To hate sellers 'sprucing up' properties to sell, with hideous effect?

[pandarific]

...and then of course putting the price up to a turn-key condition level, when you know you'd need to rip out half of it. Honestly, a nice bucket of white paint applied throughout would be fine!

You don't need to install a nice new bathroom in floor-to-ceiling beige-brown tile. Or deck over/concrete over every blade of grass in otherwise substantially sized garden. Or install 'fancy' kitchen cupboards in the well known poplar neutral shades of gloss red and black. Or paint dado rails in matching fancy colours.

Augh!

I bought a house with the carpets stapled down with newspaper as underlay.

I could kick myself....

Bought a house which had a feature wall in every room. They’d done it to sell. Rainforest scene in one room, green ice cream coloured paint in the rest of the room. The paper was coming away in every room. They put sticky backed plastic over the kitchen cabinet doors-red, plus black and red tiles and a fuck off huge matching poppy on the door to the bathroom. Idiots. They’d used thin cheap shit carpet as underlay. It was bumpy and horrible.

Another house, they’d painted the bathroom dark blue but shittily, paint splattered on the floor, they’d painted the pipes, splatted it on the bathroom cabinet, radiator, bath, horrific. They’d also done a bedroom in pink, paint on the cheap ass bobbly carpet, wardrobe, curtains! We painted the whole thing neutral as a start.

Spent yesterday painting over the spruced white walls in our new home - they'd done this to an excellent standard with drips everywhere and splashes on floors and light fittings I honestly would have preferred they left the original colours that were peaking through anyway.

Must have worked though as I did buy the place...

Got a bit worried when I read the thread title as we’re tarting up our place for sale in a few weeks. But I’m now relieved as all we are doing is slapping on some bog standard paint, tidying up, decluttering a doing a bit of weeding!

I don’t get why some people go overboard on stuff that’s going to be ripped out as soon as the new owners cross the threshold!

It's only a 3 bed and the decking has to go, but otherwise looks ok. You can definitely make it lovely.

@SocksRock it's a 3 bed.

Been in our place a year it had to be gutted completely. Jus5 started the garden and needed a skip to clear the shit they left behind and had the joyful experience of finding a rats nest today under the patio

Yes, Pandarific, the listing describes four upstairs bedrooms; is that just an error, and the downstairs office is the fourth bedroom?

Overall it looks like a very nice house, though. I can't comment on the price, though, being as I am in the US.

Oops, cross post.

It is the Sarah Beenie legacy...

Huh - you're right, it is listed as 4 bed! IMO it's a 3 bed really though yes I suppose you could use the office as a fourth bedroom.

I'm thrilled to have just bought a house with a beautiful, but out of character gloss white kitchen. I'm so pleased it's seven years old and I won't be feeling guilty about ripping it out in a year or two for something more in keeping with the house.

Much rather things were really clean and dated than cheaply done up to sell

@DameDoom
Please say you’ll link your MIL’s house on Rightmove!

Or at least the Tony Hadley sketch.

QOme of my friends is look8ng at the m8 ute and I have been to a few with her. Out if 5, 4 have had feature walls in hideous black, silver and purple flowers or black, silver and red or black, beige and bronze or black grey and silver. Hideous an£ make the rooms look smaller and darker.
Also, gloss kitchens must be more in than I realised.
Fake grass! What is the point - looks awful, feels awful and is environmentally awful.
But the worst is every one of them has had what should be a lovely wooden panelled front door replaced with those hideous white UPVC things.

Sorry for the typos- too tired and need to go to bed.

Broken mirror staircases. Just why?

I'm going to stick up for white upvc doors here, we're going to get one. Yes it looks like something off a Barbie house, but our current wooden one is older than I am, the DC can't open it, it's giving me splinters, the letter box fell off, and it's horribly draughty. Would love a wooden update, but the price!!! Upvc it is. B&Q assures me it's "Georgian" though

I would bring back the death penalty for people who monologue about the previous owner’s poor taste.

They say nasty things about the previous owner whose crime, it seems, was to follow the fashions of the time or to be old.

I usually say “pity you didn’t buy a house you liked” and they stop.

But are these all things that are done to sell rather than just the taste of the vendors?

Someone up thread mentioned a white gloss kitchen - we have recently bought a studio flat with white gloss vinyl wrapped kitchen cupboards. I hate it. It is a big attic flat in a Georgian property and the kitchen looks out of place, To my mind it's more suited to a dentists surgery or a morgue. I don't think we can just replace the doors because the white vinyl cupboard frames would still be on view. Can the vinyl doors be repainted?

In a house we lived in, we kango hammered off all the crazy paving stone on the chimney breast the day after we moved in. It had been the previous owners' pride and joy, so it was slightly embarrassing when they turned up for forgotten post and saw it in the front garden.

I bought my house last year, it was a very good buy but it had 3 carpeted doors, a dated wood kitchen held together with grease, terracota in bathrooms, peach and terracota in the sitting room just awful odd colour in the bedrooms, I think I have used about 60 litres of white and cream magnolia paint to brighten it up.

one of the houses I looked at had carpet up to a dado rail and very odd paper above, it was just bizarre, might even have a picture of that monstrosity somewhere. The joys of house buying in rural france

Our friends are trying to remortgage their house and for some unfathomable reason, they're doing this sort of thing before the valuer gets in.

WHY? They won't get more money because they've spend loads on shitty tiles.

They say nasty things about the previous owner whose crime, it seems, was to follow the fashions of the time or to be old.

I usually say “pity you didn’t buy a house you liked” and they stop

^^ my thoughts exactly thanksforthatamazingpost

Round our way they always go on about how much extra they have to spend and then a few years later they move and someone else spends thousands sorting out what they spent thousands on! Crazy people makes me at the lot of them!

It's 'doing houses up' (badly) that we're talking about here. Done to bring in extra £££ which is then a hiding to nothing as the improvements are often hideous.

Just DON'T. Leave the avocado suite, leave the price - someone will buy it and change it all anyway!