Previous owners (who built the house) did a large step/landing at the bottom and top of the staircase. It must have passed code, but it is a major tripping hazard when you are not used to it. Biggest danger is the one upstairs when my parents or MIL are visiting. I always tell the them to hold the railing in case they miss that first step/landing. We had the hardwoods refinished before we moved in and didn't even think about at least trying to alter the one upstairs.

Mrs. Pete, I have the opposite light switch problem: why does the switch operate the outlet right next to the switch?! We have this in two bedrooms and a family room. In fact, that last outlet is in a space between two doors where you wouldn't put a lamp, tv, cd player, etc. because it's right where you walk.

When you walk in the kitchen and dining room, the switches are behind the door. Why couldn't they have been 8-12" over?!

In the basement, there are only two lights in the storage area and NO outlet at all.

There is a water spigot in the garage, but surrounded by drywall and no drain nor caulk in the corner beneath. Huh? So to run sprinklers to the front yard, we have a couple of hoses running from the backyard spigot around the house to another reel in the front. One day, we'll add a spigot on the other side of the front-facing kitchen sink! Why didn't they put it there in the first place? (Come to think of it, our previous house, built around the same time, early 60's, had the same thing.)

For the TKO, here's one: the run next to the oven is a sink/stove base (and there was never a sink or cooktop there. So where there could be a fabulous 30"-wide drawer, there's nothin' but a flat panel. And most of the cabinets have center stiles; the cabinet under the cooktop has 11" openings!

We have no sidelights on the front door. The furnace is located in its own room that you access from an outside door. Just weird.

On switches, I have a walk-in pantry and wish I had them put the light switch in the door rather than on the wall...would be nice for walking in with hands full and for not accidentally leaving the light on. We have one in the foyer closet.

Thinking back to the last house we owned, here are a few things:

The mud/laundry room had a walkway with the washer/dryer on one side and a reach-in closet on the other. At the end of the walkway was a door closing it off from the kitchen. If the closet door was left open, the door from the kitchen would hit it. It was so annoying we removed the closet door. Changing the door swing would have avoided the problem.

The family room had a HUGE fireplace that was completely out of scale for the room, and meant the room was always awkward and options for furniture placement were very limited. Something smaller (like a regular sized fireplace, instead of the over-sized one) would have been a whole lot better.

There was a nice railing up the stairs, and I liked to put a lit garland on it, but there wasn't an outlet I could use that didn't mean putting the cord across a walkway. It would have been easy to add an outlet near the bottom of the stairs.

Annie, put a motion detector light fixture in your pantry :) That's how I solved the problem I hated in my last house: mudroom light was on a pull-chain!

We sold our last house and are currently building again and are now in a temporary rental.

Things I disliked about our last home:

1. Complete open foyer to living areas.

2. Huge 1 1/2" transom windows all around our 8" front door, people would come to door and peek in. Eeekkkk!!! Even total strangers would walk or drive up our 300ft driveway to peak in saying they loved our home and wanted to see the inside. Happened way too many times, too freaky.

3. Combined laundry/mudroom.

4. Light grout on some tiled floors, could never keep clean.

5. Small walk-in pantry.

6. Light switch of theatre room was outside in hallway as electrician talked us out of putting it inside the room behind double French doors, disliked having to open doors, and leave the room just to dim or turn off lights.

7. The transom window that we had above the door leading to a rear deck outside our master bedroom. Let way too much light in and it was right across from our bed. I'm one who needs pure darkness to sleep well.

8. Having a bungalow without a walkout basement, it was too dark downstairs in the children's rooms, family spaces..... in our climate with long dark winters.

Our first home (which has been our only home - in a rental now building):
1. One small coat closet, not large enough for 2 people let alone 4 and the occasional guest.

2. No entry way to really speak of - no place for shoes.

3. Full bath layout - the door was always in the way of the sink, the toilet or both. It only 'worked' if it was closed. You have to walk in, lean in to the tub and then you'd have enough clearance to close it without hitting yourself and THEN you could use it. UGH!

4. Washer and Dryer, toilet and sink all in a 5x7 space. If you were doing wash there was no place for the basket. If the basket was there - no place to put your feet to use the facilities.

5. Master bathroom vanity with no door. Pretty much made it useless. The toilet and shower were behind a door but if you needed to use the sink/light it would shine right onto the bed. Not to mention if you needed to use the hair dryer. Not a great layout for 2 people who work different shifts.

6. Kitchen - door pinch points everywhere (Annie you are stuck on lights I am stuck on DOORS). The kitchen especially. If he fridge was open no one could pass. If the stove was open, no one could pass. The fridge was right off of the garage entry - so bottlenecks constantly. In a 3-4 foot radius there was the entrance from the garage, to the right the half bath door and to your left (off set a bit) the fridge.

That's it!

chispa- The stairs you describe are NOT code; there are strict rules (in most places) about variation in height and depth of stair treads.

Our soon-to-be-former house had lots of issues. The worst was the kitchen- too small, and in the center of the house. There were no windows, and even the windows in the adjacent family room were under a porch. The fridge was directly across from the sink, so you couldn't open it if someone was at the sink. Also, when the fridge door was open, it blocked on access to the kitchen.

The dining room was too small to be usable, and it was centrally located with doors going everywhere. If you put a table and chairs in there, you had to squeeze past them, including carrying the laundry basket.

The master bedroom was long and narrow, with only one window. The only place to put the bed was directly under the window- not everyone's favorite.

The foyer was again too small to be any good. Either have enough room to receive guests, or omit it altogether.

Like many FL homes, there was no insulation in the walls, thin insulation in the attic, and single-pane windows. The A/C ductwork was in the furnace-hot attic- Duh!

There were a lot of little issues with construction, plumbing, and wiring. This surprising, since it was the builder's own house!

BP, we looked into it...but not recently...but at the time the motion detectors didn't work nicely with our fluorescent fixture and the ones that did were megabucks, so we live with it...may be worthwhile investigating again.

In our old house, I hated having the DR completely open to the kitchen...guests saw all the mess, the dirty dishes and the fun I'd have prepping dessert for everyone, like the time I opened the cabinet door, the box of crackers fell out, hit me in the head and crackers went flying everywhere...not the entertainment I had planned on!

Good list of items to avoid.

One poster made me remember something: my bedroom has only one spot the bed can be placed (not a problem -- it works), but if the bathroom light is left on and the door is left open, the light shines right on my side of the bed. I can't stand it.

Mushcreek- the stair landings meet code dimension wise, but they are not logical or where you would expect them to be. We have no issues as we are used to them, but a guest has a high probability of falling if they got up in the middles of the night and attempted the stairs with no lights on.

The best landscaping is around the foundation, and I can't see it from inside!

lr/gr is one big hallway with no good areas to place furniture
15 ft wide and 20 ft long- like a shoebox with 5 doorways and a fire place.......
bane of my life for 12 years

XC60-- you mentioned you didn't like the combined laundry/mud room. Can you share more about why? We are in the planning stages of a new home and have been considering a combined laundry/mud room (to keep more of the dirt in one place). I would be interested in some pros and cons you found from living with one. Thanks!

"What are the piddly little annoying things about your house? Not big things like too much /too little square footage."

LOL! Yet square footage issues are the most mentioned in the above posts!

I have no "piddly little annoying things" at the moment. Since they annoyed me, I took care of them (no sense going through life annoyed!).
The issues I have involve square footage.....

the light switch to our lamp post is in the garage. I wish it was indoors.

the mortgage

No full bath on the first floor and the pr directly across from the kitchen cooking area. However, the home is a duplex in an urban area with a long, narrow foot print to deal with.

Yes, CO to OK, I wonder about that too. We have a combined laundry/mud room which we pass through from the garage and it works fine for us. But it's just the 2 of us...and we keep up with our laundry on a regular basis so there aren't piles of it floating around the room. We have a bench with cubbies above and baskets underneath and coat hooks that hang over the heat register.

It has to be the otr micro- major source for conflict when both adults are home at mealtimes.

And the laundry room, which isn't sized all that badly, but the way it's laid out i have no room for putting a basket on the floor and walking into the room without tripping on the basket. It's terrible.

My laundry room, specifically the dryer vent. I'd like to meet the home design wizard who thought putting the laundry room right in the middle of the house was a good idea. My dryer vents 8ft strait up to the attic, hits a 90 deg bend, and then goes another 15 ft or so to the outside wall. Keeping that cleaned out, so as not to have a fire hazard in my attic, has been "fun".

chadoe3 - 'design wizard', indeed. More like design gremlins running amuck every which way! Pure genius.

LuannPA - the square footage issue - it seems sometimes less is more. Not in terms of less footage always but don't take x amount of space and try to fit twice as many ammenities into it just to say it has it. I think that was the cuprit in our last house. 2 1/2 baths, main floor laundry oohhhh ahhhh, except they were so tight and laid out so poorly they were a lesson in frustration every time you used them. :( I many times wished for 1 less bath and just a decent layout so the laundry room could function as one if that makes sense.

We have several light switches that are not in the best place.

However, don't you think that men design these houses? So many times I see things that no woman would have done. When I point it out to my husband, he doesn't think it is a big deal, but with just a bit of forethought there are things that could have been done so much better.

Chadoe3, maybe we live in the same house :) My dryer vents into the garage, then up. At one time it went into the attic, but now it makes the turn to go the width of the garage to outside. Oh, and there have been 3 count 'em 3 holes in the wall for the vent at different heights; one was just wallpapered over on the inside, we didn't even notice for about 6 years LOL! And the hole into the attic was stuffed with a rag to close it off. The current hole-in-use on the inside doesn't quiiiiiiite line up with its counterpart on the garage side, so it always takes two people to put the pipe back when we clean it out. This is actually a really nice, maintained house, except for the dryer hack jobs, that had clearly been going on for 30 years.

Current home...the garage door that comes directly into the kitchen, so that EVERYTHING gets dropped on the only counter space I have.
New house has laundry room with drop zone!

Laundry "closet" in the kitchen/nook. While somewhat handy in that I can do laundry while cooking, laundry winds up on the nook table, and the dining table and the floor.... grrr....

Light switches...drive me nuts. All of the two gang switches I have are backwards...at least to me. :)

Hi CO to OK,

We have had a couple mudroom/laundry rooms.

The first one was way too small as we would have to walk over laundry baskets and piles of clothes each time we walked in or went out, it was even worse trying to bring in groceries, lol. Tried to keep laundry caught up to avoid piles but with several children there was always a pile or two.

Our last house we had the laundry/mudroom in a large "L" shape the mudroom was right when you walked in and the laundry area was tucked around in a corner of the "L". So it was much better that we did not have step over piles to walk in mudroom, my only complaint was really wishing that guests who came in room did not have to see laundry piles, so having a door on the laundry area would of been nice. :)

Picture of last laundry/mudroom.

Count me as another one who hates her light switches - the placement, what they control, etc..

It's totally my fault too. This was a new build. I could have changed them, but I was completely overwhelmed with 15 million other things and never looked at the electrical plan. So we got what the builder thought would work, and they DRIVE ME CRAZY! I totally botched that part up and it annoys me every blessed day.

My electrician is going to hate me... lol
good thing he's a friend. I used to work for a lighting/electrical company, so I know just enough to be realllllly annoying. :)

OP - I'm with ya on the lighting switches.

But it was no1's fault but ours when we were building.
We didn't pay attention to our configuration during the lighting design & made our island lights - ones that basically is the main light for the kitchen when you first enter & is the focus of the kitchen - only have one switch.

What compound the problems is that the light switch is all the way across of any of the 2 kitchen entrances - along the sink wall.

Irks us to no end. So this would have been a $20 job when the walls & ceiling were open...now will be about $600 to get it hooked up to a couple of switches & the dry wall redone.

UGH!!! STUPID STUPID STUPID.

My advice to new home builders - pay attention to lighting design & where your switches are!!!

I wish we had a vestibule on the front door. Too cold and snowy in the winter and too hot in the summer. Also, indoor kitties try to get out...and barn kitties hope to get in. Other than that...I wish I had a little more counter space in the kitchen and a claw foot tub. Maybe in my next house... :)

xc60 - I think the L is very clever. Ours our separate in our build but if we'd have combined them I think your L is a great option.

The placement of windows. It looks nice from the outside, but you can't place any furniture against an outside wall without blocking some part of a window.

Side exterior entrance enters directly into too small laundry room. My biggest complaint about this house.

When we built this house, we had an electrician that my builder used exclusively. This fellow was about 60 and had been doing this for a long time. He had a BS from a selective Illinois school in physics but chose to be an electrician after graduating. Everything he did was well thought out. I have none of the light switch issues talked about here and he thought of things that I would never considered.

We are building in the spring and I heard that my electrician was retiring. Too bad...

In my last house the thing that I hated most was that there wasn't a den or TV room. The TV was in the living room, which I hated to start with since I'm not a TV person, and when my hubby had football on, ALL season long, I couldn't get away from it without going into the bedroom and closing the door. We didn't have an open floor plan so much as none of the rooms had doors, no way to dampen sound. This house we're building now has a TV room, far away from the rest of the living space, with a door.

The other thing that I didn't like was the kitchen was too big. There is such a thing as too big. I'd had tiny kitchens for so long, it didn't occur to me when we built that house that I wouldn't like walking around an island and across the room to get from pantry to sink, from sink to oven. It was too much space and not laid out well at all.

It's why I really appreciate all the layout advice offered here. I've learned a lot.

I had a *complete* pet peeve with one set of grills on my front windows. I paid extra to have beautiful black aluminum clad windows with 1/3rd-2/3rds grills and when they arrived I discovered the kitchen one was 1/2-1/2! I was DEVASTATED! It's the first thing you see and made the house look completely mismatched! You could just see the flaw.

And it looked dumb in the kitchen too, as the grills came down into your viewing space. I was so sad. And because it was in the order sheet this way (I triple checked sizes but didn't notice the grills stupid me), there was no warranty :(

I called the window company but the cost to change them was supposed to be really high because it's labor intensive. I'm a young, single woman building her first house with NO sub contractors (just ma dear ol'dad), so it just wasn't in the budget.

...until the window company came out last week to fix some mis-sized screens and a broken pane. It actually bugged the repair guy enough that he fixed them!! At no cost! I was stunned and happy and thrilled and could've hugged him. It was such an ease on my mind to have those grills match the rest.

How's that for piddly things you hate?!

I love a happy ending to your tale!