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?

😄

When you find out there’s a tips sharing thread on here 👌

Flat: cleared of everything - as expected. When I removed the swirly carpet in the hall and sitting room I uncovered beautiful parquet.

House 1: flowers and a bottle of champagne

House 2: spotless - professional post builders clean

House 3: probate sale - family left it spotless with a history of the house and road, every key labelled, additional tiles neatly labelled in the shed. The door to the airing cupboard had the heights of three children. One stopped aged 9. It was very sad.

Still on Christmas card terns with the sellers of house 1 and house 3.

We always had a full structural survey and the contract always stipulated property would be cleaned to a professional standard.

This is my favourite

Great thread but don’t people view houses before buying them??

@CoffeeLover90 : best thing for limescale in toilets is spirit of salts, a couple of quid a bottle in DIY stores.

Be careful with it though, it's very caustic.

Winner

You couldn't make it up! They had removed what looked like square backed handled and replaced with round ones as you could see the screw holes, but had just sort of stuck the round ones on (we didn't notice the lack of screws duento rushed covid veiwing and all the doors were open when we entered the house as we weren't allowed to touch anything! 😅

We got some money back to connect the Hive heating at least.

We weren't allowed to touch anything in the house as we viewed during lockdown. All the internal doors were open and the estate agent wore gloves to open cupboard doors but that was all we were allowed. All windows had to be open too and only allowed 10 minutes maximum to view everything. We couldn't even check if the loo flushed or turn lights on!

The top half of the kitchen tap was just balanced on the bottom half- if you touched it, it fell off.
Open cold water tank serving all the taps except the kitchen, so the only potable water came out of the broken tap.
Electric shower so crap that the bathroom doesn’t steam up.
Wheels on the dishwasher tray missing (I mean, wtf?!)
Fridge not cold enough to stop lumps forming in milk within 24 hours.
Every door in the freezer cracked.
Bin full of cement.
Not one internal door actually fits in its frame, they’re all either too big or too small.
Rat traps in the garden, although I think that’s a red herring as the cat hasn’t managed to find one yet, and she’s a pretty good hunter.

There’s probably more, but that’s what we’ve found three weeks in.

A door in the living room that had had the handle snapped off, the edges stuffed with newspaper and then plastered over, I couldn't stop laughing! OH didn't find it amusing in the slightest.
Orignal Edwardian spindles under WALLPAPERED hardboard on the stairs.
When we took down the wall between the office and bathroom it was insulated with egg cartons and polystyrene from an old washing machine.
The vinyl in the kitchen was laid directly on concrete with no damp proof membrane so that's gone mouldy!
It said it had central heating, but there was ONE radiator upstairs.
An extra attic above the bathroom... with a fully set up iron bedframe up there, we still don't know how it got up there, it wouldn't have fit through the opening!
The bloke that owned it before was mates with the bloke next door so both ours and next doors are bodge jobs they worked on together.

The HVAC system was on the way out, it was leaking. Lasted another year and cost 14k to replace

Wow, this thread makes me feel very lucky! When we moved in we found the vendor had bought us a new dishwasher, as she admitted the old one was broken! She also tried to leave a gigantic golden orb spider outside the front door, I insisted it had to be moved before I moved in, so she took it with her to her new house! The boiler did die within a year though, as did the pool pump.

i knew work had to be done however the previous owners had cut loads of electric lines so all electrics needed replacing.

they had removed the oven and by doing this they had damaged the kitchen sides. So needed whole new kitchen.

left most of their stuff as they had moved abroad and were meant to be clear. Took a week just to empty the house or stuff. One cupboard had used condoms in.

I had factored in the house needed replastering and flooring replaced. But not the whole new kitchen and all new electrics.

Minor in the scheme of things but all 3 toilets in the house had leaky valves, the hot water cylinder had a leaky pressure relief valve. This was on a water metered house so I have no idea how the previous owners didn't notice.

House was filthy, really grim. Grease everywhere. Found loads of cat wee stains (no attempt to clean them). holes in carpet. Carpet moth infestation. Random hole in wall and food with a clear kick mark/break. Oven grim.

aldo found some dioxide idealisation stuff from their teenager which was very sad.

house was sold as part of a divorce so we think the wife just couldn’t manage it. She popped round to collect something and seemed quite normal - my husband is still furious about it though as we scrubbed our old house clean, I was heavily pregnant and we had a toddler.

Agreed, rescue and report for neglect. Poor puppy.

Oh yeah, they left all the blinds and curtains for us but when we put them down/closed then they all had black mould on them! Grim!

Maybe notes for someone with dementia?

Although we had sellotape residue too, including 4 patches on the hideously out of place marble fire surround where I’m presuming they hung their Christmas stockings. Speaking of Christmas, when we renovated I found a 10 year old, open but nearly full, Selection box, given to the previous owner by his mum, hidden on top of one of the kitchen cabinets. He must have been at least 30 at that stage with no children. Was he hiding it from his wife and forgot about it?

Our boiler blew up 2 weeks before our house completed. We had a new one fitted!! I believe in karma!!

Whaaaat?!

What do you do?

So, a few people asking for more bomb info - unfortunately, it wasn’t as exciting as it sounds. We bought a property that was about 120 years old and had only had one previous owner (bought by parents, passed onto their daughter who lived there from her birth right through to her death). Doing some work, we found a bomb under the floorboards. It was newer than the house so had apparently been brought into the house and hidden (presumably be a child) at some point and (presumably) forgotten about. We called 101 who sent out a bomb disposal team and we had to evacuate ourselves and the neighbours (which was a nice way to meet some of our neighbours for the first time). We live in a military area and so they came fairly quickly and removed the bomb and disposed of it on a nearby military training site. The police even posted about it on their Facebook page and we got shared all over the local Facebook groups.

It was somewhat more interesting than the knuckleduster we found hidden in the previous house when we moved in there. I wonder what kind of weaponry we should expect if we move again.

We had:

A food waste bin full to the brim with dog turds (in little bags fortunately- ish)
A full suite of bedroom furniture in the loft bedroom (so total pain in the arse to remove)
A pair of crutches
A retro Singer sewing machine
The woman's first bible with her name in it
A huge bird puppet (a la Emu from the pink windmill)
Oh and there was a dead rat on the doorstep on move in day

Buy a electric steamer from Argos about £40 cuts the job down so much and you will always use it again over the years.
Also I'd re plaster,might as well do it thoughtfully from the start rather than have to do it later on.
Also could you not join the British Gas boiler scheme, get a new boiler and pay for servicing, call outs ect monthly. X

Really manky carpets throughout the house.
Can't believe the lady was trying to sell me her antique curtains for £100! We had to just get rid of any soft furnishings.
Bathroom was done out like a bad clinical area. Just white with industrial flooring ( that attracted dirt as it was anti slip) . We ripped that out quickly.

Large rug in front of the fireplace hid the fact that the floor there had rotted because of dog and cat urine, same in the utility room. Curtains and track in the front sitting room fell off the wall when we tried to close them. Kitchen ( in an extension) ceiling leaked the first time it rained .
The most disgusting thing though: the main bathroom had a grey carpet. I think carpet in a bathroom is unhygienic so went to pull it up ready to have the floor tiled. It wasn't carpet! It was years' worth of compacted pet fur and pubic hair!!!
The house hadn't been cleaned either.How do people live like this?