AIBU to not paint the room before moving

[hangingshirt]

DH and I are due to move in the next couple of weeks (due to exchange this week).

We haven't done anything to the house since we moved in 5 years ago as it was recently decorated in neutral colours just before we moved in. The only room we felt the need to decorate was the bedroom as we felt it was cosier with a bit of colour. So we painted the walls.

At the time we had a new baby DS so quickly moved furniture into the spare room/baby room and painted. Left it a few days then moved back in. DS then moved into his room a few weeks later.

We decided to sell up and move to a bigger place and try for DC2 (arriving sooner than originally planned ). We put house on the market, found a new place which brings us back round to this week where exchange is due to happen.

Here's the issue. When we painted the room we just wanted a quick fix so only moved the furniture we were able to. We couldn't move the wardrobe so just bought a small paint brush and tried to paint behind the wardrobe as much as possible. Obviously once the wardrobe is moved there's going to be a very obvious section of unpainted wall.

It's been about 2 years since we painted and we have both forgotten about it. It's only come up now as we have been reminiscing about the house and talking about a funny thing which happened while we painted the room. We now have no time to repaint the whole room which we would have to as we have forgotten the specific shade we used.

Do we/should we tell the buyers about this before exchange which could result in us losing our house. It's been 9 months from offer to now and there is a fairly long chain. I don't really know much about our buyers except they are a couple in their mid-late 30s and are first time buyers with no children.

AIBU to think no one would pull out of buying a house due to a poorly painted bedroom wall?

I already know we ABU for having such lazy decorating skills

This exact situation happened to me as the buyer.

I was more concerned at the astonishing lack of taste the previous owners had rather than having to worry about repainting.

We haven’t got round to repainting the bedroom yet but I think I’ll miss the half purple/half yellow skirting and black damask walls 😬

Just leave it. They're probably going to want to paint it all themselves anyway!

Leave it how it is, and leave a bottle of wine, flowers and a card saying hope you’re very happy here and maybe mention in that sorry about the wall, it was never done when you painted it.
Honestly I wouldn’t mind about it and I’d think the wine/flowers were a lovely touch.
I was most upset with our previous owners who unscrewed light fittings and took down curtain rails before they moved out. A bit of unpainted wall I could cope with!

Same here. People selling our house moved some massive fitted wardrobes out when they moved.
Not only was the wall a different colour behind them, it also had about 8 stripes of tester paints they’d tested behind there before deciding on a final colour.
This was along with loads of other shit we found, like they’d spilt whole cups/bowls of liquid on the carpets whilst waiting to exchange and complete and not bothered cleaning it, their cat had eaten patches of carpet, they left the shower door next to the shower where it had fallen off, oh and a condemned boiler. So we were pretty pissed off.
Just the paint on its own would be fine though.

2 of you can paint a room in a couple of hours or if you have a spare £200-£300 then just pay a decorator.

I honestly wouldn't worry about it, they'll likely re-decorate anyway.

Last but one house I bought, when the previous owner left, she took all the pictures off the wall (as you'd expect) - leaving pale picture-shaped "holes" in the brown nicotine-stained walls. Not nice, but soon dealt with as I re-decorated the room pretty quickly (actually encouraged by the staining).

If you really feel you have to do something about it, then I'd just paint the one wall with a close match to the others.

😂 I can’t believe that people would paint around furniture, given me a good giggle this morning.

But going back to the issue I would ensure the room was painted, as I could just imagine what they would say otherwise, something like this, when we viewed the place it looked lovely, when we moved in, the wall looked like a chequers board! LOL 😆

No no no.

You don't need to mention it, or contact the estate agent/solicitor/anyone about it. Honestly, this is so unimportant - no need for flowers/tins of emulsion/bottles of wine/mass apologies. It's just an area of unpainted wall that doesn't match the rest. So what? I promise you the new owners will want to redecorate at some point anyway. It's not a big deal, it really isn't.

Now, making sure the house is actually clean, rather than festooned with greasy cobwebs and filth, is much more of a big deal. Get that done and the new residents will love you forever.

I don't think it's an issue. They will likely decorate once they've moved in anyway.

In our previous property we removed a huge old traditional fire place as it took up half the living room in a tiny 1 bed to discover of course the carpet had been fitted around it.

As we couldn't afford to replace the carpet at the time we laid a rug over and a side table on top to disguise it.

We completely forgot about it until the day we moved when the furniture was all loaded ready to go. Then remembered why the rug had been there 🤦🏼‍♀️

I was mortified we were leaving a hole in the carpet but OH insisted it wasn't an issue as most people will change flooring or just recover until they decide what to do with it.

Because the difference between painting a wall yourself and paying a decorator £200 to do it is....?

Professionalism?

Leave it. And certainly don’t mention it.

Leave it with a tin of matching paint. Or move the wardrobe out early in the packing and paint behind as you go.

Just leave it.

I'd leave it. When I moved in to my house there were patches of different colour paint where there'd been pictures hanging up, and there was a bracket for a tv in the bedroom they'd painted around. But, the house was clean and we were going to redecorate anyway so it wasn't a problem. They took all the light bulbs which I was more annoyed about!

Paint it fgs, it's an hour of your time. If you left a rental property in that state it would cost you your deposit of several hundred pounds. I'd be pretty pissed off if I spent a six figure sum on a property to find it like that. I'm sure the new owners will want to paint it theirselves, in time. Probably not counting on having to do it the minute they move in.

The guy we bought our house from hadn't taken down a single picture or mirror in about 50 years but had happily painted around them all. The result was everything was painted to the wall, layers and layers of paint and an awful brown colour behind. We laugh about it

Of course you don’t have to! They’ll probably paint the whole thing anyway

I would not jeopardize the move or create more stress for anyone by telling them about it in advance. If you think it might cause ill feeling socially then I’d leave a letter explaining we’d completely forgotten and only realised at the last minute when we moved the wardrobe and some fixing money as a good will gesture (check with your solicitor that doing this doesn’t leave you open legally). But that’s as far as I’d go.

I'd paint that wall only. Will take a couple of hours. Not everyone redecorates the minute they move into a house and I'd be much less bothered by a slightly mismatched wall than I would by a non painted one.

This really isn't a big deal. Paint that wall a contrasting colour if you can't find the original. Past that it's fine.

I wouldn't bother, the worst tgat will happen us the buyer will think you were lazy for not decorating properly!

Let's me honest, the buyer is not going to ultimately live with your five year + paint anyway in any room for long.

How would you react if you walked into a house you just bought with walls half done? If you won't like it, they won't either. Just tell them and leave them £200 to fix it. Goodwill and also saves any embarrassment if you run into them on a later date.

When we moved into our house we discovered that the previous owner had painted the skirting boards around her larger furniture. She had painted them white and the original dark wood was showing where her furniture had been. We just thought it was funny! 😂 So I wouldn’t stress about it to much.

I would leave it now, it isn't a structural issue, and see how you feel after all the stuff is moved out. You may remember the shade in the end, and even if you don't, if you just paint the wall/s or parts of walls affected as feature sections in a slightly different shade that will save time and will neaten it up.

We last moved 9 years ago, and the house I sold looked in pretty good nick at the time it went on the market and sold quickly but when we moved all our stuff out after exchange there were dark smudges around the edge of where every mirror and picture had been, so I went around with the same colour emulsion and it did not take long at all, and it did the trick (looks terrible wet but dries the same colour) and it made me feel better, leaving the house i loved looking loved You may feel the same at that point!

Don’t paint the room. New owners will want to come and make it their own anyway.