Bad decor/renovation choices?

March 16, 2011 1:47 PM

Biggest home furnishing/renovation mistakes? Choice of materials, furniture, colors or arrangements that ended up a wreck (or ongoing annoyance)?

Example: black shiny floors in a kitchen show every speck of dust, drop of water, etc.

Especially interested in fads that were/are tough to live with and inadvisable materials.

posted by the young rope-rider to home & garden (53 answers total)

Sliding shower doors. Popular in the 70s/80s...HATE cleaning them. And if they're cheap, they rust. And it does not leave you an edge of the tub to sit or lean on.
posted by wending my way at 1:50 PM on March 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

I would think twice before buying a giant u-shaped sectional couch again. It has it's benefits, like three people can sleep on it. And it is comfortable. But because of its size and shape, we basically can only have one arrangement in our living room, and when we consider moving to a new apartment (or house-buying), I've seen many living rooms that would not easily fit this beast. Plus, because of the investment, we are likely looking at using this couch for many years to come.

Also, the micro-suede has pluses and minuses. The fabric shows dust, etc, and I'm beginning to worry about how it will hold up in the long-run (sagging, wearing thin). On the other hand I've spilled coffee and wine and it never stains. A few weeks ago I was holding a glass of wine and my sleeping husband knocked the entire thing out of my hands (wine all over me, my laptop, pooling on each side of me on the couch. I absorbed it with paper towels, and you can't see it at all now. Crazy!

So, think about your couch purchase.
posted by JenMarie at 1:59 PM on March 16, 2011

Wallpaper. 'nuff said.

And although I've never done the deed myself, I've had to restore many, many, wooden features (banisters, french doors, trellises, crown moulding, etc.) covered in years of paint, when in many instances it looks SO much better in its restored and stained glory!

Lastly... with any custom built piping, lighting, etc. Make sure that you plan for possible future repairs.. I had to work on a hot tub enclosed in super expensive marble whose pump had failed. No access door or anything, ended up costing the customer hundreds of dollars in marble alone (w/o demo and rebuild labor, I didn't do that part). A simple bit of pre-planning would've saved the customer so much money. And lighting... fixtures where it's impossible to replace bulbs without being a contortionist, and no way to replace a busted fixture without destroying the whole cabinet enclosure or other built-in structure....
posted by Debaser626 at 2:01 PM on March 16, 2011

Padded walls. The house we grew up in, built around 1975 or so, has a rust-orange padded wall in the living room. Just one wall. Orange. And padded. Bad, bad idea.

It is unfortunately still there. You cannot paint over or easily remove that monstrosity.
posted by raztaj at 2:02 PM on March 16, 2011

Stainless steel that scratches and dents (all the rage right now in overly-expensive appliances).

Flat-top stovetops. To a lesser extent, all electric stovetops.
posted by fritley at 2:06 PM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Dropped ceilings in places other than a basement. We tore out a dropped ceiling that had been installed in the main floor of a victorian house with 12' ceilings... to this day I have no idea why they put it in in the first place. Just say no to suspended ceilings.
posted by GuyZero at 2:06 PM on March 16, 2011

12 volt track lighting. If you think about it for a few minutes, it turns out there's really only a few good places for the lights. You don't need to install an expensive eyesore, that you probably don't even have extra fixtures for, and that needs power-hungry heat-emitting transformers.

Ceiling low? They block the space. Ceilings high? They're too far away to be of much use. (See: power law rapid light falloff)
posted by StickyCarpet at 2:08 PM on March 16, 2011

wood countertops in the kitchen. they look beautiful, but are essentially impossible to maintain (sink water + wood = bad).
posted by tbarkow at 2:17 PM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

Painting our powder room red. After several years, I hate it. But it's going to be so hard to paint over it, and it's a tight space anyway, and it's just ughhhh.
posted by candyland at 2:17 PM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wide white grout on tiled countertops. The builder put it in and I ended up spending 6 years doing a lot of cleaning with bleach (every time I made tea, or had wine, or ...)
posted by kbuxton at 2:18 PM on March 16, 2011

If you're going to be installing carpet, go for the really nice carpet pad. It makes a huge difference in how your carpet feels. Our carpet guy told us he could save us some money by reusing the old pad and it's been a huge regret.
posted by TooFewShoes at 2:18 PM on March 16, 2011

Dark colored toilet/bath/sinks. Not in my house, but my friend spends a silly amount of time keeping hers looking semi-presentable in our hard water area.

Custom sized built-ins/cabinetry around appliances. In my kitchen, the space for the fridge is so hemmed in with counters and cabinets that when I recently had to replace the ancient fridge, my choices were limited to exactly two models, both by the same manufacturer and of the same style and lack of energy efficiency as the previous (much-hated) fridge. While some appliances stay the same size (dishwashers), some have ballooned in size over the years (fridges, washing machines) or gotten much smaller (microwaves). Similarly, over at another friend's house, she has a neat custom cubby for a microwave oven that I doubt she'll ever find a replacement for when it inevitably dies. Yet another friend has a really nice set of countertop appliance 'garages' that are now too short or narrow or shallow to fit currently available replacements. Just go with adjustable shelving.

Spa-sized bathtub. Numerous friends put them in during '80s-90s era remodels. Very few of them are used anymore due to their desire for conservation and/or the fact that with their average house water pressure, it takes nearly an hour to draw a bath and completely drains the water heater in the process.

Outside: never plant vines. No matter how beautiful the flowers or how they hide that ugly corner, they always grow faster than your ability to manage. I now spend several days/year giving various parts of my house and garden haircuts.
posted by jamaro at 2:22 PM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I actually prefer flat top stoves. No crevices for gunk to get into, no huge burners that have to be washed separately in the sink, etc. I've had all 3 major types of stove, and I'm going back to the flat top from now on. Caveat: I don't enjoy cooking. If you're the chef type, gas is the way to go.

Upholstered furniture around children. Leather is your best bet for being cleanable and still looking to be in decent shape after a couple of years.

cheap flooring of any variety.
posted by wwartorff at 2:24 PM on March 16, 2011

Faux finishes when painting walls. It looks so cute when Martha Stewart does it, but none of us are Martha Stewart. For some reason my mom let me sponge paint a bathroom in high school and we both thought it was awesome at the time but now it is obviously Crazytown.

Accent walls are similarly questionable. They can be done right and then they're terrific, but when they're wrong, they're so very wrong.

Not building ventilation (with fans and stuff) into bathrooms. Huge mistake.

Also, seconding JenMarie on the sectional couches. They really are awesome and they're a good choice if you know that their location is going to be pretty static, but if you ever rearrange, it is practically guaranteed that they will not fit right in whatever space you move them to. I still love me some sectional couches but that's something to keep in mind.
posted by mandanza at 2:27 PM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

laminate flooring. The knockoff pergo floors that were put in just five years ago in our house look pretty dreadful - the laminate looks more like plastic with every scratch, and the joinery is starting to crack. Ugh.
posted by peachfuzz at 2:30 PM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Mistakes:
Painting over wallpaper. Wallpaper isn't that hard to remove, but wallpaper that has been painted over is a nightmare. I'm working on stripping a wall with 2-3 layers of paper that's been painted over.

Laminate, Pergo-style flooring. Clicks annoyingly if you're wearing a shoe with any sort of heal on it.

Suede-finish or textured wall paint. It's terrible for people with allergies and you have to sand it down first if you ever want to paint over it.

-----------

Things to do:
Get a nice carpet pad instead of the cheapo one that comes standard.

Seal your grout. It makes it easier to clean and less likely to get mildew or mold on it (also keeps water from penetrating behind the tiles)

Caulk your house, both inside and outside. Water is the enemy of wood.
posted by Ostara at 2:32 PM on March 16, 2011

As kbuxton said, wide white grout on kitchen counters. Especially with white ceramic tile. It is a bitch to keep clean, and the 6x6 tiles make rolling out dough for baking impossible.

Also, colored accent tiles - they can end up looking dated and restrict future decorating options. I'd maybe not hate the white tile in my kitchen so much if the accent tiles weren't that dark green that was so popular in the mid-to-late 90s. The two upstairs baths have the same issue, with green in the master bath and black in the hall bath. Blech. I'd rather have just plain white.

And anyone who puts carpeting in the kitchen or the bathroom is just wrong.
posted by Lulu's Pink Converse at 2:34 PM on March 16, 2011

U-shaped kitchen. The layout didn't allow for much else, but only 2 people can be in the kitchen working before you start bumping into each other. Fortunately, my friends are good-natured.

When I renovated the daylight basement, I expanded the utility room and storage a bit. Wish I'd made it larger, even at the expense of the living space. Storage and workshop space are useful.

Buy a few things you just really love. I bought a Pottery Barn rug that I absolutely loved, and it was perfect in my last house.

I choose color by how I want the room to feel, not by favorite color. For example, I used a pale neutral to make a room calm. A room that faces sunset will get a lot of gold and reddish light.

Don't forget to level the tub.
posted by theora55 at 2:35 PM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Before making any design decision, ask yourself "How am I going to clean this?"
posted by cyndigo at 2:36 PM on March 16, 2011 [16 favorites]

The biggest mistake is to try too hard to save money.

The sweet scent of low price fades quickly, but the stench of poor quality lasts forever.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:50 PM on March 16, 2011 [18 favorites]

Not having enough electrical outlets. Who wants to put a power strip down in a kitchen or bathroom?

Dark bathrooms. It may seem like a good idea to paint a powder room with dark paint, but it really gets old after a while.

Glass tables. They look fabulous and modern but aren't very child-friendly (or klutz-friendly). Scratches show through pretty easily, and they are a pain to move. They're also a liability (instead of a safe haven) in earthquakes.
posted by hampanda at 2:51 PM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I adore my sectional couch with a chaise at one end. In most ways, it's a good example of buying something that you really, really want and being happy with it.

However, the cushions are kind of soft because they're filled with fluff instead of a shaped foam insert. The loose back cushions, for example, are always getting smooshed into weird shapes that are hard to beat back into normalcy. Maybe a little more stuffing would help.

But the main problem is that between the chaise cushion and the shaped cushion on the other side (instead of being just plain rectangular -- see how the chaise cushion fits around the arm?), it's impossible to turn two of the three seat cushions over for better wear, or to hide a spot. There's only one way the cushions fit on the couch, so you can imagine how much of a divot is in the chaise area (where I spend, um, most of my time...).

Thankfully, the fluff mitigates that to some degree... but see above :P

Also, when we remodeled our bathrooms years ago my parents told me I'd never have to clean under the new clawfoot tub. They lied.
posted by Madamina at 2:53 PM on March 16, 2011

uglyhousephotos.com is a good museum of regrettable renos.

I am a big fan of my claw-foot tub and would not take it out, but it is hard to clean along the wall sides of it. (On preview, yes, also under it -- though it is nice to have so much real estate for storage there)

Do not cheap out on toilets. Cheap + low-flow = mistake, and I haven't been thrilled with non-cheap low-flows, so I'm waiting until I find just the right antique toilet to rip out the cheapie and re-install.

All wallpaper "borders" -- looked nice for a half hour in 1992, I suppose, but yuk. Not too too complicated to remove, but still not thrilled to be doing it.
posted by kmennie at 2:58 PM on March 16, 2011

Tiled countertops. I have them. I hate them. They never look clean, even with grey grout. The only good thing I can say is that you can put hot pans on them without worry. But I have plans to redo the kitchen and the counters are the first thing to go. Second is the drop in sink. The edge always looks icky. I'm definitely doing an undermount.
posted by elsietheeel at 2:59 PM on March 16, 2011 [4 favorites]

Low-cost engineered wood flooring (even with a supposed 25-year warranty) looks like cheap, finished plywood in about 2 months -- because that's what it is.
posted by heigh-hothederryo at 3:02 PM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

I have a coffee table with drawers that I love, but inset glass panels at the top that I hate with a fiery passion. The glass shows every tiny smudge and speck of dust, and untold amounts of crap get caught in along the edges.

Definitely agree with the no tiled countertops suggestion. That grout just looks super nasty over time.

And building on what others have said, also avoid tankless toilets like the plague. My parents have some, and they've been an eternal annoyance to everybody who has ever had the displeasure of using them.
posted by Diagonalize at 3:08 PM on March 16, 2011

1. Unless you are truly masterful, do not DIY. House the Sequel was owned by someone addicted to DIY...who didn't know WTH he was doing. (Laminate floors, badly installed; electrical wiring to main kitchen light, screwed up ["well, he had the right idea," the electrician commented]; grout in bathroom tile floor, unsealed; etc., etc., etc.)

2. Ditto black sinks. I've got a black marble vanity now that's just impossible to clean.

3. Make sure that you can actually reach light fixtures. In House the Original, a tall contractor installed a fixture over the stairwell that was very easy for him to reach. For short TJW, getting to the fixture involved climbing on the banister and teetering over the abyss.

4. Cheap carpet is just a waste of money, as is cheap padding. Buy good stuff.
posted by thomas j wise at 3:09 PM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

2 bad ideas: a noisy toilet in a bathroom that shares a common wall with the living room. Think about noise transmission between adjacent rooms--readjust the floor plan, add sound insulation in shared walls, +/or choose quiet appliances.

In the same vein, pay more to get quieter versions of exhaust fans for kitchen and bathrooms. Life is much more pleasant if the fan doesn't sound like a jet engine.

When buying things, be aware that "contractor quality" or "builders' quality" doesn't mean extra special good, it means junk.
posted by Corvid at 3:14 PM on March 16, 2011

Someone upthread spoke against black in bathrooms. Allow me to speak against white. For some reason, our bathroom seems to be a magnet for crud that stands out brilliantly against the white tile flooring. If it were up to me, the bathroom would have been done in something earthy, like concrete.

Got a cheap faucet for the kitchen sink (comparatively—it seemed expensive at the time). Hate it—the handle seems to have only on and off, no in between (Pegasus is the maker. Avoid). It's also a weird three-hole configuration (one for the outlet, one for the handle, a small one for the soap dispenser) that will be hard to match when we replace it.
posted by adamrice at 3:26 PM on March 16, 2011

Think carefully about removing utility space in favor of "living" space, and think especially carefully of trying to shoehorn living space from places it was never meant to be, such as a low-ceilinged basement.

Nothing was more disappointing to me in our house search than finding a house with a garage (a necessity for us) that had been turned into a totally craptastic "bedroom".

As for decorating, avoid trends. I mean, if something is in-style that you just adore, go for it, but granite and stainless to will look as dated as avacado and super-long shag before long, and they will similarly be harmful to resale at some point, if that's the goal.
posted by maxwelton at 3:53 PM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

Think stainless steel appliance + granite countertops are the kitchen look that will be very dated soon.

And as someone who loves to cook and can, I HATE my smooth top stove. I'd rather have plain old electric burners than this. It is a total bitch to clean.
posted by purenitrous at 4:03 PM on March 16, 2011

someone in the 70s or so did my downstairs bathroom in yellow tile with a brown tile border. Yellow. and brown. It's HIDEOUS. We called it the "pee and poop" bathroom. It's waaaaay too much tile to bother getting rid of (although I ponder re-bordering it in blue -- blue and yellow is not so bad) unless we redid the whole bathroom and dealt with the weird sink cabinet at the same time. We keep an opaque blue shower curtain closed so it isn't quite so overwhelming.

Have at least one kitchen cabinet that can take tall cereal boxes. None of mine can. It's eternally irritating.

Both of my doors (front and kitchen) open right into the room without much transitional area. (There's a tiled area at the front door which is convenient for shoe removal, but no place to STOW those shoes.) I would give ANYTHING for a mudroom. Or a foyer. Or somewhere where we could drop bags and shoes and things or put things on their way back out to the car and NOT have them in the middle of my living room/kitchen. Just at one entrance.

And GOD YES on the wallpaper borders. I hate them so much. And they're hard for me to get down because I'm very short. Wallpaper generally is not my favorite thing, but the borders are obnoxious.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:09 PM on March 16, 2011

Oh, on the househunting front, we recently looked at a house with an uber-bathroom with a tub so deep I literally could not have climbed into it safely. I would have needed stairs. That house also featured a built-in gun-rack closet. I'm a big fan of personalizing your space, but over-personalizing and expecting other people to pay a premium because YOU paid a premium for a tub you could drown standing-up 9-year-olds in and a built-in gun-rack closet is insane.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:11 PM on March 16, 2011

Nthing the assertion that smoothtop/flat/glass/electric/whatever you call them cooktops are a true nightmare to keep clean. Both white and black are problematic. I let a teapot run dry and cracked the hell out of mine. Couldn't make the change to a gas cooktop fast enough. Very satisfying though a steep learning curve to adjust to a different cooking mindset.
posted by Ginesthoi at 5:24 PM on March 16, 2011

(pressed post too quickly)

Also, consider adding some variation of crown molding in most rooms. It is a classy touch that never seems to look dated or weird, especially if you stick with a classic design and avoid sticking one molding upon another until the stack at the ceiling is 12 inches high or even more. Rooms without crown molding seem to lack that sort of polished feel that the molding adds.
posted by Ginesthoi at 5:29 PM on March 16, 2011

We have some bizarre design decisions in our house. One room has unfinished rough wood paneling. Splinters. Seriously. Another room has a single wall composed of rough exterior brick. FWIW, we do not have a brick house; the only place the brick appears is on that one interior wall. These are also pains in the head when it comes to dusting, because they grab dust like crazy and also happily shred anything used to try to dust them.

On building and remodeling, we think the reason that we can not get ANY outside reception (radio, TV, cellular) in our house is that the builder--a DIY guy who built the house for himself--went overboard on rebar in the foundation. Apparently, his reasoning was, "I have it, I may as well use it."

On that note, it may be a good idea to try not to put too much metal between a computer use area (or a wifi enabled TV accessory) and the wifi router. We *think* the wifi issues that one friend had were due to positioning the washer/dryer between one office with the wifi router and the other office with the second computer. IT's been a few years; technology may have improved, and of course one can always get a repeater for really bad spots. But when you're putting it together, it may be easier to just avoid the problem in the first place.
posted by galadriel at 5:31 PM on March 16, 2011

Every rental property I have lived in has had pale carpets. Supposedly they make the rooms look bigger. In reality, they make the rooms look dirty, because they are stained within minutes of someone drinking or eating something in that room, and they need vacuuming every couple of days.
posted by lollusc at 6:46 PM on March 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

Oh yeah, also:

That wonderful modern fireproof building substance called asbestos.
posted by lollusc at 6:47 PM on March 16, 2011

My parents bought a house that had the master bathroom incorporated into the master bedroom - no walls between the two. Not only that, but the toilet was separated from the rest of the room by nothing but saloon-style western doors. Terrible.
posted by WowLookStars at 7:29 PM on March 16, 2011

We bought our apartment new and there are two things we did that we regret:

(1) Not looking into replacing the range hood over the stove in our apartment when it was built... seems like we can't fry anything without the smoke alarms going off.

(2) Having the builder put in hard wood flooring; turned out to be WAY more expensive than if we had just pulled up the carpet afterward :(
posted by groovesquirrel at 7:29 PM on March 16, 2011

Black carpet. Our apartment has it and we hate it. Haaaaaaaaate it. The rationale, according to the building manager when we moved in, was that it won't show red wine stains.

True. The one time I spilled red wine, it did not leave an obvious stain.

However, every single damn cat hair and grain of dust shows up. And those we get all day every day.

I'm thinking of taping a picture of Sisyphus to the vacuum cleaner. At least it might give my husband a chuckle as he continues the endless task of trying to make it not quite so screamingly obvious the instant someone steps through the door that we have two mostly-white cats...

Oh, and yes, tile counters suck. Even more when they're Pepto-Bismol pink.
posted by Lexica at 7:45 PM on March 16, 2011

Almost everyone paints. Make sure you're invested in what you're doing when you decide to paint.

1) Buy the right paint. Don't just buy the cheapest kind you can find.
2) Buy the right supplies. Nice brushes help a lot. Frog tape. Drop cloths.
3) Take your time prepping. Move out all the furniture. Tape the shit out of everything. Lay down drop cloths. Do it all. You will spend more time prepping than you will painting.
4) Attention to detail when you're painting. If Mom and the kids are helping out, give them tasks they can handle. Tape doesn't really work so figure out how to cut in properly and spend your time doing just that.
5) Don't burn out. Take a break. Eat. Make sure energy is high. When people get tired/over it, they start throwing paint on the walls and they stop giving a shit.
6) Once you're done painting, you'll have to go back around and touch up the edges. Don't forget this part.

If you can't invest properly in a DIY paint project, I recommend hiring it out.
posted by shew at 8:43 PM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you want to paint a weird color, buy the major items (couch, bedding, etc) first, *then* pick the paint. In my first apartment I painted my bedroom bright green. It was an awesome color but it was really hard to find bedding to match!
posted by radioamy at 8:48 PM on March 16, 2011

Ginesthoi is spot-on about crown molding. Looks so classy! I'm so used to it living in New Orleans that everywhere else looks cheap in comparison!

I love my apartment's kitchen, but I hate our sink. The basin is shallow and the faucet is low - with just a few dishes in you can't even fill up a pitcher of water! I wish we at least had a taller faucet.

Definitely be wary of trends. Those sink basins that sit on top of the counter are going to look dated very soon. Ugh.
posted by radioamy at 8:53 PM on March 16, 2011

Nix the cheap laminate flooring. Nth-ing no tile counters - the grout is such a pain. And, I know this may be unpopular, but my mom and all her friends HATE their granite countertops. They all agree it's impossible to tell if they are really clean and every last one of them would pick something other than granite in their kitchen if they could do it over again. Also, I'll never get a divided kitchen sink again, after having a big, deep, single bowl. It was the greatest thing ever.
posted by buzzkillington at 1:14 AM on March 17, 2011

The bathroom in my house has wood panelling on the walls and ceilings. I don't know why. Maybe the previous owner wanted a "Swedish sauna" look. It provides the perfect environment for mould growth and every time I have a shower I wish it was gone.

The same bathroom has a little mini bath, about 30cm deep and about 1m on each side. Nobody knows what it's for.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:42 AM on March 17, 2011

The same bathroom has a little mini bath, about 30cm deep and about 1m on each side. Nobody knows what it's for.

It's for washing your feet before you take a real bath or shower. That way the shower/bathtub stays cleaner, and you don't have to sit in your dirt if you are bathing for fun.
posted by lollusc at 4:53 AM on March 17, 2011

Kitchen upper cabinets hung ~14" off the countertop in my last apartment. Argh! It meant that neither the knifeblock, the coffeemaker, nor the paper towel holder would actually fit (especially not in a useable way) at the back of the counter, and I had to temporarily retire my under-cabinet mounted CD/MP3/radio. Standard height is 18".

New house has 24" spacing, which is a huge relief after the old apartment. Being able to pour water into the coffeemaker without hitting the pitcher on the upper cabinets is nice; putting a half-sheet baking pan (wok, huge skillet, etc) into the dish drainer without having to angle it like crazy is also nice. Getting a chef knife out of the knife block and not ending up with bloody knuckles scraped over the cabinet corner is fantastic. But it would be a hassle to get anything out of the cabinets if husband and I weren't both tall. We're about to redesign the kitchen and are waffling over the 18-24" range.
posted by aimedwander at 7:55 AM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I made some regrettable mistakes in the placement and number of light switches. Give them plenty of thought.
posted by wryly at 3:48 PM on March 17, 2011

Never paint trim ultra-white. It is stark and jarring. Pick a softer shade of white instead.

If you want your dining room to be in the same color line as your living room, but slightly dark, go TWO shades darker on the swatch. One shade darker doesn't really like much darker when it's on the walls, with varying sunlight between the rooms and all.

Always, always, ALWAYS invest in good tape when you are painting trim and want to keep the paint off of your hardwood floors and window glass. Cheap masking tape will cost you a lot of time in the end.
posted by sickinthehead at 7:00 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I curse every day I took out the walls in my living room-den, having a big open area means you can't close the door and you're always in a room with someone. It's annoying
posted by The Whelk at 3:46 PM on July 24, 2011

Oh and Jersuemale stone counters was a disaster, chips, stains, and does not age well.
posted by The Whelk at 3:48 PM on July 24, 2011

"Jerusalem" rather.

And in an older building, don't renovate without considering to replace your fuse or circuit breaker boxes. I didn't even cross my mind and now we have archaic boxes in hard to reach places and they have to be worked on LIVE which is just super dangerous.
posted by The Whelk at 3:49 PM on July 24, 2011