To feel sad when I see my old house?

[avenueaspirr]

I sold my house in April 2020 and then saw that it was again on RightMove and now sold - so obviously I had a look.

They’d change quite a bit but I’d seen they’d ripped out the shutters in the bedroom that I’d paid £1000 for and replaced them with floral curtains - that one stung

I know I’m being unreasonable and it’s not mine! It was just sad to relive the memories I’d made there and see the changes. Anyone else felt like this?

I’ve looked up all my previous homes including childhood homes on Rightmove

I'd love to see what the next owner has done to my last house! There were loads of improvements I could have made - and would have if I'd known I'd live there for 14 years rather than the five or so I'd planned - so hopefully the next person has. I wanted to knock through between the tiny kitchen and the dining room, make a kitchen diner with an area for utilities (the old kitchen). I hope they've done something like that, it would make it a lot more practical and better, usable space.

I don't think I mind if they make changes, it's only natural. My old childhood home, I think I'd like to see what's happened to that, but then I'm more emotionally attached to that one and I feel a bit nervous about drastic changes to it. It had lots of period features that were high quality installations at the time, I'd not like to think they'd been taken out and replaced with cheap fixtures. But these things happen all the time...

@CrazyNeighbour

Not me, but a work colleague whose wife was an interior designer were invited back about a year later. The new people had removed everything she had lovingly created over the ten years they had lived there. He was stoic about it… she was gutted.

It didn't occur to her that this might happen, because other people have different tastes? Just because she's an interior designer doesn't mean she's right.

My old farm cottage had a beautiful garden with a stunning climbing rose bush hanging over the dry stone wall at the bottom of the garden, a tall hedge that was filled with birds and their babies every year, separating the cottage from an ugly building works a field away, a huge 50+ year old rhododendron near the car parking that would be alive in the summer with thousands of lovely bees (who never bothered anyone nor left the bush) and two gigantic old trees beside it. I think they must have been at least 50 to 60ft tall at least. No neighbours to bother with leaves of lack of light etc and they were healthy and quite a way from the house. It was lovely. And as it was all plants that took care of themselves, gardening was as complicated as getting a lawnmower out every now and then and a quick once over with some hedge trimmers every couple of years.

New people bought it and ripped everything out. Goodbye bees, bye bye little conifer and rose bushes in the garden. See ya later wall climbing roses. The hedge? Gone. Even the trees were cut down for the new wood burner they installed. There is NOTHING but grass and road planings now. Not a single plant or flower surrounding the entire once picturesque cottage. It's not even nicely done either. It just looks tatty and bare. There is no neatly trimmed lawn and fancy deck, patio or gravel. Just roadworks stone chips chucked down.

I don't understand why people want to move to the countryside into a pretty, really old cottage and then make it look like it's in a concrete housing estate.

We actually became good friends with the couple who bought my late fathers home, so I've been round lots of times. Some of the changes they've made are great ideas, others less so. The bit that makes me sad is the garden which was Dad's pride and joy and now is just a square lawn with all the flower beds taken out.

We invited the ones before the previous neighbours. They were shocked that something they'd installed was no longer here (removed by previous owner). It sounded vile and probably would have put me off buying the house

@Paddingtonthebear

I’ve looked up all my previous homes including childhood homes on Rightmove

I'm dying to see what my childhood home looks like now but the people who moved in after us have stayed there so there aren't any pictures I can look at

I had a pretty little Victorian cottage and the buyers stripped it out to a grey carpeted, bright white open space. Nothing against a bit of grey and white but I felt a bit sad about my cosy cottage The gorgeous garden won't be the same now either but hey it's their house now.

My buyers ripped up the beautiful garden. If I'd known they were going to pave the entire thing (I took up paving when I moved in) I'd have dug up all my very expensive plants and taken them to my new (very bare) garden. I can't bear the thought that they might have dug up my pets (I'd have taken them with me too).
Can't understand why anyone would completely pave an entire garden when they have a couple of young kids. Surely grass is so much more kid friendly. We have none in our new garden and we're putting lawn in as and when we can afford a few rolls.

My old house was filled with grey carpet and that weird glass furniture. Thankfully, we never put too much heart and soul into it.

The house of my teens, back in the 80s, recently sold. It had barely changed.

They ripped out plantation shutters?!

My childhood home had a massive garden and half of one side had huge rhododendron bushes down it. They were cavernous inside and my siblings and I had years of dens, climbing fun, pirate ships etc and the outside of them were so so beautiful every summer covered in flowers. They’ve all gone now, just replaced by a boring hedge. They were probably well over 100 years old and irreplaceable. Breaks my heart every time I go past.
The people who bought our beautiful warehouse flat of dh & I sold it a few years later but the estate agent particulars said that they’d installed the kitchen when really it had been us. That pissed me off as I was so proud of that kitchen.

Not recent houses, but when I saw my childhood home had all the walls knocked through and (very reasonably) modernised I felt sad. It’s the only house I have vivid dreams about being in, so it was jarring to see that.

My first flat has been sold on 3 times since I bought it. The last time it was listed it was exactly as I'd left it 9 years ago even down to the same curtains in the living room and the singe mark on the kitchen cupboard door
I loved my flat but I find it really odd that 3other people didn't want to freshen it up/change colours/add their own stamp.

When my father passed away my siblings and I had to sell the family home that had been in the family for 3 generations. It was old and run down, needed tons of work and none of us siblings were able to take it on. Although it was old and so run down it was still the house I grew up in (as did my father) so was sad. The people that bought it fixed it up so nice. They let us see it when they finished and it was so nice, but it still made me feel sad because it was no longer the home I knew and loved. They actually ended up selling it to a friend who grew up next door to me. She does not live in the area though and rents it out. Her mother still lives next door though and manages rental for her daughter. Although the house is now amazingly nice I do still sometimes think about how I wish I could have taken the house and raised my boys there like I was.

The very first house DH and I bought was a Victorian terrace, absolutely jam packed with the original period features. It was a gorgeous house, but we just outgrew it. The couple we sold it to ripped everything out - and I mean everything. Parquet flooring became laminate, the original roll-top bath got tossed out, open fireplace got blocked off and replaced with one of those electric fires which is set into the wall with white pebbles, ceiling roses gone, original loo with high level cistern replaced with a modern loo. And, to top it all, they got rid of the old original Victorian copper that was in the downstairs bathroom. That was a remarkable feature that everyone used to comment on when they visited.
Fair enough, it was their house to do what they wanted with, and I don't recall being pissed off about it - just genuinely curious that they would want to buy a property that we marketed on the back of its authenticity - that they ended up making it look like a new build.

We saw it on Rightmove two years after we sold it, and it was difficult not to feel a bit sad about the modernisation they'd done. Lots of "Live Laugh Love" ornaments, and several wall transfers about dancing in the rain and suchlike.

Not losing any sleep over it, just a bit baffled that they chose that house over the plethora of new builds that were cropping up in the area.

I spent a-g-e-s renovating the bathroom in my flat before I put it up for sale. It was a horror of a job, but eventually I made it look beautiful. About a fortnight after the sale went through, I found absolutely everything - all the fittings and even the tiles - in a skip in the underground car park. All I could think was, "All that work!!" I nearly cried.

Not sad as such but I work next to my old house and always wonder what life would be like if I still lived there.

The house I grew up in was a1930s treasure, with stained glass, dark oak doors, skirting, etc. Every little detail was there: Bakelite door handles, bevelled glass doorplates, geometric shaped fireplaces, and the bathroom was an Art Deco delight.
When I last looked at it on Rightmove, all the period features were gone. It looked as though it could have been built last year.

I am not actually an Art Deco fan, but it was such a period piece, it probably should have been graded. ☹️

When my parents put our old childhood home up for sale, they had multiple bidders bidding over asking price because it was a beautiful and lovingly looked after family home. I was devastated when they sold, even though I’ve lived overseas since 2007. It was always “home” and the idea of someone else being there was anathema to me.

My mum messaged to let me know the new owners had put on the market after 2 years. Checked out the pictures and it was a shell of a home. They hadn’t changed the fundamental beauty of it, but it was like they just didn’t give a shit. The 150ft garden my mum spent years creating was left to overgrow, the original oak floors were ruin.
Seeing what they did to it made me realize that the love my parents put into it was transferred to their new home. I was gutted but felt able to let it go when I saw that I didn’t recognize it as the home I grew up in.

But I still remember the sound of the porch door opening when I’d come in late, the smell of roast lamb on a Sunday when I opened the front door, the creaks and groans of the staircase when I tried to sneak upstairs without waking my parents; the smell of jasmine on the patio on a summers evening, mixed with my dads bbq chicken.

So many things make a home and it still brings a tear to my eye to think about. I hope my kids have the luxury of memories like my own.

We sold our house last year, we had bought it 8 years before as a doer-upper. We spent a lot of time and money doing it up and converting attached barns. It was our family home.
The couple who bought it from us bought it to use as a location venue, they told us that’s what there were planning, they would live there but rent out all/any parts of the house for photo shoots.
It was really weird when they put up their website, as it looked like we’d had a good tidy up and gone out for the day (they bought quite a bit of our furniture).
I felt a bit like someone had stolen our identity, it was really weird and I did feel a bit upset.
I then started seeing it in magazine articles, usually only corners of rooms all styled, or the hallway/staircase, but I know the house so well I can work out where it is.
I’m fine about it now, but it has been strange as we’ve moved abroad and are renting so don’t have a proper home which is such a contrast.
Selling it was the right thing to do but it was a beautiful house, so on some levels I do miss it.