Shit stuff in the house you just bought

[TheFrozenCanal]

This is a semi lighthearted thread, hopefully popcornable.

We recently moved house. Buyer beware is of course the rule at play here.

We offered when houses were being snapped up within a day, and eventually found a house though had to go 20k over the asking price for it. We desperately needed to move - work and no space for dc. We had no money left in the budget for anything more than a quick coat of paint.

We moved in and the:

Boiler is dead. It's -2 outside and I've had two plumbers over to quote on a replacement and they've both told me they fixed it, only for me to discover it isn't fixed.

In bringing the furniture down to move they gouged chunks out of the stairs wall. It's not even that tight to come down. To make space, they took the handrail off (and discarded it I presume) leaving huge holes in the wall. I now need to replaster the wall really.

The upvc windows are extremely draughty for some reason - I didn't think that would happen it wasn't noticeable when we first visited last May!

The whole house is papered in a paper that really needs to come off. But in taking the paper off I see that it was put up to hide some really shonky plastering. Between that and the wallpaper paste gloop that I'm struggling to scrape away, we can't decide if we ought to replaster the whole house (as a DIY job) or sand it down with an electric sander.

What delights were in store for you when you moved in that were not picked up by the survey?

😄

Moved in March 2020. Hole in roof. Not visible from road / garden and no loft stairs so surveyor didn't see it.

Toilet was leaking and disintegrating. Bathroom tiles were only held on by sealant around edges and could have fallen off wall at any point. Bathroom floorboards were rotten under vinyl.

Pipe from toilet into sewer was inside house and leaking, plus pipe underground from house to main sewer had collapsed. Basically one corner wall of the house had been absorbing sewerage for months / years. It still smells occasionally now.

Gas was leaking underground from copper pipe buried in concrete that fed the gas fire. Only discovered when we took apart stuff to get to the leaking sewage pipe. Gas started to escape where we had dug into the flooring to get to the pipe.

Boiler packed up about six months after we moved in. Gas pipes were not legal standard and all needed replacing.

Gas fire flue wasn't connected to external vent / chimney pipe inside the loft. So every time we used the fire (before we noticed the gas leak) we were filling our loft with CO.

Double glazed throughout but almost every window has blown.

Wiring is dodgy as fuck.

Had a full survey and the only thing they picked up on was that the repointing needs doing and there's asbestos in the garage. Haven't thought about either of those yet.

We bought an old and very dated farmhouse. Arrived with our 2 day old second baby and half the family to clean and move but ended up sitting down together and ordering pizza because every inch of the place was immaculate. They also put 500l of oil in the tank knowing we were arriving in winter with a newborn.

My parents moved out of our 40yr home recently and word came back from the buyer that they couldn’t believe how clean and well maintained the house was. Also they commented especially on the full soap dispensers at every sink, beer in the fridge and huge log pile left in the garage for the wood burner.

Just to give a few alternative nicer moving stories.

The last house I bought in Dublin - the owners were waaay behind in moving out so my movers helped them pack their van. They left behind a disgusting oven, caked in grease and filled with dirty pans so first thing I did was chuck it in the (very muddy/dog shitty) back garden. Couple of hours later they came back for it...

Double glazing windows draughty
shower thermostat doesn’t work
integrated washer failed
damp in box room
Freezing cold house full stop.

Oh my god so much.got our keys nearly 3 months ago.

Shed was locked and had no key - we busted it open to find the floor totally rotten so that’s got to go.
bathroom toilet didn’t flush at all (thank god for downstairs loo).
both loo seats encrusted with piss
bathroom extractor doesn’t work
bath plughole completely full of hair
Bathroom sink overflow blocked with grime
Boiler had been serviced but heating can only come on with the hot water and the thermostat doesn’t work
one bedroom radiator didn’t work at all

My friend arrived at her new house to find the vendor and all his unpacked junk still in it.

Loft full of old, useless crap and the gaps between the beams filled with polystyrene pellets.

Broken boiler.

Radiator plumbed in the wrong way.

Aluminium frames on all the windows and doors (naive first time buyers who didn't know this was a thing).

"Stinky <racist term>" scrawled inside their son's built-in wardrobe.

A cracked kitchen floor tile they'd hidden with a vegetable rack.

Garage door rusted shut.

Dodgy electrics.

Two gas fires that were immediately condemned when we had our first heating system service.

Random pipes used for plumbing throughout. We've had various plumbers in over the years and they all reckon they're off-cuts from industrial machine piping. No standard fittings at all, but also no lead, thank goodness.

I've lived here for 13 years and done a lot of work on the place. The boiler was replaced straight away, with double glazing and doors replaced in the first year. I hired a waste removal company to empty the loft and garage and got a new garage door fitted. New electrics in 2016. The garden was landscaped in 2017 and a new kitchen put in. There's still bits that need doing but that's owning a house for you.

We were left a pile of junk in the shed. Fourteen years later the previous owner's son arrived on the doorstep wanting some of it back. He was very put out that we hadn't kept it.

The hall ceiling fell in shortly after we moved in... there had been a leak in the bathroom above for years.

The kitchen ceiling started to sag after a couple of months. To the degree you could slide a hand under the dividing wall between two bedrooms. Turned out the previous owner was a DIY fan..decided to open up the kitchen below... by removing the load bearing wall, and didn't put a joist in!!!! (How that was missed on the survey GOK) Luckily Dh IS capable, and put an RSJ in, but the mess , scaffolding and plastering was a nightmare.

The downstairs loo wouldn't flush.. there seemed to be a blockage. A plant pot to be precise, wedged deep into the pipes!!!

The double glazing..wasn't.

The kitchen also had to be re screed and refloored as due to the DIY-ers interesting take on plumbing the waste pipes under the sink were mostly draining under the floor!

We've been here 18 years now and we are STILL finding small DIY cock ups . The electrics have been... interesting. Still, it keeps DH busy

It's very reassuring that it happens to other people too!

Kitchen cupboards were also full of grime and grease and the handles were black from years of dirty hands and no one ever wiping them down
windows were filthy
gutters full of moss (this was on the survey)

You win the thread @BumpySkull what happened?

an entire garden shed, dismantled and stored in the loft....we live in a bungalow with a large garage...

We had to get the whole house rewired to pass the electrical safety thing the insurance wanted (special cert as it's a thatch). £800.
There is also a beehive in the chimney which we can't remove, but I quite like it now.

Some of windows don’t open and/or have broken trickle vents…. All being ripped out and replaced soon along with the boiler. We also paid over the asking price and hadn’t budgeted for any of this shit. Never house we buy I’ll be looking in cupboards, flushing toilets, opening windows and checking inside EVERYTHING even if I do look like a madwoman!

The boiler packed in within a year.
The electrics / wiring were a nightmare. (If you turned the kitchen light on the living room went out!) and no electrician would touch it short of a rewire that we couldn’t afford.
The shower only ran cold water (electric shower, see issue above..)

It's 5 days, so for things like the boilers it would be covered. Gobsmacked that it's not the same everywhere. We negotiated leaving white goods, washing machine and dishwasher were pretty new, fridge freezer was not. Spent 5 days dreading a phone call saying it had broken down! We also had to have some work redone during the conveyancing and had a retention of money stay with our Solicitor until the work was finished, took a while as it was winter and exterior work needed a certain temperature.

WTF OMG

What on Earth did he think would have happened to it?! What did you say??

House1

• bath not bolted down - packed up under its feet with bits of wood/hardboard/newspaper folded up
• loo not bolted down (stuck with silicone)
• airbrick missing, hole sealed with wallpaper
• bath leaking/loo leaking into kitchen ceiling - 'fixed' with bits of shredded towel tied around, plus silicone
• plaster that falls off when you take off the wallpaper, in huge several ft square sheets

All that done by council repair contractors, discovered shortly after I bought it from them.

House 2

           rusted radiators
           half a central heating system
           many parts of the old defunct heating system left in situ
           30 year old boiler, control panel held on with gaffer tape, if it moved a mm, it stopped working
           random switches that do nothing (no they don't operate next doors tv)
           buggered window frames, inc sliding patio door that would fall out from time to time, randomly.

Bought this off my sister though, she bought it from the people who bought it from the council. When I was looking for a house in this area, I found one round the corner.. however I was 200 miles away in House 1... she was, round the corner. She wangled buying the house I wanted, and I got this one (this is what happens when you rely on parents for financial help people!). So now, she, the able bodied one, lives in the house with the accessible front door and downstairs toilet... and me, the wheelchair user lives in the one with the only access via the back, and no downstairs toilet. And all these bodges and embuggerances.

I will haunt the fucker, I really will!

We moved in August.

The windows are REALLY draughty, badly condensated and leaky (didn't notice when we viewed in May as it was nice weather and the home report just stated 'windows of an age where they will likely require attention in the future'.

The back door is wooden and completely rotten! The dog managed (with ease) to gouge big chunks out of it scratching to get in.

The keepers for the internal doors all sit about an inch below the handles so that doors don't stay closed.

Just last week toddler DS bumped into the skirting board in the hall on his electric trike thing and it fell clean off. Has just been stuck on with 2 blobs on mastic.

Honestly, it's like the house that Jack built. We will be spending the money we had earmarked for an extension on righting the wrongs over the next few months.

Calves in the garage - with a promise they’d be moved by the end of the week.

A dead sheep in the garden

Attic window had fallen in and it had been raining into the cavity for weeks

Used sponge in the bath

Water cascading down a wall internally - they said it had never happened before (this was the first week)

External doors in the playroom couldn't be opened as they opened inwards and they had boarded and carpeted the room above the bottom of the door - we ended up shaving the bottom of the doors

Ok, the bomb wins the thread.

My house is just bodge job after bodge job we've had to fix.

Worst offender was the boiler with an 'immaculate' service record. Wasn't earthed properly, and nearly killed my brother in law. Night one. No heating for a week in late November.... Great.

Then we were locked out of our bedroom when the handle of the door got jammed. Managed to jimmy it open with a credit card in the end. Shower was patched with so much silicone to stop it leaking. Took a few months, but it still leaked. Door from the conservatory couldn't be closed. All window seals have blown. Then the decorating... Layer upon layer upon layer of paint. Literally decades of the stuff. Same with the wallpaper. And when you eventually get the fucking stuff off, the plasterwork is shit. We've managed to redecorate 2 bedrooms so far in 5 years of living here.

Then there's all the other crap we need to sort. They removed the bannisters to the stairs. The conservatory quite frankly needs to go. Flooring replaced by not shit flooring.

Rats, lots and lots of rats.Rural property been empty for sometime.

Chatting with DP and remebering the other things we found as well as the odd shed in the loft!

Hive heating system - that had been fitted but not linked to boiler so the house has no heating for 9 months, in the cold North East of Scotland previous to us moving in, meaning when all the furniture was removed the outlines were left in black mould, on the 3 layers thick anaglptya wallpaper.

Kitchen - Found the kickboards propped up by bricks, the extractor hood hanging off the wall, and a massive leak under the sink where the pipe lagging had been removed causing condensation to destroy the floorboards and joists and it was a miracle the kitchen wasn't in the basement. The inside of the cupboars were coated in a weird slimy substance.

Master - The gorgeous fitted wardrobes in the master bedroom, one of the huge selling points fo this house, full of mushrooms, other plant life and made me feel like bloody Jane Goodall looking for Gorillas in the jungle! They had to be fully ripped out. When we viewed they were full of clothing, no smell of the mushrooms/mould etc weirdly.

2nd bedroom - The spare room always smelled a bit whify but not bad as such, until the radiator leaked during plastering work and the carpet got damp and released the ungodly smell of cat piss. Upon ripping up the carpet the entire underside was splattered in urine stains, as well as the underlay and some of the floor boards had rotted and were holding the smell too!

We never met our sellers as purchased during Covid. Neighbors on one side tell us she was a " nice but free-spirited hippy type" and a Neighbor across the road said she was a "smelly bastard" so make of that what you will.