Growing up, I remember the broken knob in the shower. Long after the hot water knob had rusted off, my folks were still stepping into the shower with a pair of pliers to to twist the tiny rod poking out of the tiled wall where the shower knob used to be. It was probably an easy enough fix, but the pliers seemed like an easier solution at the time. What home repairs are you putting off for time, money, or convenience?
Maybe it's a light fixture. Or the dishwasher. Or some other non-essential that you didn't feel like playing a $600 repair bill for the privilege to use. Or maybe it's just a little bit broken, but still functional. What project or repair or replacement are you putting off and why?
For me, it's my car radio. I know it's not technically in my home, but my car is definitely an extension of my home, especially with my commute.
I always used to listen to the music from my iTunes playlist anyway. My previous method for jamming out in the car involved burning playlists from my iPhone onto CDs (I have a personal loathing for FM transmitters, but that's a different story for a different day).
But, my car is kind of old and while having both a CD player and cassette tape player right in the dash must have been cool in 1998, it stopped being cool for me long before the sound system broke. Since I never had an AUX cable, I've put off repairing my radio in favor of listening to music and radio right out of my iPhone, using the cupholder trick to slightly amplify the sound. I skipped a step in my weekly playlist routine and saved a $200 repair bill in the process.
So what's your repair procrastination story? Do you hand wash your dishes because of a broken dishwasher? Is your bathroom missing tiles because the old ones were discontinued? Do you line-dry your clothes because your dryer is on the fritz? Get it off your chest and share the dirty details with us in the comments.
(Images: Shutterstock [1,2,3], bimmerforums.com)
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Broken toilet set in the main bath. one of the bolts is missing so that the seat slides to the side as you sit down. On the bright side, it makes cleaning those little crannies around the seat much easier.
Gah! Siding! Several boards need to be replaced, it all needs to be scraped, caulked and repainted. I just don't wanna do it (or pay to have it done)!
The ceiling in my master bathroom shower cubicle. I accidentally broke the seal on the can light the first time I changed the bulb and didn't realise this until I noticed the ceiling was sagging around it. I let the whole thing dry for weeks (I have another bathroom with a shower/bath so it wasn't difficult, and I merely duct taped around the light to make it water tight for now. I'm not up to replacing dry wall and a light fixture just yet, nor do I have the stretch in my budget just yet to hire it done, so I just leave it. I'm the only one who uses the shower, so who cares.
The carpet upstairs. There is about a 2 and a half foot square gap where the dog tore it up. It looks terrible. The room is large and it would be expensive to recarpet. I am kind of halfway between hating it and no longer seeing it.
Popcorn ceiling. It's terrible. It bothers me a lot more in the bathroom, where the ceilings are lower, but it's so expensive to remove and then we'd have to repaint.
The bathroom doorknob is non existent on the other side. I wanted to replace the doorknob w/ an Anthropologie one, but it wouldn't fit and so I returned it. I didn't know how to fit the original one back on so one side kept falling off after coming out of the bathroom. Home Depot isn't the easiest place to get to so I wait until I have a bigger purchase to go for and every time I go, I completely forget about the bathroom door.
Plumbing in the 1/2 bath which requires ripping out the ceiling in the garage. :o(
Well I was putting off replacing the decades old water softener and solar water heater tank until they both completely broke down. Within 2 weeks of eachother. So now I'm having to put off repairing my disgusting 1960's bathroom complete with blue carpet.
Also - broken toilet seat, mostly because it's on a pink toilet and I refuse to put a perfectly good, new, white toilet seat on that monstrosity.
We kept the original horribly yellowed, flowered curtains that were here when we moved in. Figure until we repair all the plaster and paint they are worth keeping up in order to not stain or damage new ones.
The joys of homeownership right here.
Our front porch… Over time, we just got used to it, and stopped seeing how bad it actually was… but once in a while you’d see it from a fresh angle, and be horrified.
Even though it made the front of our house look terrible, the time and energy was better spent on spaces that were actually inside the house. We’ve finally begun the project, but it took us over two years to get to it.
Doorbell. We have one on both the front and back doors. Neither works!
Where do I begin??? @Jess13 said summed it up: The joys of home ownership.
And my 1999 Fabulosity with only 140,000 mi. has a quirky electrical problem somewhere between the speakers and the connection to the CD player. Periodically, the sound clicks off. This has been going on for 6 years. It's cheaper to just give the front of it a sharp whack with the heel of my right hand. Usually works!
Currently there's a kitchen door cabinet fallen off its hinge. Small fix but feels like such a chore!
Also, there are cassette adaptors that plug into your iPod and play out your car speakers. Maybe you already tried that, was a cheap fix for me.
I painted the walls and ceiling in my stairwell TWO YEARS AGO. Except I couldn't reach to get the corners up near the ceiling with my ladder. It has taken us two years (to the month) to get the motivation to figure out a ladder solution and fix it. We had big plans to do it this weekend.
Last night my husband called me and said there was water soaking through the ceiling and down the walls, right where we were going to paint. Our air conditioner is the culprit. At least we didn't paint it last weekend?
Many thousands of dollars of tenant damage (because we don't have the money right now... really, we should have sued):
The Geisdorf shower head they dipped in a strong acid to clean of hard water deposits;
Replace the shower glass, which was damaged because they never squeegeed after showers (it had a coating which became discoloured -- we will try to get replacement from the manufacturer).
Extensive hard water deposits on the everlasting green slate deck of our undermounted tub and around the shower (they never wiped up pools of water -- just left 'em). We've consulted with the stone people, and they have suggested carefully sanding the areas, as we have tried everything else, and nothing works. We're a little intimidated...
The huge chip in our indestructible German cast-iron tub. (damn tenants -- something very head and sharp was thrown in the tub, most likely a tool, like the claw end of a hammer).
Replace the inside of our Wolf gas oven. Again, hundreds of dollars worth of damage. The apparently used it for barbecue without a drip tray, and all the gunk accumulated in the middle of the oven. They then used tools -- sharp barbecue scrapers or a chisel -- to clean the oven. When we got the oven, it looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in 2 years -- it was disgustingly dirty, and took 4 people 3 hours to clean. (we had to pay for the cleaners) Anyway, it is full of deep gouges which are rusting, and the interior has to be replaced. After 4 attempts to get the black gunk off our oven racks, we STILL don't have them clean.
They also mistreated the burner caps and rings and the grates and gouged and scratched the enamel drip trays. We'll replace everything if and when we ever get the money.
Their children deeply scratched some of our kitchen cabinetry, which they filled in with red magic marker, and they scratched most of our wood cabinets around the handles with their rings... We'll try asking our cabinet maker what we can do, if anything. Really, really, makes us sad... We have matte cabinets, and I heard of a product in the UK, but have not been able to find one here.
They also gouged our walls, their children drew with red magic marker, and they put holes everywhere to hang their art collection.
(we had a useless property manager, and will never, ever, rent to a young couple who have only 1 child -- they moved out with 3 -- who live with their trucker father/father-in-law. I blame the latter for the damage to the shower and oven.)
Absolutely everything has to wait until we are back on our feet financially. It is really frustrating as the house was just-renovated when we left. Never again will we trust tenants. I'd rather sell-up, and buy an investment property to stay in housing market if we ever go on posting again.
Oh, and then there was the stuff we were going to do before we got tenants -- new front door, fix up the utility room and basement, new terrace, enlarge the garage...
So many things. But a daily irk is a bedside floor lamp in which the light is wobbly on the top, so I have to turn the on knob in a very certain way to get it to stay on. Irritating because I use it all the time.
A small fix is the bathroom door that is falling off the top hinges - I'm just lazy.
But sadly, our house needs some major work - a new roof, replacing the fence in the back yard, exterior paint and stucco work. When you are upside down $50k and toying with walking from the house, it pretty much paralizes us from spending big money to fix anything. :(
TV. The porch. The half bathroom. The kitchen. The paint in the kitchen. The non-existent flooring on the stair landing. The non-existent basement. Front closet organizer. Front closet doors.
It won't end. If you fix one thing another will go and destroy itself.
Post-caps on the new fence. Well, "new" here meaning 2-year-old. I found new glass ones for a STEAL at the rebuilding center. Turns out they were there for a reason - the mold from which they were made was crooked, so they don't fit on top of the posts! They bend inward; it's not just a matter of shaving off one side of the wood or anything. Have probably spent more time trying to figure out an easy solution that it would have taken to just do something complex!
A couple of days ago I put replacement screws in the hot and cold faucet handles in my tub -- they'd been missing since I moved in 19 months ago, the handles just unattached and coming off in the hands of anyone who didn't know to press in just so when you turn them. 66 cents for screws and less than 60 seconds to attach them, but I just never did it. Now I feel like superwoman. Next up: I bought a handle for the screen door to my back porch that's been handle-less since I moved in, but how long will it take me to attach it?
And can I just say how much I love seeing everyone's issues? I like the reminders that not everyone lives in a house-tour-ready home.
In regard to your inferior sound situation in your car, there is a better way. Ironically, it is precisely because your car is old enough to have a cassette deck. There is a product
Cody CA747 that plays mp3 recordings directly from your IPhone,IPad, IPod etc through your cassette deck. It produces a great sound. It costs generally under $15
You owe me one
Dee
The ball part of the door handle to my master porch fell of. Still works, but I have not even gotten around to trying to crazy glue it back together.
More handles need to br replaced because my 3 year old keeps locking them
The paint is wearing off my kitchen cabinets at the handles and I don't like the colour, but painting them all, I still have not painted all the rooms I have bought paint for.
I live in a house over 100 years old. The stuff that I didn't fix? That would be everything that wasn't on my list this weekend.
I live in a pretty new house (under 5 years) so not much, although I should touch up some paint here and there where scuffs have happened, try to fix a few dry wall nail heads that are popping up (d*mn the builders!) and probably replace the lav faucet which I keep forgetting seems to be peeling it's finish off on the back of one handle base, where I rarely notice it.
Other than that, my main focus is ongoing landscaping projects and refinishing some chairs...
The ballast in the giant fluorescent maxi-pad over our kitchen island went out last month. We thought having to cook in the dark would motivate us to save the money needed for an upgrade but it hasn't worked so far. We just go out to eat :-/
I have not been able to open my front door from the outside for more than two years because the entry set (I don't know what you call it but it's the kind in which you press a lever) is broken (probably because I neglected to tighten a noticeably loose screw). I called a locksmith and he said it couldn't be fixed--that he could drill a hole in the door and install a traditional doorknob. That would look horrible from the outside because the interior pieces of the old set would be visible and from the inside because there would be either two door knobs or an empty hole where the current door knob is. The solution appears to be to replace the door but entry doors are expensive. Therefore, we go through the door from the backyard. In the meantime, I've spent money on unnecessary stuff like two oil paintings.
Fascia boards scraped & some replaced. Then painting the house. I have been putting this off for years! I've even scrubbed the house in preparation of painting and then *something* more importantly distracting came up!
The lighting fixture in my closet keeps burning through bulbs and needs to be replaced, as well as the florescent fixture in my bathroom. Someone told me it's a bad starter? I'm not too keen on DIY electric, so waiting till the time/money situation is right to have an electrician over. Also, I have a cabinet door in the kitchen that hangs wonky, and two ancient wall unit AC's that I'm hoping to nurse along through one more summer...
Ha..! these are hysterical..GO TO THE HARDWARE STORE AND BUY A DAMN NEW TOILET SEAT..GODDDDDDDDDDD. I even put off repairing MYSELF>>> ; )
I bought a pair of lamps for my living room credenza/shelf thingie because I loved the shape and patter on base. Color was this weird texture-y rubbed bronze. So I painted...3/4 of the pair white. got bored. still need to replace the lampshades. one is white..the other is tan.
its been a year. They have blended into the background and I don't notice until I'm dusting. I bought a can of white spray paint to finish the paint job...two weeks ago.
I fear it will be a project (amongst many) I will never finish.
@Duane - right?!? Mine is 90 years old and, yeah. *sigh* I love this old house, but the upkeep is crazy.
I have a kitchen pantry door with a broken hinge tucked behind the fridge because I just recently painted the kitchen, want to get nice new hardware throughout, have no decent specialty stores here and need to buy it online, and can't bring myself to pay shipping on four stupid hinges and then go back and buy the rest of the hardware at another time. I really should just take the other door off that cabinet so it looks intentional and not trashy, but that would be admitting I'm procrastinating the purchase. :-)
I've also got an unused storage room/past child's bedroom/future office and guest room with no light fixture. Said child took the original out and installed a ceiling fan (when he was 17 or so) and then took the ceiling fan with him when he moved out, but the original fixture is lost to the winds. I haven't bothered to budget the time or money to fix the light in an unused room when there are so many other projects, so every time I have to go in there, it's flashlight time.
Pilot light is out in apartment's wall heater. Went out in winter and it's summer now, still haven't dealt with it.
As with every home we've owned, there is at least ONE thing in EVERY. SINGLE. ROOM. that doesn't get done. Nothing is ever complete. It makes me crazy. I don't know ...
My condo was built in the late 60s, and until last weekend we had this absolutely horrendous avocado green toilet in our downstairs bath. We finally replaced it with a white one and I couldn't be happier about something so ordinary!!
We repainted a year ago, and have not gotten round to rehanging pictures yet. They are all stacked up against walls. We had a huge stain on the kitchen ceiling and walls for about 10 years after a leak from the bathroom above.
@Mschatelaine: We never squeegee after showers, I didn't know that damages the glass. Once a year, I use a product for car windscreens on the shower glass, gets all the marks off. It's Spanish, but I'm sure you can find an equivalent anywhere.
The cheap contractor grade doorknobs in our house are slowly falling off one by one. We were shocked at the price of replacements that are not even high end but just a nicer finish so for now, we're living without them as they come off. I'm starting to wonder why we need them at all :)
When my daughter was in high school, she and I got into a pretty nasty screaming match. It quickly ratcheted up to an all out door slamming fest -- but ended as soon as she kicked my hollow-core bedroom door.
This happened when she was about 16, and she's 25 now. So yeah, it's been nine years, and I really don't see the gash any more... Except at that moment just before "company" comes over!
Our back garden fence completely disintegrated last year, so we shelled out to have a lovely new stockade fence put in. Not three weeks after the work was done, our coop manager told us that there was an outstanding fine from the city dating from thirteen years ago, requiring that we have a door between our garden and the neighbors' (for fire safety.) Seriously--that hideous fence was rotting away with no door for ages, through at least four different owners, and nobody from the city noticed the fine, but right AFTER we build a new, doorless fence, we need to cut it up and stick in a door within 30 days or we'd face a several-thousand-dollar fine? So we had a handyman come in and do a quickie job of cutting a door out of the fence. As you can imagine, it now hangs agape and won't close no matter what we do; fortunately, we like our neighbors! We were meaning to get that door fixed, but now we're moving, so I guess it's the new owners' eyesore to deal with...or not...
I repainted and changed the hardware on bathroom cabinets. But when I rehung them, I rehung the center ones just a little too close so you have to close them at the same time or they won't close all the way. That was two years ago...
Replacing the kitchen hardwood floors that separated due to water damage that happened sometime before I purchased my condo.
Fortunatley, most folks don't see it unless I point it out.
Tile will be going in it's place. I just need to either get myself to DIY school or hire a tile person to do the work.
Oh, yes. We moved into our house in April and so far on our "put off indefinitely" list:
- Our kitchen faucet wasn't installed right so it wobbles in the base where it connects through our countertop every time we turn it on or use the hose.
- We have a 3-switch light switch in our dining room that was put in crooked, making the art above it look crooked. But the whole damn thing is in there wrong.
- We have hard water, so, yay.
- They used latex paint on our front door and likely didn't let it cure thoroughly so all our paint peeled off onto our weather stripping, leaving big brown marks all around. Not to mention that the door is on there crooked, so no weather stripping cures the 1/4 gap in the lower left of the door frame.
- There is no place for a dryer vent in our garage, due to the addition they built onto the house. They just covered up the existing vent and didn't bother to see that this would cause a major issue, so we're currently venting into an indoor vent kit.
- They either used old grout or mixed it wrong, because it's cracking all along our kitchen countertop/backsplash, and bathroom counter/backsplash.
- There wasn't an electric garage door opener, nor is there a ceiling outlet near the opener, so when we had one installed, they just looped an extension cord around the outside of our opener track and plugged into a nearby wall outlet.
- I really want to paint the outside of our house because it's peach. And already peeling.
The light inside my fridge has been out for years and I just can't ever get around to that random chore.
when i first saw my kitchen in the real estate photos prior to purchasing I knew I would have to replace the entirely blue kitchen (benchtop, vinyl,cubboards)... that was five years ago, i haven't got further than measuring and people always ask my how my kitchen is coming along....also, have a doorknob-sized whole in a bedroom wall following a door slamming incident - which I refused to fix as my husband had made me so mad at the time...three years ago. Oh, blinds in guest room need replacing as they haven't opened/closed since we bought house... again, five years ago. Sorry guests.
We've owned our 80+ year old house for 4 years now & have made lots & lots of improvements (full insulation, roof, windows, wiring upgrade, plumbing, deck, front steps, reno'd kitchen & dining room, new 1/2 bath, paint). But it's the little projects that drive me crazy. For example, we need to install a bathroom vent. We even had the hole cut in the roof & the vent cap done last year. Still need to install a the actual vent. We need a couple of exterior outlets installed. We need to do something about the little office nook in the kitchen so I don't keep making it the dumping ground for all my crap.
Then there are the things that I'd like to do- update some of the ceiling light fixtures, update the upstairs bathroom, and create a play space in the cellar. Those cost some money that we've run out of for this year. Oh well, it's a marathon, not a sprint, right?
So so so many things. The dryer light has gone and died out awhile ago, never got around to replacing it. Been meaning to clean/repair the kitchen cabinets. Broken toilet seat in the second bathroom. The very noticeable hole in the wall in my sister's room. Sink faucet that is leaking. My mini d'oh mistake that I made with my closet curtain; it wont close because I put one too many rod support in the wrong spots so now I got like a foot of gaping curtain. And the list goes on.