Greastest regret - H&G edition

[salejolie]

What is the worst decision that you've made in regards to your home or decor? That delayed remodel? Too big of a project? bonded leather sofa in pepto pink? Tell us all about it!

I think mine would be this moroccan shaggy rug that I thought was so cute, until I realized you can't vacuum shaggy, and it takes colossal strength to hoist it over the rail to beat.

[treedimensional]

I regret not nagging my spouse to do the work in a timely manner, especially after the demolition had already been done. Since I began nagging, he's actually made a lot of progress.
That's such a miserable confession.

[mrs.jacinthe]

Uh, I regretted the wall-o-sofa™ that we ended up with after we bought two more straight sections of our sectional. It was like 11 feet of the ugliest upholstery ever, and R and I still only used the two pieces we bought originally. We got rid of those two sections and it was like "ahhhh", we got the family room back.

[lilac05]

Right now, it's that we bought a second home (foreclosure) before selling our (then) current home. Everything predicted that our house would sell as soon as it hit the market (including multiple real estate agents). 7 months later...we're enjoying lots of double mortgage payments and a plummeting bank account.

I hope we'll sell soon & I will be able to say that scooping up this home was our best move ever. For now, it's the worst.

[emoflamingo]

Oct 7, 2015 21:15:08 GMT -5 lilac05 said:

Right now, it's that we bought a second home (foreclosure) before selling our (then) current home. Everything predicted that our house would sell as soon as it hit the market (including multiple real estate agents). 7 months later...we're enjoying lots of double mortgage payments and a plummeting bank account.

I hope we'll sell soon & I will be able to say that scooping up this home was our best move ever. For now, it's the worst.

Ditto. Except we have done 3 years and 3 sets of renters (so far). And we paid full price for our house.

[pitterwoo]

Add me to the list of people where the whole house might just be the regret. H had bought the house a few months before we met. We dated a couple years before getting married and we would have been better off starting over in a place of our own. It has been so much more of a fixer upper than we expected. I remember sitting together during our honeymoon making a 2 year plan for completely renovating the whole house DIY. It's been 7 years of marriage and it seems like we probably have a couple more years of projects to go. I feel like so much of my life was on hold while spending weekends at Home Depot.

[magdala]

In my first apartment, the walls were painted pale pink so I bought a burgundy couch. I got out of the apartment in a year. I had the couch for another 6 years. Burgundy is not one of my favorite colors and I had to make it work until I could afford something new.

[sju]

Our last house. If only I could tell my 28 year old self to stay put. We had a new construction starter home that was perfect for us and I had bought for a good price. Then FIL passed in 2005 and his 90-lb lab came to live with us. The house immediately felt small. We decided to buy a bigger house with more land. We ended buying a 7 year old home that needed updates (stupid error #1) with 3 acres of grass. Full price to make matters worse. DH spent his weekends doing yard work for the next 8 years. With the market crash on top of it, we ended up not making back approx $100k when we moved. We have been renting for 2 years and are now under contract for a new construction home. The last experience left me so nervous I am feeling stressed.

[sju]

Oct 7, 2015 21:15:08 GMT -5 lilac05 said:

Right now, it's that we bought a second home (foreclosure) before selling our (then) current home. Everything predicted that our house would sell as soon as it hit the market (including multiple real estate agents). 7 months later...we're enjoying lots of double mortgage payments and a plummeting bank account.

I hope we'll sell soon & I will be able to say that scooping up this home was our best move ever. For now, it's the worst.

I hope you sell soon!

[demandypants]

Taking out the built in Revco stainless fridge and freezer from my kitchen. However it was not usable, or functional, or practical to keep. But it was cool

[Blueper]

I think that my greatest regret is hanging on to way too much stuff. My mom was selling her hobby farm to move into her husband's place just as we were moving into our house. I somehow willingly became the dumping ground for all of the stuff that she had no use for. It's taken me 3 years but I'm finally starting to get rid of things that I will never use.

My second regret is that we put in a bathroom in our basement a few years ago and I went with the trendy board and batten look which does not really go with the rest of our 1979 typical suburban house. I'm tempted to remove it but I can't justify it since it is still newish and it would be a giant pain to sand down the area. I think in the meantime I'm just going to repaint the upper portion from a dark dark dark navy to a more spa-like sage.

Third house regret (this one sounds terrible) is that I adopted a cat a few years ago who has become territorial of our house and sprays random corners of our house. Two different vets have seen him and he is fine, this only became an issue when some random neighborhood cat started poking around our property. This cat is lucky that he is ridiculously enamored with me and hates everyone else because he would have been re-homed a long time ago. My confession is that I'm looking forward to not having to track down his spray and stress before anyone enters our home once he is gone.

[partiallysunny]

I love my house.

But it's had some major unexpected expenses.

I don't regret buying it. I regret how I allocated my renovation money after first buying. But I wasn't aware of some of the deeper more pressing renovations that were around the corner.

I guess I wish for hindsight, lol.

[2curlydogs]

When we first bought our house I had envisioned the downstairs painted a soft yellow.

It ended up being mustard-colored. It was awful. Like living in a French's bottle.

So then we had to re-prime and then re-paint. Fortunately we hadn't moved in yet, so we didn't have to deal with moving furniture. But still.

[dr.girlfriend]

I can't honestly think of anything in this house. Our previous apartment, though, was a converted factory, and had HUGE floor-to-ceiling windows. I had this grand plan to make Roman shades for them -- bought a ton of curtains from IKEA, paid a seamstress a pretty solid amount of money to sew them together to the huge length that was needed, and then never actually did it. They sat in a Tupperware in our closet until we were moving out, at which time I realized a mouse had been nesting in the bin and I got eeked out and threw the whole thing away.

ETA: I don't love our couch. We were moving, and bought kind of impulsively. It's a pull-out, so more expensive than it should have been and no one ever sleeps on it. I'm hoping to upgrade, but with dog and kid it doesn't make sense to do it right now. I hate how heavy and hard to move it is, though!  We've had a new rug for that room for almost 5 months and have yet to put it down because either DH or I have had back problems since we bought it!

[Deleted]

Our living room is LONG and awkward because it is perfectly symmetrical on one wall with wide windows and the front door smack dab in the middle. One end has the fireplace and the other end has the opposite-the-front wall open with a 3xdoor open arch into the dining room. I wish the fireplace was on the open end as it would make a nice sitting into entertaining area but moving it is so not an option. I decided to set up the media center on the short wall opposite the fireplace, thinking I'd turn the fireplace area into a nice sitting area but all that has happened is that the room feels completely cut in half with our L-shape sofa. Now after having had this for almost a year, I wish it the media was on the fireplace side against the archway wall but H says absolutely not, he is NOT going to go through moving all the wires and hiding them again and rebalancing the speakers and the tv will have sunlight hitting it (which was a reason for my original plan) but I miss my fireplace in the winter! We don't have money to replace the uncomfortable love seat that is next to it yet.

[Susie]

I tend to be very slow to spend money and make decisions, so my regrets tend to have to do with how long we lived with something that we should have done much sooner.

Like the carpet when we originally bought the house:


...we tolerated that nonsense for SIX YEARS before ripping it out and replacing it.  Dude.  Don't be so cheap.

[simpsongal]

#1 Our big ugly brown sectional. After 3 years it looks terrible too. At least I don't care when the kid wipes his nose on it.

I've bought so many ugly curtains, I can't even tally them up

I'm very indecisive, so I have a lot of other small ones.

[Deleted]

I think my lesson has been to upgrade a house when you actually need to. We had a smaller home in the city and we planned on having kids and wanted something larger in a good school district. We've dealt with infertility for 5 years. We should have just stayed put where the taxes were so much lower.

Ditto PP regarding a burgundy couch. Thought I needed some color in my first apartment since the walls were white. Regretted that within a year.

[TBM]

lol that I have looked at this post for the past 22 hrs and just now noticed that it says Greastest, not greatest.

Either way I don't really have any regrets. I have made my share of decorating mistakes and have hopefully learned from them along the way, but nothing really regrettable.

DH regrets that we didn't get things done at our last house (kitchen and backyard) until we were getting it ready to sell. It is completely his fault that we didn't have the money (he thought we needed to help out our kids financially long after I thought we should), and he feels really guilty about it now. He made a comment about how great the kitchen looked and that we 'should have done this a long time ago' and got a look from me that apparently made a huge impact on him.lol He realized how much it took from our quality of life in that house, so now he's the one pressuring me to get things done sooner rather than later.

[ktzmoh]

Buying a house on a hill. The kids can't ride their bikes outside...

[davescatch]

I regret not moving out of this house into something else - our neighborhood has gone downhill in the last few years, break-ins, shady characters hanging around at weird hours, etc.....we have installed IP cameras, and had to put in more barriers for our shed and back basement door. Last week there were 3 break-ins on my street - my husband is already so paranoid (given our boat was stolen and ripped apart back in 2012) so his reaction to all this is to go Rambo on my and board things up!!!!