There's nothing quite as permanent as a "temporary fix," lol!

For nine years we had an absolutely hideous three dangle thing light from our laundry room fan. Occasionally I would see it and try to remind myself to get a schoolhouse light for it, but I kept forgetting because I don't spend much time there. I finally got around to having it changed a few months ago, and the housekeeper complained that the new light wasn't as good as the old one for ironing! Lesson learned :-)

I have put up with a large but ill-designed and substandard quality pantry for nine years.......still need runners on the back staircase......runner on library stairs and new rug for that hall......and the beat goes on. It's a process.

I went to Ikea in . . . January? And I still have the boxes of bookshelves lying around unopened and all the shelves I bought unhung.

In my defense, I keep thinking a) I want to paint first; and b) I'm afraid of wires in the wall which keep popping up on my studfinder everywhere I want to drill for the shelves.

Oh, I've got a doozy!

Our guest bath is actually my bath (master has a small, en suite) and it's rather small. The bath and floor are tiled, but the prior owners put really dark, like grey black grout and I thought that was lousy.

The room would look bigger with lighter grout.

So, I had DH grout over without getting the old stuff out.

Now, about twice a year we have to go in and touch up where the grout has fallen out in the shower area.

The floor's been fine.

Talk about stupid! Just to save some money and get a pro to redo the grout, we have a kind of crappy job that needs touching up!

I really, really want to rip it ALL out, but since we don't have a money tree, it's probably not going to happen ;(

The list is too long and depressing to put down here. Previous owners were do it quick and cheap types so every time we try to do something it snowballs. Doesn't help that DH is a "good enough" type of person himself. I need a pint of IPA....

It isn't fun cleaning up after "Harry Homemakers" is it?!

Am I the only one who has light bulbs in chandeliers that constantly need changing? My old housekeeper used to do it and the new one doesn't and soon we'll need a flash light in the kitchen...

When we were driving away from the home we had lived in for 26 years and just sold in favor of urban living (first a rental apartment, now a condo), I said to my husband "the fact that the laundry room closet had no door knobs for 26 years should tell you something about whether we should be homeowners!". We always opened the door with a toe stuck under the door.

I have always liked Emily. What a great, refreshing post. I have annoying, ugly issues like that in almost every room in my house. I am so happy when I get a home improvement or decorating project done, but instead of enjoying what is good, I tend to focus on everything that's not done. There's not enough time or money to do it all. It's so nice to be reminded that is the reality for most people.

I went to Ikea in . . . January? And I still have the boxes of bookshelves lying around unopened and all the shelves I bought unhung.

Got you beat. I bought those shelves to hang over 3 years ago. Still sitting in the corner of my studio. Oh I did put together the closets so I could store my supplies but the handles I bought to put on them? Sitting on the corner of my desk for the past 3 years.

Oh and we moved into this place three years ago. No paintings on the walls, and most of my decorative stuff is still in its boxes. My excuse is this is the place we rent for the summers. We own our place in FL. That place is finished completely.

This is the first time I've ever admitted this. Most here (GW) know we had a significant remodel and add-on to the house. The price could have bought us a new house but we wanted to stay where we're at in the country.

When I found out I was SO embarrassed. One wall in the DR is wallpapered. I even sent a sample of the paper to my color consultant so we could match paint. Amy, are you reading this? I didn't even have the heart to tell you!

It was papered, and it was beautiful. Lots of compliments. However, a few months later I was l just standing in the kitchen and glanced at the wall. Two strips of wallpaper are UPSIDE DOWN. LOL!!!

And it still is. When people comment on it now, I tell them it's upside down, thinking they noticed it and were just being nice. No one ever notices it...but me.

The contractor didn't charge us for hanging the wallpaper, and when I told him about it, he didn't offer to fix it. I was in no mood to argue, but I should have.

I have more paper, and I suppose I may get to it eventually. Maybe not. :)

I bought my house in April 2009, and within an hour of signing the closing papers, I removed a shelf the previous owner had installed in the foyer in an odd place - it blocked the hall closet door from fully opening. Months later I applied drywall mud to cover the rather large holes left from the installation. It is six years later and I still haven't painted over the drywall mud.

Beagles, what type of bulbs do you use? We have those chandy candle type bulbs, and after 6 years I've only had to replace two.

Since we moved in last summer, we haven't had too much time to let projects sit unfinished. Mostly its and issue of saving up funds to complete stuff; not because we don't want to/ haven't gotten around to it. Unfortunately, the list is the following:

-finish stenciling the painted nightstands

-sand, paint and stencil desk

-buy bookshelves, dining room chairs, rug for bedroom, curtain rod for living room, chair for desk

-make/find/do something about the missing headboard in our room

-install crown molding in living room and dining room

-finish that freakin' mural

-hang a single picture

Boo. It looks like we haven't done anything - I swear we have!

Soon after we bought our house we had the wood floors redone in three rooms. The hideous non-original quarter round got tossed. Since then, the plan has been to replace it with better looking shoe molding that matches. Close to 15 years now, I still vacuum out the gaps. Excuses have disappeared over time. Yes, the nicked up and in one area scratched by the PO's dogs section of trim has to be repaired, but I've gotten really good at matching stains and finishes. And we got a (free!) decent miter saw when a cousin upgraded. And we upgraded the nailer. Maybe this fall...

So far, sjhockeyfan made me LOL.

Keep the stories coming, we're obviously in good company. Don't mind the broken oven door (so far back I don't remember when it happened) or the empty hooks on the wall (just since November). I'll get to those things one of these days.

Last year during my guest bath remodel, I sequestered my cats in my bedroom. One day Zephyr had a meltdown and pulled up the carpet at the threshold. I cleaned up the debris and repaired it with duct tape. It's still like that. It's hideous but I've stopped noticing (gray carpet and silver duct tape eventually blend). The carpet really needs to go. Just goes to show you what flaws you can ignore and live with.

@beagles: "Am I the only one who has light bulbs in chandeliers that constantly need changing?" I feel like I'm constantly changing chandy-style lightbulbs! I have them in maybe 9 or 10 indoor fixtures and 4 outdoors. I feel like they hardly last at all. I bought some of the LED type thinking they'd last longer. They are uuuuuugggly! The packaging hid the fugly plastic sleeve or whatever you call that thing, so I didn't see how ugly they are until I opened the boxes. They are now relegated to only the fixtures on my garage, too high to see eye to eye.

As for the original question, well I'm the queen of unfinished projects, long on ideas and short on time, money and execution. I always knew that maintaining a house took a lot of work but since losing my DH I have sometimes felt overwhelmed with it. Some day when the kids are out of the house I'll have a pile of things to do to fix up and sell!

Not only do I love these stories but they are VERY reassuring! What's puzzling, at least to me, is that for many if not most of my dangling tasks, the fix is often quick and simple. When I do finally tackle some long-neglected problem it ends up taking 30 minutes., after I've been ignoring it for years :). Ah the mysteries of the human homeowner psyche...

My attic and basement are full of my hidden shame. My house generally looks neat and organized and people often comment on my "lack of clutter." What they don't know is that you can barely open my attic door or the bulkhead from the basement because there is soooo much carp in both areas. Half full paint cans, baskets that I will use "someday," holiday decor, off-season pillows and bedding, discarded exercise equipment, outgrown shoes (for whatever reason, then end up in the basement utility room), light fixtures, stuff from oldest kid's brief foray into apartment living... etc. About every two years we do a big basement purge with one of those Bagsters in the driveway, and we really need to do the attic AND basement this year. Whenever I think about moving, these are the areas that make me think maybe instead DH and I will live here until we die, so the kids will have to deal with all this stuff.

We bought this house about four years ago. It was a foreclosure, and needed a ton of work (still does, but getting close). Trying to purchase this thing was a nightmare, it was like the bank and realtor didn't want to sell. They kept refusing to turn on the water service, and only did so at the very last minute before closing. It immediately started raining in the dining room!!

The bank fought us on the repairs, but eventually got it taken care of. It delayed closing by a few weeks, our landlord was freaking out because we were supposed to have moved, we almost lost funding. It was stressful!!

After we were finally in, more leaky, broken pipes were discovered. The kitchen ceiling even caved in, but we decided to just repair on our own, now that we were finally in and were planning on redoing the ceiling anyway to add lighting and exhaust. The pipe that caused that mess was to the shower in our bath. We had to cut out part of the wall in our closet to fix it. A big, ugly hole, about 2x3'. I covered the hole with an old bathrobe because it creeped me out, then promptly forgot about it! We have yet to fix that hole, even though we replaced the ceiling below right away.

Oakley, we just use the chandelier candle bulbs (incandescent- I hate LEDs). I can't believe you have only had to replace a few of yours. I agree w/ chicagoans that we seem to constantly need new ones because the bulbs don't last at all. Ours have been replaced numerous times in our kitchen chandelier and several times in our sunroom (those are a real pain b/c we need a very tall ladder). We do keep our lights on almost all the time though.

I'm working up the nerve to tell DH that I don't think the overhead garage storage rack, that I spent $$ on and he spent hours putting up, is going to work.

I should have seen it coming, that it would block access to shelves in the back of the garage, I really should have.

Alas, the damn thing is up and I'm already cursing it's existence!

The silver lining is that it's from Costco, and can literally be returned in pieces.

LOL at all these stories. Day to Day life takes priority sometimes, and deservedly so.

Here's another one: After one year in my new house, the light over the range burned out. I have a built in microwave over the range, and the light is under that. In trying to change out the bulb, I broke the bulb off at the base. But I haven't been able to fix it! It's pointing toward the back wall, and there's just not enough room to get at it! So sad.

Beagles, I read that over tightening bulbs will cause them to wear quicker. I copied this into my Notes, but forgot to add the source:

If you over tighten the bulbs, you can push the contact inward in such a way that there may be some arcing going on in there, which will cause the bulb to burn out sooner. You might even be able to see pits\burns on the contact on the bulb as well as the one in the socket.

I took a look at my fixtures that seemed to eat bulbs, and very slightly lifted the contact on each one with a toothpick (and power turned off). Then replaced the bulbs being careful not to twist too much. So far, it seems to be working!

I lived in my first place for 7 years and never hung a single picture. I propped them up.

I lived in the second one with bubble wrap over the windows for several years instead of window treatments.

There was not a working kitchen in that house for 4-1/2 years.

The valves in the bathroom faucet went bad first cold, so I closed the shutoff, then hot, so I closed that shutoff. And then since the sink didn't work anyway I removed it. You had to wash your hands and brush your teeth at the bathtub. That took a couple years. I only renovated the bathroom because I wanted to sell.

Thanks for the tip Errant_gw. We tighten our bulbs very tightly b/c we had a sparking chandelier that nearly started a house fire and the electrician we spoke to said that it likely happened because the bulks were lose. I will need to do more research on this!

Beagles, we leave the light on all day, every day. Same with the kitchen under cabinet lights. Only one has burnt out. Both get hot, would they be the LED?

Violet, here's what you do. We had to pay an electrician to get out a bulb broken in the porch light.

Turn the breaker to the hood and stove off. Use pliers to unscrew the bulb. That way your hand won't get in the way.

Now here's a tip for everyone if you don't know it already. For some reason, it seems that all of our burnt out lightbulbs are hard to unscrew. Even in lamps. It could be due to humidity, I don't know.

The electrician told me to put a very fine glaze of Vaseline around the metal part of the lightbulb that screws into the socket. Don't put it on the bottom of the bulb. Haven't had a stuck bulb since!

Errant, I can relate to your closet. I love my plumber - he always returns my calls and takes care of whatever little annoying thing bothering me. My plumber is clearly not a carpenter. I had a barely existent drip in the guest room shower and he cut into the back of the foyer coat closet to access a repair. I need a carpenter to possibly make something not as rough looking as sheet rock nailed back up, something that could be removed, returned into place - especially since a remodel of that bath will be somewhere 'down the road' and we might need that through-the-wall access again.

I do need the carpenter/contractor at some point. So far, I've been enjoying the house, busy with other things, and not wanting to commit myself to a contractor showing up at 8 AM and being here for days. The two guest bedrooms in this house have the original glazed cherry 1955 paneling in them, extending to right inside the closets with their built ins. I think it was probably lovely at one point but its tired, looks dry. We've been here two years and I haven't even bought furniture for one of those rooms, thinking I should have the walls taken care of first, move furniture in and decorate after.

It's been two years that I've been ignoring the oversized pink Jacuzzi tub in the master too. Other than the one day I filled it to see its operation and found it likely too noisy to ever enjoy if we were bath takers, and we are not ;) I'd like it gone, but I want to just come home from an errand and have it gone I think, I don't want to endure a messy disruptive project right now.

love the stories, and like many don't feel so badly now. We are also in a fixer foreclosure, we bought ours in 2006. While most all projects have been done and to a very high standard, a couple of little things still linger to be done, like caulking some of the crown molding or painting the rest of the bathroom door (it's only 1/2 done). We also have 6 huge shelving units we bought from Costco for the basement three years ago. 5 are still in boxes and one is partially put together. We also have all the stuff we hauled from California in the basement, it's been sitting down there since we moved in. Until this year, the only thing we've done in our back yard is mow. Finally we power washed the house and added the shed. We don't have fences, and our neighbors all keep their yards meticulously maintained. Our grass is half dirt, half weeds and the beds are so bad they're going back to their natural wooded state. I would love to get all of these projects done, but in the big scheme of things they're just not a priority. To our defense, the yards have never been maintained so we walked into a mess when we bought it and this year we have been working outside a little bit each week so some progress is noticeable.

I've only just figured out that lukkiirish is Lucky Irish, not Lurker-ish.

Oakley, the problem is that the space is too tight -- I can't get leverage when I reach back there, with pliers or any other tool. I'm thinking the entire microwave must be removed, which I'm not about to do myself.

I hate KLUDGE design!!

Violet- I don't know if there is room to try this trick, but it works perfectly. Get a whole potato (yes really) and push it into the broken bulb base, as far as you can. The potato will grab the glass/metal and function as a handle. Turn the whole potato, to unscrew the bulb. It will twist right out.

After this mass confession, why do people apologize for dust or a pile of "stuff" in photos they post? Makes no sense to me!

The mirror over our master bath sink has been obviously off center for 9 yrs.. Does it bug me? Yes. Does it bug me enough that i've ever asked for it to be moved? nope.

Just this year I framed two prints I bought at the Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Show . . . in 2001. In the intervening years they lived in an ever-more-brittle manila envelope on the tops of refrigerators in five different houses.

DH propped his bicycle (that he hasn't ridden in ten years) against the inside of the front courtyard wall when we moved into this house a year ago. I'm still trying to figure out how to get someone to notice it's there and steal it. It looked cute covered in snow in the winter.

Violet, have you googled how to remove the light bulb, using the brand of the microwave?

The potato trick is supposed to work too, but turn off the power!

Confession. I will never, ever, EVER remove the stove hood light because the last time I did it a brown recluse fell out. DH gets the job now.

This is a lot of amazing stuff considering most people who read a Home Decor website probably have a higher than normal interest in their home. What's going on in the houses of the other people?!

Your stories remind me that with every movd we would repaint and touch up. It still eludes me why we always waited to do this, never to be personally enjoyed. Now that I'm older and it takes far longer, I do it for me. No moves on the horizon.

Linelle, that is too funny!

Linelle, I hadn't figured that out! LOL over Pal's bubble wrap- window treatment, no working kitchen and only renovated the bath to sell! Oops! That last part hit a nerve! 2 1/2 years ago I started renovating my only bathroom; but the contractor never returned to finish and I've had no bathroom sink, sub-flooring, 2/3 sheetrock, no towel bars, medicine cab, or lights except in the bath fan. Now I've got a new guy who will be finishing it so I can sell! Even so, it worked out as the special console sink on legs, the marble flooring, towel bars, shelves, robe hook, lights etc. etc. that I had bought for the renovation are already installed in the new house : )

yikes, Oakley. gah now I'm really afraid!

I always thought you were suppose to have undone projects...point of conversation with the DH. Was told once you have "completed" the home repairs, you'll move. Has happened to us several times. So for now I am keeping those projects undone, tired of moving. Love all the stories above.

Iinelle, re: lukkiirish; I didn't figure that out either until someone in another thread referred to her/him as "Lucky" and I thought, "Huh?..Oh!" Lol

Potato trick sounds like genius.

Jakebedy, put a lock on the bike, but one that's not too efficient. That will ensure someone takes it, because they think it must be worth locking.

We're redoing our FR, which was a teen hangout for many years. I will spare you pictures of the petrified grape jelly & cola stains in the carpet -- in retrospect, the damage was worth it.

When we moved here 19 years ago, there was no money for window treatments. So I stenciled a design on muslin & put up home-made valences, and over the years, have visually tuned them out. Now that we're taking them down, I can't believe I lived with them for 19 years. Yuck!

SJHockey, your tale had me LOL.

The main thing that is driving me nuts is wall to wall carpet in our bedroom areas. We replaced carpet with new 7 years ago and shortly thereafter it started to pull away from the tack strips leaving us with crumpled carpet. When I was renovating the kitchen I had the LR carpet ripped out to continue the hardwood in the kitchen/breakfast area into the living room but we were leaving the carpet in the bedrooms. I asked our flooring man to have a crew come out to re-stretch the carpet. DH insisted that they didn't have to send a special crew out so the stretching didn't get done. Now all it would have taken was another phone call but did I? No..... it's been almost 2 years and we still have the crumpled carpet. I'm so disgusted with the carpet that I decided we are having it ripped out and installing hardwood instead.

Our downstairs bathroom that DH uses is a nightmare. When we had it completed our handy man used the cheapest fixtures he could find. I promised myself that I would promptly have everything replaced but it's 19 years later and the only change is my DSIL put a Pergo floor in for DH. If we ever sell I will have to have the whole thing ripped out and redone because it's an embarrassment.

=-qwa