Lets do some D&R unpopular opinions!

[Deleted]

FTR, I wouldn't buy a MCM house and "update" it. In fact, I've dedicated my life to undoing stupid updates in my own house. I just wouldn't buy MCM myself because I don't like the style. I fully support efforts to preserve the style and even love a good pink bathroom myself (and have been a bit sad when I see them ripped out here).

[stephm0188]

I love my french door fridge. If that's wrong, I don't ever want to be right.

I don't like the big poofy couches with the recliners built in and all that jazz. It's like the Stay Puft marshmallow man of furniture or something.

And I feel like our master bathroom has the best set up. Double sinks, but on separate vanities. The best of both worlds.... counterspace and no sharing.

[aimeedyan]

Jan 22, 2013 22:46:56 GMT -5 @gingersb said:

I like matching furniture.

I like granite. 

I like stainless steel appliances. 

I hate rooms that look decorated.

I like photos of my kids all over the damn house.

I like my TV above the fireplace. 

I love a double sink in the kitchen vs a big single basin. 

These are all things that are popular IRL, but not with the D&R crowd.

Totally with you on the double sink in the kitchen (just not bathrooms!)

[ktzmoh]

I also strongly prefer my top-loading washing machine to front loaders.

I also hate granite.

I also hate the compulsion to DIY anything and everything because I saw it on pinterest.

[thewop]

I like black/dark cabinets.
I love color.
DIY wreaths look ridiculous 90% of the time.
"Blog" staged home are a joke. It's not real. Sure it might be pretty, but I want to see practical normal homes.
McMansion homes are a waste of money and space. No one really needs 3000 sq ft for a family of 4.
I would never buy a new construction home, and have zero desire to build one from the ground up.

[decoraholic]

I like Ikea kitchens (obviously, since we have one, lol) and I'd totally consider doing another one someday if we ever move. They aren't your typical Ikea product.

I guess mine is marble bathrooms and counters. I think they are beautiful, but the thought of etching, staining, and scratching it so easily would drive me (and my poor husband) crazy. I say my husband because he'd have to deal with me following him around telling him to don't scratch! you can't use that cleaner! wipe up the spill! We have a marble backsplash in the kitchen, and that is about as much as I'm willing to worry about.

[thewop]

Jan 23, 2013 8:50:54 GMT -5 decoraholic said:

I like Ikea kitchens (obviously, since we have one, lol) and I'd totally consider doing another one someday if we ever move. They aren't your typical Ikea product.

I guess mine is marble bathrooms and counters. I think they are beautiful, but the thought of etching, staining, and scratching it so easily would drive me (and my poor husband) crazy. I say my husband because he'd have to deal with me following him around telling him to don't scratch! you can't use that cleaner! wipe up the spill! We have a marble backsplash in the kitchen, and that is about as much as I'm willing to worry about.

 Tell me more about your Ikea kitchen.  PIP's would be awesome!  We need to redo our kitchen in the next few years, but I don't want to spend a fortune (our house isn't big and fancy, so putting in a fancy kitchen would be...weird).  I want it to be nice, but I'm simple.   Cabinets is what I'm most interested in.  I can't decide if I want to restain them or replace them (we would sell the current ones or put them in the basement/garage).

[decoraholic]

Jan 23, 2013 8:56:28 GMT -5 thewop said:

Jan 23, 2013 8:50:54 GMT -5 decoraholic said:

I like Ikea kitchens (obviously, since we have one, lol) and I'd totally consider doing another one someday if we ever move. They aren't your typical Ikea product.

I guess mine is marble bathrooms and counters. I think they are beautiful, but the thought of etching, staining, and scratching it so easily would drive me (and my poor husband) crazy. I say my husband because he'd have to deal with me following him around telling him to don't scratch! you can't use that cleaner! wipe up the spill! We have a marble backsplash in the kitchen, and that is about as much as I'm willing to worry about.

 Tell me more about your Ikea kitchen.  PIP's would be awesome!  We need to redo our kitchen in the next few years, but I don't want to spend a fortune (our house isn't big and fancy, so putting in a fancy kitchen would be...weird).  I want it to be nice, but I'm simple.   Cabinets is what I'm most interested in.  I can't decide if I want to restain them or replace them (we would sell the current ones or put them in the basement/garage).

I'll post 'em in a new thread. I'm too scared to post pics of my own house in an unpopular opinions post

[simpsongal]

I haven't seen this unpopular opinion, so here we go:

I don't like prefinished hardwood floors. Period. Whatever type, however high the quality you will never convince me that prefinished floors are as good or better than finishing floors on site.

[teeah22]

Jan 22, 2013 22:17:24 GMT -5 @callmefia said:

People are focusing so much on these expensive/fancy things in design that I wonder if they realize how soon their choices will be out of style and need to remodel again. And that everything looks so blah because EVERYONE in the blog world does the same thing. I think this whole keeping up thing has probably played a really big part in short sales and foreclosures. Did you see Teeah's comment about how she bought her house as a short sale and the seller went out of their way to comment on how expensive the tile was?!

/rant

She actually walked me around the whole house and pointed out all the upgrades they had done when it was built and how much each one cost   I pretended to be interested, meanwhile all I could think was "hmm, this probably has something to do with why you're having to short sell the house now..."


My UO:  I looooooove my TV over my fireplace.  Love love love it.

[Deleted]

Ok here goes.

I say no to:

- granite - it's way too busy and will date so so many homes in 10 years. I have faux granite in my kitchen right now. It will be replaced with a dark stained butcher block when we have the $$.

- front loader washers. They are too low to the ground unless you spend $200 each on those drawer stand things, which is a total waste of $$ to me. We are in the market for a new washer/dryer set now - we will be going with a non agitating top loader washer.

- wall words - no. Period.

- wall to wall carpet. It's gross. Give me hardwoods, baby.

- ripping out perfectly good closet doors and installing curtains....coughcoughyhlcoughcough

- Chevron and Ikat - my eyes would be grateful if you would just please go away

- DIY projects using totally random crap

- light colored wood

- white appliances - if I could find the person who first thought a white stovetop was a good idea I would inflict bodily harm to said person

I say yes to:

- YELLOW kitchens!!

- Ikea - but I agree that balance is needed

- dark wood

- an open floorplan concept - this is probably because I've always lived in places with defined rooms and want something differnt

- stainless steel appliances - I'm keeping mine until they croak, I don't care whether they are still in style

- the popular blog looks of white paired with dark wood. I love that look regardless of whether it's trendy though.

- the flat screen TV above the fireplace. I do not get the hate.

[lb2006]

Well.....i didn't realize my 1970s bathroom would be such a hit!

My unpopular opinions:
I don't like wall words
I don't like chevron

i'll keep thinking

[katecoop]

I hate fake greenery. Not fake plants or Christmas greenery, but when people string up garland of ivy leaves around mirrors or above cabinets. Gross.

I hate beach themed things in houses that are not near a beach or other body of water.

[kaylie]

I really hate wall words and I agree with PP about kids names above their beds/cribs. What, are you having trouble remembering who they are? I also don't like all that corny "...because two people fell in love" crap. Eww.

I'm not that concerned over whether or not the changes we make to the house are green or sustainable. It's nice, but I'm not going out of my way.

[Susie]

Jan 23, 2013 11:55:18 GMT -5 @crackhabit said:

Also, I hate the term "forever home."

I mean, forever? Forever ever?

How can you know that?

lol.

A lot of people get really hung up on it, I see it here and sometimes on MM too.  I think it's weird too.  Who the hell knows what's going to happen in a decade or two?

[mrs.jacinthe]

Jan 23, 2013 12:22:20 GMT -5 Susie said:

Jan 23, 2013 11:55:18 GMT -5 @crackhabit said:

Also, I hate the term "forever home."

I mean, forever? Forever ever?

How can you know that?

lol.

A lot of people get really hung up on it, I see it here and sometimes on MM too.  I think it's weird too.  Who the hell knows what's going to happen in a decade or two?

For us, at least, a forever home is an unlikely thing, but we try to look at each home we buy as "COULD we live here forever?" I think it's a much better way to go. We don't *have* to live there forever and we're not definitively tying ourselves to any one place - but I've reached a point where I'm not willing to settle for something that doesn't make me happy.

/random brain droppings

[hausfrau]

Jan 23, 2013 14:28:42 GMT -5 downtonali said:
- white appliances - if I could find the person who first thought a white stovetop was a good idea I would inflict bodily harm to said person

This! So much! When we first moved into the house we rent, our landlady swapped out the old stove with a new, white gas stove. It's great, except keeping the thing spotless has been such a pain. I feel neurotic when people come over because I'm constantly wiping down the stove lest they think we're dirty.

My unpopular opinion is that I hate yellow kitchens. Ours is a particularly bright shade of buttery yellow and it always makes me feel queasy. I also don't like open floor plans. Our house is basically one giant long room with a hallway next to it with our two bedrooms as bookends to a small bathroom. There's no where to go to get away from each other besides hanging out in the creepy basement doing laundry. It gets old very quickly.

[decoraholic]

Jan 23, 2013 12:29:45 GMT -5 @callmefia said:

Love the outkast ref but a lot of people use the term starter home... So if it isnt a starter home, Should we call it our long term home?!

I hate the term starter home, just because I got really over it when people suggested that we (or anyone) buy a starter home. I feel like its a bad prospect and I'd rather have saved longer to afford something I could stay in a long time. I don't want to be stuck with one bathroom and two kids just because nobody wants to buy my crappy starter home!

Also I really enjoy D&R but I don't always want to pump my excess cash into my house, so we bought what we could afford without being house poor. There are things like savings and traveling and college funds etc

People sometimes walk into our small home and say "it's great for a starter home!"

They assume, I guess, because it's smaller than most homes in our area, but I never said it was a starter home :^). Ouch, lol. We may upgrade down the road, but we also bought this home because we felt we could live in it indefinitely.

[thewop]

Jan 23, 2013 12:29:45 GMT -5 @callmefia said:

Love the outkast ref but a lot of people use the term starter home... So if it isnt a starter home, Should we call it our long term home?!

I hate the term starter home, just because I got really over it when people suggested that we (or anyone) buy a starter home. I feel like its a bad prospect and I'd rather have saved longer to afford something I could stay in a long time. I don't want to be stuck with one bathroom and two kids just because nobody wants to buy my crappy starter home!

Also I really enjoy D&R but I don't always want to pump my excess cash into my house, so we bought what we could afford without being house poor. There are things like savings and traveling and college funds etc

 LOL. You'd probably consider my house a "crappy starter home" then (which it's not, I'll probably live there for 20+ years).  We will most likely have 2 kids with only one bathroom.  But yeah.  There's more to life than a big fancy top of the line home.  I love not being house poor. 

[decoraholic]

Thanks sbp . I'm not crazy about super large homes either. I wouldn't mind if our 1600 sf home had a basement, and maybe a tad more space, but overall it doesn't seem that small to me. It's cheaper to maintain and furnish too.

If I could custom build a home it would have one big great room, one big eat in kitchen that can seat 8-10, and a nice office space on the main floor. I love open floor plans though. No separate formal living and dining rooms. We'd never use them. Basement would have a workshop for sure (for me, not H, lol). Upstairs would have 3-4 bedrooms with a master bath and a hall bath.

[narockshard]

I'll play, these posts are always so interesting. I basically like everything everyone hates   I love open floor plans, but it must be a personal thing because I like openness in a lot of things, i.e. I HATE living in woods. It just feels so closed in and dark. For the record I grew up in the country surrounded by fields and LOVED it. We had scattered trees but nothing that cast shade all day on the house.

I love double sinks in bathrooms, although we don't have them currently. I do take a while to get ready in the mornings and hate sharing, even if it's only for a few minutes with my husband. I guess I'm selfish ha.

I can't stand any shade of yellow or cool blue in a house. Turquoise type blues are ok though.

I love big, new houses but would only get one if I could fill it with a big family.

I HATE weird angles, corners, and when things aren't centered, like windows. We turned downed otherwise fine houses because of off-center windows or rooms that had weird angles. I'm just huge on symmetry.

I kind of like country/hunting themed man caves...  To a certain extent of course. The previous owners of our house put in a cherry stained wood ceiling (it looks like beadboard kind of, but I don't know what you'd technically call it), painted the living room a kind of pea green (for lack of a better description, I promise it looks really good), and left burgundy/cream plaid valances and pillows on the built in window seat and it just all goes really well together. We bought a comfy dark brown couch, hung up a couple deer mounts and some vintage metal plaques (like of ammo and gun companies) and I just really really like it! At first I wanted to change it all up but the hubs said he liked it and wanted to keep it so I went with it and now I'm sold. Mind you the rest of the house is not like this at all, but it really works for the basement man cave and it feels really cozy. Kind of like a lodge I guess!

[emoflamingo]

Jan 23, 2013 13:27:34 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

I think quiet-closing drawers and toilet seats are a waste of money.  How 'bout you just learn how to not slam stuff and then spend that money on something else.  Like painting over the hideous chevron paint job you put in your dining room.

I have a 6 year old and this concept, I swear, is completely foreign. He dropped the toilet lid so hard it shook the house. HOW?! He is a tiny little peanut of a boy!

[mrs.jacinthe]

Jan 23, 2013 14:45:49 GMT -5 @callmefia said:

We definitely didn't go cheap but are comfortable in our budget and ability to remain in this house for a long time. We can afford it if one of us was laid off or something worse. I can't imagine spending so much that if one of us lost our job we would be in Foreclosure like so many people are now.

Confession: The house that we are buying would not be sustainable on only my income.  We could keep up with the payments for a *very* short period of time before we'd be in trouble.  As in, the house payment is more 65% of my take-home pay, not including utilities or ... you know ... eating.  That said, R makes a LOT more than I do and if I were laid off, there would be absolutely no problem paying bills.  This is what we get with a huge pay disparity in a HCOL area.  FTR, we have a back-up/contingency plan in the event he ever did lose his job, but it's not fun and involves a LOT of part-time jobs.

[kaylie]

Jan 23, 2013 15:04:06 GMT -5 mrs.jacinthe said:

Jan 23, 2013 14:45:49 GMT -5 @callmefia said:

We definitely didn't go cheap but are comfortable in our budget and ability to remain in this house for a long time. We can afford it if one of us was laid off or something worse. I can't imagine spending so much that if one of us lost our job we would be in Foreclosure like so many people are now.

Confession: The house that we are buying would not be sustainable on only my income.  We could keep up with the payments for a *very* short period of time before we'd be in trouble.  As in, the house payment is more 65% of my take-home pay, not including utilities or ... you know ... eating.  That said, R makes a LOT more than I do and if I were laid off, there would be absolutely no problem paying bills.  This is what we get with a huge pay disparity in a HCOL area.  FTR, we have a back-up/contingency plan in the event he ever did lose his job, but it's not fun and involves a LOT of part-time jobs.

You're not alone Mrs. J. Ours isn't really sustainable on my income. We'd be okay if H was still working, but it wouldn't be fun. I think the realities of buying in a HCOL area and buying in a LCOL area are pretty different. Fortunately if we ever ran into a problem we could get help from family.

[Susie]

Jan 23, 2013 15:04:06 GMT -5 mrs.jacinthe said:

Jan 23, 2013 14:45:49 GMT -5 @callmefia said:

We definitely didn't go cheap but are comfortable in our budget and ability to remain in this house for a long time. We can afford it if one of us was laid off or something worse. I can't imagine spending so much that if one of us lost our job we would be in Foreclosure like so many people are now.

Confession: The house that we are buying would not be sustainable on only my income.  We could keep up with the payments for a *very* short period of time before we'd be in trouble.  As in, the house payment is more 65% of my take-home pay, not including utilities or ... you know ... eating.  That said, R makes a LOT more than I do and if I were laid off, there would be absolutely no problem paying bills.  This is what we get with a huge pay disparity in a HCOL area.  FTR, we have a back-up/contingency plan in the event he ever did lose his job, but it's not fun and involves a LOT of part-time jobs.

I can't even imagine buying a house on only one income - probably because my experience has been having student loans that are as big as a mortgage.  It's like having two mortgages.  Until a year or so ago, the SLs were actually bigger than the mortgage (in both balance and monthly payment).  You can't really sustain that on one income, but we did it anyway.  If we ever wanted to be homeowners, that was how it was.  We just won't ever be able to have one of us stay home with kids.

[lolc]

I have no idea if my opinions are popular or unpopular, but here goes:

1. I love side by side refrigerators and prefer them over french door anyday.

2. I see no problem with TV's above the fireplace. It makes sense to me. Couches positioned to focus on the fireplace/tv - enjoy the best of both worlds.

3. I like top loading washing machines over front loading.

4. I do not like very open floor plans. I also do not like some of the new home plans I have seen lately (locally) that eliminate formal living rooms entirely (not even an option to turn it to a den/study).

5. I don't 'get' the kitchen island being a different color from the rest of the cabinets, and don't really like the way it looks.

6. I despise rubbermaid shelving like this:

Every shelf in my kitchen pantry, laundry room, and closets are made with this crap (hence the strong dislike for it). Unfortunately its very low on our priority list to remodel/change but gahhh.... I just hate it. Especially for hanging clothes.

7. I prefer carpet in the bedroom. Hardwood is ok too. No tile (in a bedroom).

[stephm0188]

I adore my formal living room. It's used all.the.time.

[thatgirl2478]

I used to say I HATED open concept ... and I still do to an extent. However, I'm starting to realize that open concept in the kitchen/causal eating area/family room would be REALLY nice now that I have a kiddo who likes to play while I cook. I can't leave her downstairs in the family room where her toys are or she'd be in trouble in 2 seconds flat. I can't let her roam around the upstairs for the same reasons (we are delinquent in the 'secure furniture to the wall' phase of child rearing).

I have stainless and wish I didn't now that it's not new and the child isn't a baby... finger prints & water drips are HORRID on stainless.

i don't get the love for a lot of the target decor items... i get that they aren't offensive and relatively cheap - but meh they don't do it for me.


SBP - I love that older floor plan - we almost purchased/rent to owned a house that was similar though MASSIVELY large (4,000 sq ft). There were 2 reasons we didn't a) the massive amount of mold in the basement made it hard for me to breathe and b) it was in a town in the middle of no where - even worse than where we are now! LOL

[mrs.jacinthe]

Jan 23, 2013 13:56:47 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

This is actually pretty darn close to our under-contract house's floor plan. Very similar, except mirror image it, and for us the kitchen was an addition, so there are only 3 bedrooms (and a bathroom) upstairs.

[boiler717]

I don't live visible televisions in my house (however not everyone has this luxury). We are the weird people that have a giant great room and don't use it as our main family room, therefore we don't have (well, will not have once we have furniture in it) a TV in the great room.

We use our sunroom, and our TV is tucked in our corner so you see it when you are watching it.

I will say having a great room comes in handy when you have large families and entertain a lot. We refer to it as our banquet hall. We've had four dinners with over 30 people since October and have 3 more planned through May. We set up tables and chairs in there and everyone has a place to sit.