Paint the whole house taupe, with beige Berber carpet," You want everything consistent dear" How about No! if I'm going to live here for the rest of my life, I want color, Chartreuse in the living room, red white and blue in the kitchen, yellow walls and Ceiling in the family room , black, white and terracotta ,in the main bath, Kelly green rug in the master bedroom! As the song goes " I don't care! I love it! You don't live here I do. My adult children are Artists, I wonder why? LOL

@juliesayer. Our neighbors across the street advised us to cut down our giant, shady, old maple trees so they could sit on their porch and look at the front of our house

However, Worst advice ever must have been given to the previous owners of our 1907 house, who covered the original hand painted mural in the pic below with floral wallpaper.

White tiled floor in kitchen.

@Catherine Hounslow, I agree completely... in fact White tile floor ANYWHERE! They always look SO bright and clean in pictures and such a major pain to live with.

Worst home advice hubby and I received came from a well-meaning family member, who insisted we should, as newlyweds, buy a condo to get our foot up on the first rung of the real estate ladder. I'm sure condos are great for some people in some circumstances, but a young couple who want to build a family don't need a condo. The money we paid in association fees alone was almost as high as our former rent. In order to sell it, we put in new carpeting, and then had to replace the AC unit. Between the real estate agent fees, the improvements we made, and other expenses, we barely broke even at closing, and even then, the whole experience was a net loss of several thousand dollars. We should have stayed in our apartment, and used the savings toward the house we eventually bought.

When I was 10 I gave my parents the advice of painting the house we lived in a baby blue color. WHY they listened to me I have no idea but that house is STILL baby blue. They moved from there 25 years ago. Still cracks me up when I drive by there. What can I say?? - I can be very convincing ;-)

You need an extra bedroom for guests to visit 3-4 days per year. No, mom, that's why there are hotels

To install light colored carpet!!!!!! Not ever anywhere for any reason!

It wasn't really advice, but the advice was implied, about a year after we bought our home (35 years ago):

"It's a great starter home"

It's our forever home, and I have genes on both sides of my family that makes living to 95 or so not out of the question.

A bank told me (when I was unemployed) - if you can't pay the bills, get a loan off your house and get money that way. (horrible advice - if I can't pay back that loan - the bank gets my house!) Great for the bank - not great for me.

The worst advice given was to attach a cheap piano hinge to a glass/ aluminum-framed shower door to the tile doorway. This from a guy who was too stupid to measure the door before he finished retiling the shower stall. The piano hinge was meant to extend the aluminum frame. The remodeler tore out thick concrete walls and installed hardibacker, which would have been fine if he had measured correctly. The new doorway was an inch and a half too wide. We fired him.

The silver lining: I posted the problem, which seemed like a crisis at the time since it involved thousands of dollars, on the John Bridge Tile Forum and learned that one of the forum moderators lived in my area. Since then, that moderator has renovated all three baths/showers in our house using the "mud" method (meaning a concrete and chickenwire underlayment that the tile is applied to) and really, they are still beautiful, functional, and no shower pan leaks! All white tile, just perfect! Love that tile forum too.

I don't even remember where I found them, but I hired one contractor for a small job, that did a good job, but disappeared just before he was done, no big deal.................but he finally called and said he was hiding from the mob. He was an older guy, said he was from Las Vegas, with a perm and a gold chain. Another guy that did a good job, but one day several years later, I heard a familiar voice on TV, and looked, and it was him, on a local talk show talking about how he put his life together after being in prison.........................

Resurrecting an old thread here, but I'm going to have to say the worst advice we got was from ILs:

"This is a good house, I think you should buy it, we like it."

They convinced us to walk away from two homes that we really liked that we're closer to my husbands job but further from "home". still regret it. (We brought parents along to the second or third viewings of homes)

Fixing up a dream/forever home we were okay with, fixing up a starter home has turned into a mess of calculating what will help us sell and get an ROI on. If they're not doing the work, or living there, I'm not listening to personal opinion.... next round will only "listen" to about technical issues from my grand pap or father in law on the second viewings.

Many years ago I was instructed to rip out the vinyl in the kitchen and breakfast nook, replace it with ceramic tile, and extend the tile into the den. Ok, the vinyl had to go, but the tile was a BAD choice ... too shiny, always cold, and hurt my back. Worse, it made the den look like a bathroom. I had a young child and a dog at the time, so I suppose the idea was that tile would be “practical,” but after six months it looked awful and after a year, completely dated... and my back hurt. I didn’t like having to put rugs down in front of the sink. Far more hassle than it was worth.

Additionally, the tile increased noise levels. Nothing to absorb the sound of the TV or appliances. Putting dishes away made a racket like a bowling alley.

That house was sold two years ago and torn down.. I want to say,”thankfully.” And who gave me the bad advice? My mom.She was a wonderful person and a domestic goddess, but I never shared her taste for “modern”, which to me looks institutional.

Do what you want, not what your family members want. Sometimes even mom is wrong.