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AIBU?

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Original poster

AIBU to not paint the room before moving

130 replies

hangingshirt · 08/10/2018 03:13

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 Grin). 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 Blush

OP posts:
Hillarious · 08/10/2018 12:13

Your buyers will probably find it funny, but will also be somewhat pissed off with you. Just put yourself in their position. For the sake of good karma, acknowledge that it's not ideal with a tin of paint, roller, small paint brush and more than just one bottle of wine. But if you've gone as far as buying the paint and brushes, you might even manage to do the painting yourself.

RibbonAurora · 08/10/2018 12:17

Tell them it isa feature wall! Grin

Honestly, OP, I'd just leave it. They'll probably want to paint the entire room themselves so it would be a waste of time trying to do a patch up job.

If you really want to make meaningful gesture toward welcoming to their new home I'd spend money on getting in a team of professional cleaners to bottom the entire house on moving day. Previous owners of our last two houses did this for us and left the places gleaming. They did inside cupboards, floors, windows, the lot. We did the same for our buyers when we sold last time. It makes such difference when you're moving in and don't have to get to work scrubbing and mopping.

campion · 08/10/2018 12:20

Non problem. All lived in rooms look a bit tatty when you move everything out. Decorating is usually a priority in a new property so I wouldn't worry.

There are more unpleasant surprises than a badly painted wall.

campion · 08/10/2018 12:23

...and as RibbonAurora says , leaving the house properly clean is much more important than a bit of paint.

SadieAB9 · 08/10/2018 12:24

I absolutely would not even consider painting a room of a house I was moving g out of. Literally no way. Why? I'm sure the new owners are planning to decorate anyway. I find it really shocking that anyone would feel obliged to do this (I'm not orginally from England and where I'm from nobody would dream of doing this! I think this is another overly-polite English thing Grin

SadieAB9 · 08/10/2018 12:26

Where I'm from we wouldn't even clean properly beforehand - just pack and go! Definitely nothing done after the final boxes are packed and gone!

Notso · 08/10/2018 12:27

The house we've just bought was full of this kind of thing. I think they repainted it all white to sell it but didn't move any furniture.
It doesn't bother me in the slightest. We're buying the house not their taste in decor.

OutPinked · 08/10/2018 12:30

We just bought a house that was decorated like something from the 1950s so we’ve had to re-do it all. Only having to paint one room sounds like heaven Grin.

Having said that, it won’t take you long to just paint that one wall so I’d just do it.

EmpressJewel · 08/10/2018 12:31

I wouldn't bother painting the wall. Unless you are going to paint the whole room, it will look obvious if you patch up a smallish section so they will need to repaint it anyway.

GoldenBlue · 08/10/2018 12:32

I wouldn't worry about it, it's common.

If you've got spare paint offer to leave it. But no I don't think it warrants money or worry

Racecardriver · 08/10/2018 12:37

I know someone who bought a house only to find that the previous owner had painted around pictures hung on the walls which is a bit crazy when you think about it. I wouldn't bother telling them or alternatively you can chip a bit of paint off the wall and take it to get colour matched so that you would only have to paint the one small section.

PeaceRiot · 08/10/2018 13:39

I don’t think you need to do anything although it might be nice to. There was a similar situation when I bought my house and the sellers left £100 B&Q voucher and a bottle of champagne. I really appreciated this and thought it was so kind of them. I wouldn’t have been bad mouthing them all over town if they hadn’t.

RhiWrites · 08/10/2018 13:46

Leave it. I find this kind of thing super annoying so I try to avoid it when painting, I even take the radiators off.

But when buying a new house? Who cares. It’s cosmetic and I’d be planning to repaint anyway.

Pinkprincess1978 · 08/10/2018 15:22

You are really over thinking this! If you feel bad then paint the wall but don't offer hundreds of pounds or have it written into the contract!

We part exchanged our house and were told we had to make sure all jokes filled, walls painted and spent many hours doing this prior to moving only to find our builders sold it to a developer who gutted the whole thing, taking down walls and completed plastered the lot! We could have cried at the wasted time 😂

OftenHangry · 08/10/2018 15:31

This happened to me.
"Ready to move in". Sure. EVERYWHERE was painted just around the furniture. It was quite a shock what we saw it empty Sad

user187656748 · 08/10/2018 15:35

Non issue. In my first flat the sellers had carpeted around the divan bed....

TheMadGardener · 08/10/2018 15:38

I wouldn't bother. Every time we've moved house you find there are marks on walls where paintings were hanging, or bits faded by the sun, or bits that were behind furniture which are a different colour. We had damp in our last house which came through the wallpaper in one of the rooms and we just wiped off the mould and painted it over before selling. I should point out that the buyers were aware there was some damp, because they had a damp survey done, but even the damp surveyor only picked up damp in one room when we knew it was really bad in another room where we had painted over... The damp was behind anagylpta wallpaper and I'm sure when the buyers ripped off the wallpaper they would have found much more damp than they were expecting...but...that's between them and their damp surveyor...and we never got any comeback from it!

(now I sound like a bad person...)

steppemum · 08/10/2018 15:40

please don't feel you need to paint it.
If you are feeling super generous, leave a tin of paint and brush with a note saying - sorry, until we moved the wardrobe, we had forgotten we painted round it. The tin can be white emulsion. The thought is there, it happens

really, really common to move in and discover that something had been painted round, or that paint had faded under pictures etc.

On one room in our house, once we looked closely, they had quickly painted over a dark blue wall with white paint. It was a quick cover up job, and once the furniture was out, it looked awful. But it was just paint.

TheWormThatTurned · 08/10/2018 15:54

The house we're currently in: when we viewed it, there were wardrobes on one wall.
When we moved in, the wardrobes were gone and a big patch a totally different color remained. It didn't really bother me, maybe in part because I planned to decorate anyway.

We also once viewed a house where the room was half painted, and the owner (who had moved out) left a big tin of matching paint and a note of apology that he hadn't had time to finish it before moving out!!

I'd say it's fine to leave it as it is.

Notreallyawaitress · 08/10/2018 16:39

Leave it!
We moved into our house over 4 years ago and I’ve only just discovered today that the previous owners painted the floor tiles AROUND A RUG! I think that says as much about my slovenly habits as it does theirs 😂

AIBU to not paint the room before moving
m00rfarm · 08/10/2018 16:45

Are you joking? Bearing in mind the state that most people leave their houses when they move, a bit of missing paint is not going to be a problem. Broken boilers, leaking pipes, holes in the roof, cockroach infestations ... I could go on

EmpressJewel · 08/10/2018 17:57

I am loving all the posters who are saying that it will take a couple of hours to paint a room.

Me and OH have painted all the rooms in our small Victorian terrace and it's taken us about 3 days per room. That's because we do it properly - sanding down the walls, white undercoat, two coats of colour, edging, woodwork and ceiling.

If you are going to do a shoddy patch job that's going to need fixing, you may as well not do it at all.

NewPapaGuinea · 08/10/2018 18:01

Paint the wall and take the bathroom with you.

Fiffyshadesofgreymatter · 08/10/2018 18:05

@NewPapaGuinea

I forgot the bathroom thieves! What happened with that thread?

MargaretDribble · 08/10/2018 18:16

When we moved in there was so much junk in the garage it took 3 months to get rid of it all. By comparison one wall painted round the furniture is nothing. Our house wasn't particularly clean either, whereas we had a cleaning company clean our old house.
They probably plan to redecorate anyway.

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