Living Hell: The worst kips of 2020
Words: Dylan Murphy
Welcome back to Living hell, the series profiling the worst kips on Daft in Dublin. In our final edition of the year, we’ve the bumper list of the absolute worst properties we’ve seen this year.
It’s been a long year, plastered with inconsistency, but one thing we could rely on, even in the midst of an unprecedented global crisis is a jarring lack of empathy from landlords.
Providing our timeline with not even a crumb of humanity we’ve seen landlords present all sorts of gross gaffs and overpriced hellholes on Daft in 2020. It’s a sad state of affairs and the marketplace is increasingly looking ike the wild west with cowboy letters converting just about anything into “homes”.
The definition of a “property” has become so skewed that we’ve become accustomed to bedrooms with a microwave next to the toilet for €1000 a month, but this isn’t acceptable. And we get it – with most of the shite that has gone on this year, you’d be forgiven for wanting to look ahead to 2021. However, it’s important we don’t glaze over this, it’s becoming all too common and inaction could mean this becomes the new normal.
Having undertaken this series for the best part of a year we’ve seen a dystopian conga line of ridiculous gaffs stomp their feet through our timeline. We’ve picked the worst individual features from the kips we’ve examined alongside a few more we found on Twitter.
My basic decision-making process for deciding if a property is Living Hell worthy or not is to examine if it could physically host an episode of “Come Dine With Me”. If so it is ineligible, save for a few exceptions i.e if all the guests share a number of bunk beds as chairs (trust me I’ve seen bedrooms with multiple bunks) or if it’s not an actual house.
So take a deep breath, grab a stress ball and have your Twitter fingers at the ready – these gaffs are absolutely rancid.
An Impossible Trifecta
There are some things that just don’t exist. Have you ever seen a goth drive a car? Never, because it’s impossible. Ever had a can of water? Nope, because it’s fake news.
I don’t make the rules, these are just some of the inescapable facts of life. To answer your question of why they can’t exist, but Imagine Dragons can I put it down to a momentary lapse in the simulation.
Moreover, when it came to this series I haven’t ruled much out. However, I did believe it was inconceivable that a fireplace and a washing machine could exist within 5 yards of each other. This property one-upped my short-sightedness by adding a bed into the mix.
Put simply, this room is the physical manifestation of millennial anxiety: interrogating why you’re paying €1195 a month to have your microwave on a stove and praying that the extractor fan sucks you up.
Click here to view the property.
Pay me €1,100 a month for radioactive clothes
With this place, you basically have a choice between storing pots in your wardrobe or underwear in your cupboards. Grayling Properties (Who appear a lot on this list) describe the property as featuring “built in wardrobes to ensure ample storage”.
The only storage is right beside the microwave and unless you want your Christmas jumpers to grow a jingle bell with an eyeball on it then I’d stay clear of this place.
As a final note, when the front door literally hits into the ‘living space’ i.e. the pathetic excuse of a sofa that has no feasible use, then it’s time to swing the door shut again.
Click here to view the property.
Pay €1000 a month to sleep in a shit climbing frame
Impractical? Check. Eyesore? Check. Inconclusive and grubby imagery? Check.
It’s been 4 months since we discovered this cubby hole and we still aren’t sure what it truly is. It seems the landlord was offering an opportunity to experience life as a pre-pubescent wizard under the Dudley’s stairs for €1000 a month.
Click here to read Living Hell 005: Pay €1000 a month to sleep in a shit climbing frame.
SAD!
Can you imagine the landlord’s phonecall sourcing the bed for this kip?
“Yeah, it’lll need to be no larger than one and a half metres wide to fit in next to the fridge… No I won’t pay any extra for an electric blanket… What do you mean it’s a fire hazard to have a bed this close to the cooker?… No fuck you, Mattress Mick”.
I think the pictures do all the talking on this one.
Just look at the drawer in the corner. It looks like it’s actually trying to distance itself from the rest of the place. SAD!
Click here to view the property.
The kitchen-bedroom fusion
In at number 10, we’re throwing it back to the very first edition of Living Hell ‘The Kitchen-Bedroom Fusion‘. An absolutely terrible property, even by the awful standards of this series.
There’s a cooker in your bedroom or there’s a bed and chest of drawers in your kitchen. Whichever way you see it the extractor fan still looks like it runs on batteries.
Besides, who wouldn’t want to pay €1060 a month to have their underwear smell of last night’s dinner? Alternatively, you could hop between the random furniture squashed into the room in the world’s most depressing game of The Floor Is Lava. The possibilities are endless with this spot.
Click here to read Living Hell 001: The Kitchen-Bedroom Fusion.
Storage Wars Dublin – The Bedside Spatula
Imagine a vault from Storage Hunters, but only it contains all the random shite advertised on Gumtree in your local area, you pull up the shutters and are met by this:
Is that a gate from someone’s driveway behind the bed?!
If you have a kink for kitchen utensils you are in luck, otherwise, you’ll be keeping a spatula next to your bed. Maybe it could double up as a fly swatter to bat away the insects that’ll circle around that crusty looking mattress.
EAT THE GOVERNMENT.
Click here to read Living Hell 004: Storage Wars Dublin – The Bedside Spatula.
A adult entertainment studio with a microwave
DublinRentWatch does a great job of keeping their eyes peeled for properties that don’t meet planning requirements. Thankfully this listing got taken down, but the letter was expecting someone to pay €1290 a month for what looks like a set for the kind of high street porn studio that records on flip phones.
No sink, but a drying rack for cutlery on top of the microwave? Sure, why not.
There’s not even an oven or cooker let alone somewhere to wash the dishes. Least you can name your next mixtape “Paper plates and pot noodles” with a sense of authenticity.
Enter through the bathroom please.
There’s just so many questions here. Do you wipe your feet on the bath mat as you enter? Is the bathroom as the entry to the house an architectural first? Do you have to wait until someone has finished in the bathroom to enter?
I know this year has encouraged people to be apprehensive about potential visitors, but if you can’t even poo without fearing the arrival of the postman then what is life.
The least of your worries isn’t even guests getting an unexpected wift of your bowel movements as they enter, it’s the fact there isn’t even an oven or cooker.
Click here to view the property.
No Toilet? No Problem.
We’ve become accustomed to beds in kitchens (or kitchens in bedrooms?), but usually, the letters attempt to offset the absurdity of the place by ensuring it is squeaky clean. Well, not this landlord. They have actually tried to hide the bed from plain sight.
After a closer look you can find the bed in the corner of the kitchen.
The landlord’s choice of a fisheye lens to take the pictures is an interesting one. I don’t know if it was a foolish attempt to make the rooms look bigger or if the Daft.ie post is some faux-artistic, multi-medium allegory on how warped the housing market has become.
As the title suggests there is no toilet either. Enjoy your bus trips to the loo.
Click here to read Living Hell 003: No Toilet? No Problem.
House or Ikea showroom in a garage?
*Sighs*
The definition of a “house” as we know it is being deconstructed. This is where your da keeps his tools and the lawnmower, not where depression is born.
Ever wondered what a hospital bunkbed would look like?
The worst thing about clinical looking places like this is that clearly, no one has ever lived in them. There are no human-induced imperfections, no marks on the floor, just a personality reduced to the colour white.
Click here to view the property.
Breakfast in bed has taken on a whole new meaning
Whether we want to lie on a sofa, sit by our desks or stand in the kitchen, normally, we have a few alternatives of how we relax in our homes. However, there are only two available options in this shoebox: lie on your bed or stand beside your bed – that’s it. Maybe you’ll go to the bathroom and sit fully clothed, immersed in the water listening to Frank Ocean just to feel something, but that’s about as exciting as it gets.
The oven door pulls down the same way a bridge over a moat does. You can at least reach from the castle that is your painfully thin single bed for the chicken nuggets that’ll keep you warm in the winter.
And while normally I’d praise the inclusion of a telly, it feels like more of an inconvenience. How are you supposed to even watch it when you face the other way on the only piece of furniture in your room?
Click here to view the property.
An alpine lodge in Tallaght
Wow, an “Alpine Lodge”, equipped with storage heater and a general aura of misery. Best of all, you can get it for just €1200 per month. Yes, that’s right, for only 117.2 hours of minimum wage labour you can live 45 minutes from the city in a shed. Perfect for ski season in Tallaght!
If you’ve ever wondered what the inside of a coffin looks like, then you are in luck. I’ve seen more life in a morgue than this dead-room.
Rent a “log cabin” in Drimnagh for €1,100 a month
From the sixth edition of our living hell series. A literal shed that is described as a ‘Log Cabin’.
You know, this series can get pretty fucking bleak, but I thought no matter how bad things got that each edition would feature actual houses. This is peak capitalism. Slapping a hole you can shit in into a space for housing rogue objects and calling it a house. Imagine throwing some paint buckets and loose tools out of here and thinking, “God, you know if we put a mattress where the lawnmower used to be we could charge someone to live on our patio”.
Click here to read Living Hell 006: Rent a “log cabin” in Drimnagh for €1,100 a month.
A literal bus
Good lord. When I said Jesus take the wheel I didn’t mean this.
A bus. An actual bus.
The german language is great, they’ve mastered the art of creating words for specific feelings and experiences that don’t exist in other languages. Take “Sturmfrei” for example. It’s an expression that describes when your parents are away and you have the gaff to yourself. Great. Chef’s kiss. Perfect. Love it.
Ireland on the other hand seems to just to inadvertently produce physical products for the things they can’t put into words. This kip being the prime example. Sitting in the dictionary, lined up next to “antonym for pleasure” is a picture of this bus in a gravel car park.
Like don’t get me wrong, if you have a desire to enjoy your summers across Europe at your leisure, then yeah a converted bus makes some sense. But paying €900 a month to plant yourself in a car park just so you can join the rat race of the city is soul-crushing.
It takes someone to be seriously disconnected from reality to believe this is a good idea. At this point, I’m honestly surprised they didn’t have the cheek to call the built-in DAB radio a home surround sound system.
This is a place to exist, not live, but I mean at least they’ve tinted the back windows so you can cry in peace.
Looking to 2021, let’s make these kips a thing of the past.
