When my husband and I flip houses, we are very careful to make sure that the spaces we create are usable. The last thing anyone wants is a fixed-up house with awkward or unusable features. Everything gets measured and given the appropriate space. But we have toured many houses and seen what many other flippers do. Often, house flippers do not really understand the spacial aspects of their designs and only think of the immediate impression or the how the photo will look. Here are some bad design choices I have seen in flip houses:
1. Toilet Tightness- The more bathrooms in a house, the more you can usually sell it for, so many flippers will try to cram bathrooms into tiny spaces. I have seen way too many toilets that are literally jammed right up against the tub, the wall, or the vanity. No space left for you to properly sit down.
2. Silly Sinks- In another attempt to cram more into small spaces, some flippers will place tiny sinks into corners. I saw a bathroom with a 7-inch sink tucked into a corner. If they had extended the wall just another few inches, they could have installed a full-sized sink in the space. The design choices there didn’t include usability.
3. Oddly Shaped Showers- When you buy a house, always pay attention to the shower curtain. If there isn’t one, look at the shower stall and imagine where that shower curtain would be placed. I have encountered so many crazy corner or angled showers in houses I have toured. There was no curtain rod installed because there was no thought during construction as to whether a curtain rod could be placed there. They were just trying to cram one more shower into a small or awkward space. If you can’t figure out where the rod should go, there probably isn’t a good spot to put one!
4. Colliding Cabinets- This drives me nuts. If the person who is designing the house doesn’t know or understand kitchen spaces, you can end up with dueling corner cabinets. If the cabinets in the corners are not spaced apart properly, you can end up with cabinets that hit each other or hit the cabinet pulls when you try to open the cabinet. You can’t even get the cabinet open! Many kitchens are installed without enough thought, which leads to major inconvenience.
5. Awkward Appliances- Have you been in the kitchens in which you can either open the fridge or the oven, but not both? Or when the dishwasher door can’t extend fully, because it smacks into another cabinet? Kitchen layouts that are just thrown together by flippers, with limited thought on function, can be a working nightmare for the owner. And I have seen lots of kitchens like those.
6. Clashing Character- I saw one house, where in an attempt to save money on the flooring, they left the old, patterned tiles on the floor. The tiles were in good condition, so that made sense. However, they decided that they would install a very modern, gray and white kitchen in that space. Total upgrade, right? Wrong! The new, modern kitchen clashed terribly with the warm-toned, tradition tiles on the floor. The space felt uncomfortable and poorly renovated, when a different choice in cabinet and countertop could have pulled the room together into a beautiful space.
These design failures are not just found in flip houses. These can be found in many homes, especially when renovations had been without the help of someone who understands space and their uses. We try to make sure our properties are not just beautiful, but functional as well. What is the most annoying design you have seen in a house? Do you have any of these fails in your home?
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