To be upset regarding new home.

[2023NewStart1]

We’re in the process of moving into new home and I am shocked at the state of the walls. Not sure if we’ve been lucky before (3rd home move in 20 years) or if this is normal so posting here. The house looked beautiful and we thought it was ready to move in as it was exceptionally immaculate but now that the owners furniture and belongings have gone we realised how much it’s going to cost to paint. Every single room including the bathrooms has hundreds of nails dug into the walls! Even the decorator was shocked and said they seemed to have loved their pictures, we hung up a few pictures over the years and never nailed them in but used command picture strips. Only thing that was nailed in was a heavy mirror.

my mum was really shocked too, every single room needs to be painted and it’s going to cost a lot as we don’t know the names of paints used and trying to match up is going to be a nightmare. Mum very helpfully told me I should complain to the estate agent! I’m obviously not going to as the sale has happened and EA won’t really care.

any advice on what we can do or just anyone to sympathise? I haven’t told anyone in RL as it seems like a non problem but it’s really upsetting me as me we can’t move furniture in till decorating has been done. Every single room needs decorating now. It’s going to delay our move as all decorators are busy during this time

I sympathise @2023NewStart1

We had this with a picture postcard perfect seaside cottage we bought. We had totally romanticised the property. It looked so quaint and delightful and was sympathetically furnished and decorated. What a shock we got when we got the keys and went to the property after completion. It’s grottyiness was displayed in all its glory in the empty place.

The previous owners had lovingly painted around furniture so silhouettes remained where furniture had been up against walls. They had also varnished around the rugs on the wooden floors. It was a total heart-sink experience and a money pit property.

The kitchen cupboard doors were broken at the hinges (can’t believe we missed this at viewing), they left a most disgustingly filthy electric cooker and oven, fridge, freezer and a sour smelling washer. When we got the chimney sweep in to sweep he condemned both fireplaces. The lot had to go.

In addition it was absolutely filthy as in silver fish ever where in bathrooms and the kitchen. Plug holes with years worth of slimy hair and detris, baths & sinks limescaled, toilets skid marked up. To say it was a professional couple it was a total disgrace. I could go on but I won’t. We spent a year of weekends replastering, decorating, resanding & varnishing floors, carpeting upstairs, replacing log burners etc then sold. Ill try to remember to remove my Rose Coloured Glasses in future 🤓

Good luck 🤞

Every house I’ve bought has had unseen issues. One house I left had a leak when we took out the washing machine so I got a plumber in to sort. Got to the new house and there was a similar issue with their pipes and a not left saying you must connect a washing machine before you can turn the water on at the mains as the tap which connects to the washer was broken!! So had to get a plumber out that same day on arrival to new property. Was fuming. We spent ages cleaning our that we left to find we had to start cleaning the new one. Then what we though was plain magnolia paint was in fact hiding a multitude of other random issues and it became a bit of a joke that so many things needed fixing. I guess once furniture has been moved out the reality is different to what you would have seen when viewing. It’s taken me -5 years to get all the rooms decorated as it wasn’t top priority. Oh, and until this last lot of rooms, we have always used nailed on picture fixings. Only just bought the sticky Velcro ones recently but only for light weight canvases.

I thought everyone decorated every room in the house when they moved in? Thought that was normal? And all my paintings are secured with drilled holes rawplugs and screws so you’d REALLY hate mine.

Ask the estate agent if they can confirm make and colours of paints used as you need to fill nail holes and love the colours so much you don't want to redecorate.
Sellers will normally confirm paints if you're polite :)

Dulux do a colour matching service - if you take a pic of your wall or something the same colour they can make paint that colour. However, it's probably best to redecorate. Just move your furniture around as you paint. We had to repaint the whole house when we moved in and probably need to do it again.

No big deal. Fill it in with pollyfilla and paint get it. You’d be redecorating anyway I assume.

⬆️

This

OK...fine to be a bit upset, but don't let it ruin things. Nail holes can actually be filled in with any white-colored toothpaste. Sand, and repaint. Consider this a wonderful opportunity to add the colors YOU love to your new home! Do one room at a time, and have fun choosing colors!

A bit of filler And a white wash will fix it. Put furniture in centre of room and go for your life with a roller. Not sure that this is a real problem.

OP i’ve nearly finished re-skimming every room in my house within 4 months of living here. I WISH we only had to fill tiny holes and decorate! This is really not a problem to worry about.

We redecorated our living room and put up a gallery wall with some cheap frames and some quite expensively framed art. We used command strips, the velcro ones and used more per picture than advised to ensure they would really stay stuck.

This was on an internal wall.

We went on holiday for a week at Easter, the weather was quite cold so obviously no heating on in the house.

And arrived home to every picture fallen off the bloody command strips, frames and glass broken. It cost a fortune to fix and are now all hung with rawl plugs and screws.

Also OP is took us 8 years to finish painting all the rooms in our house. About to restart and hate myself for having to secure bookcases into the wall and I'm cackhanded with polyfilla....I'll have to get my dad round to "show" me again.

Hardly a reason to “regret new home”

woe is me I have a new home and have to redecorate. Trolling to the max. (And if it isn’t have a word with yourself)

How is a picture of nails outing? 🙄😂 people are so self obsessed

Seems like such a non problem. I'm bringing my kids up in a home without heating and is single glazed. I'm sure you will survive.

They say that moving is one of the worst things even causing heart attacks. Take it easy and slowly. It'll all turn out OK. Good luck. 🙂

Cannot fucking wait for OP to take some of these tips then sell her home and for me to read a future MN thread in 10 years from her buyer going “And when I moved in, behind all her pictures were these mismatched paint blobs hiding 100 holes filled with cotton buds and toothpaste!”

No compassion here, sorry OP

Think yourself lucky it’s only nails, my BIL and SIL bought a house last year which seemed perfect but at the top end of their budget. When the people moved out it turned out the furniture was covering massive holes in the wood floor and a huge hole in the wall! They had to redo the whole downstairs floor which cost them a lot that they didn’t really have, painting I would say is basic and something most people would do anyway.

I’d imagine most houses have pictures put up with nails…
sadly bless you are very thorough when you look round, you’ll always miss stuff like that..
When I moved in half the skirting was missing in the lounge, it had been hidden by their sofa when I viewed… it’s just one of those things, houses are lived in and when we buy them off others we have to except that we need to plaster, paint etc to make it how we want it.
I moved in mine and decorated one room at a time. If the holes are easy to cover with paint as you suggest then don’t stress..thank your lucky stars the walls aren’t damaged enough to need to replastering.

Toothpaste?!? Just buy the proper stuff needed from a hardware store and do a good job… you have to live here after all.
Don’t just botch it

We have over 300 items on our walls 🤣

?RL Mumsnet doesn’t have a word count . Can you explain this one to me please ?

Perhaps her name is Markle!

🤔
Or Carrie?

Yes agree. Just one room at a time. Don’t understand the matching paintwork bit . You’re repainting so what’s to match?