to do much to, has become our fixer upper 7 years later. While it has a ton of imperfections, we love it and don't really want to move now that we've completed so many awesome projects around the place to make it "ours".

I say if you really make the place a home instead of a showroom, it will have a quirky sense of individuality all it's own. Just like any human.

The paint in our bathroom (latex painted over oil by the house stagers) is coming up in several places. I have chemical sensativites, so have to wait until the weather warms up to leave the windows open at night when it is sanded and primed. Since there is little else I can do in mean time, I like to think of it like Italy or Cuba where they have those lovely walls with different colors showing through.

Instead of building the dream home at the lake, there was the joy of moving into and remodeling my husband's childhood home. Last decorated in 1976, by very patriotic people. Charming people, salt of the earth, red blooded citizens who shopped at Sears. Raised the most wonderful man on earth and Gawd bless us every one but they were patriotic!
Vinyl upholstery with Liberty Bells, the founding fathers in brass and termites swarming through the walls. Trust me, I could see the imperfections. When I quit crying, which took a while, I could see the honey oak that had never been painted over, the workmanship hidden under duct tape ( I said a great many heated things during this time, some that I regret but two shall remain law-1st, I will crucify the first person who tries to paint any original woodwork and 2nd, that duct tape repairs have a half life of one week, at week two I throw whatever was repaired with duct tape out the door and it never comes back! Life is just too short to deal with looking at the liberty bell AND duct tape, on a daily basis.

I have re-grouted an entire bathroom only to have hidden termite damage from_ behind_ the wall dump my work into the bathtub six months later. That was a tough one.

But now the house sings to me while I tend to it, seems happy and the garden blooms and all those things I saw as imperfections? Those things are dear to me now. This house NEEDED me and maybe, just maybe, I needed to make a neglected place feel loved.

I love the 15 coats of paint in my pre-war apartment crown moldings, baseboards and huge windows. I decided to play it up by buying antique furniture in that same yellowing-white color and hanging traditional oil paintings on the walls. It looks beautiful, and the only shiny new thing in there is my laptop.

I'm sorry but that picture is just scary. It looks like the wall will just fall apart...... right now.

When I moved into my last house, (not my current wonderful apartment), the color scheme was truly...um....inspired? I love color, but here are just a few of the previous owner's choices:
one bathroom was safety cone orange
the master closet was dark turquoise
the dining room had one wall of padded silk, and the other walls were a sort of purpley grey. Liver colored, I called it

and the kitchen was YELLOW! You have to shout the word to catch the feeling. The ceiling was yellow, the floor was yellow linoleum, the walls were covered with yellow vinyl wallpapaper, and the formica countertops were also yellow.

I wanted to wear sunglasses when I was in there

strangely that looks like a map of Malaysia.

When the plaster fell off a wall in our apartment, I painted the ragged void to look as though part of a delicate fresco had been uncovered.

The workman who showed up months later to repair it was reluctant to cover it up!