Thursday Thirteen #10 - Things I hate about our house

Thirteen Things that drive me nuts about our house! I've been watching too much HGTV, I think. All of the things that I would love to fix/renovate/improve around here but can't afford to do so are driving me nuts... So since I can't actually do any of these right now, consider this my wish list. :) And to be fair, stay tuned next week for my list of thirteen things that I love about our house. Master bedroom - I don't know if it's the size (too small) or the number of doorways (2), closet doors (2) and windows (2), but it's almost impossible to fit everything that we need to in here. One of these days, I'd also love having a separate master bathroom. White Carpet - The previous owners installed new carpeting in the living room and hallway before we bought the house. Unfortunately it was cheap carpet - and it's white! Or rather it was white. Now it's kind of a gray-ish with lots of stains and spots. But there's probably not much point in replacing it until the kids are older anyway. Dark wood trim - Our house was built in the 1970's and you can really tell. All of the trim, interior doors, closet doors and windows are all a dark wood trim. It makes it look dark and kind of grim in here. Kitchen arrangement - Our kitchen isn't huge, but really the size doesn't bother me. But the way it's laid out does. There's almost no good place to put a table and chairs since you have to walk around them to get from the kitchen to the rest of the house. And we don't have a separate dining room, so the table has to go in the kitchen. I'd also love a breakfast bar or island - not to mention more cupboard and counter space. Kitchen cupboards/counter - As long as we're on a kitchen theme... Cheap, dark (of course!) wood cabinets and old, yellowed laminate countertops. And so much of the cupboard space that we have is wasted just because the cabinets weren't designed very efficiently. Upstairs bathroom - Hmm, where to start... Maybe with the powder blue fixtures (tub, toilet and sink)? Or the textured vanity top that traps dirt in all the little crevices... Or the old, cracked linoleum. The whole bathroom needs to be torn out and re-done. Someday. Bedrooms - The other two bedrooms aren't tiny. Unless you've got two kids sharing one of them, and then it gets really cramped. And although the house is 'technically' a four-bedroom, the fourth 'bedroom' is in the basement, extremely narrow and also happens to be the laundry room. Back deck - The decks in our neighborhood were basically thrown on at the last minute by the original developer of the neighborhood. Most of our neighbors have replaced them with well-built, larger ones. Ours is not safe (not bolted to the house), the railing openings are way too large to be safe for kids, and not large enough to really be usable. This is one of our top priority projects when we someday get the money to rebuild it. Backyard - This is kind of hard to explain. The previous owners took very little care of the yard and landscaping. We have a huge pile of rocks under our deck that needs to be disposed of. We also have a huge sandbox that we are planning to tear out in order to reclaim most of the flat portion of the yard (there's a hill that takes up most of it). We've started working on it, just a little at a time. Back door - We don't have much room for coats, shoes, backpacks, etc. And it's right where the basement steps are so I always worry that someone will get accidentally pushed down while trying to squeeze past. I would so love a 'mud room'... Basement - We refinished a good portion of it a couple of years ago. The layout (furnace in the middle of the basement) drives Ron nuts though and it's definitely not very practical. The bathroom down there is almost unusable and needs to be completely re-done. We'd love to tear it all out, relocate the furnace and start over someday, but that's pretty much just a pipe dream. Efficiency - Everything is fairly old, from appliances to windows. Someday I'd love to replace with energy efficient ones. Sidewalks - Or rather the lack of them. I so wish we had sidewalks so the kids didn't have to play and ride in the street. Yes, I get frustrated with these things about our house. But they are all fairly minor issues and definitely fixable - someday when we can afford to. Next week I'll balance this out with the things I love about our house! Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

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