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?

😄

Was some of this stuff (thinking grim carpets) not obvious when you viewed? I go around rattling doors, running taps, opening windows and poking at boilers when looking at houses, and also we’ve had to provide boiler certificates etc as part of the sale. Fair enough if the boiler is obviously ancient.

Our first house was run of the mill tired old house stuff - wallpaper covered in tar and nicotine stains and manky carpets from dogs. But it was all obvious during the sale process and as a result we got a bargain.

Mice, lots and lots of mice, when we looked around our house it looked so lovely, a nice family lived their but when we moved in we discovered mice had taken over, I couldn’t sleep for days worried about them crawling on me.

That’s really sad :(

We moved 2 weeks ago. Overall the house is lovely, but:

Washing machine and dishwasher waste pipe had been sawn off at the outer wall and deliberately blocked with silicone, so the kitchen flooded when we first tried using them.

They left us a huge, unattractive and very dusty display cabinet type thing which we hadn't asked for, so have had to arrange for it to be removed on top of the usual moving chaos.

Shower leaks.

In our last tenement flat we found a panic button in the bedroom - wired in to the alarm system!

in this current house - nothing too surprising but it was absolutely filthy. Fridge came with the house and it had been emptied but inside it was covered in mould and orange oil. I had to get in a professional oven cleaner too. Everywhere had dust and dirt and grime and it was just horrible.

@CoffeeLover90 full fat coke leave it overnight it will clear limescale.

DF rented out flats many years ago and he always ensured they were immaculate when tenants moved in. Worst tenants I can recall let their dog poop all over the carpets and never cleaned it up! Worst of all they had a crawling child in there 🤢Everything in there had to be burned when they left. Took weeks to get rid of the smell and the whole flat had to be disinfected before it could be redecorated.

How did you fix the showers @xyzandabc ? Were they electric? We have this trouble in our house and haven’t found a solution yet.

This would of broken my heart. Can’t believe you sent it back to live with those horrible people.

Most of the gubbins in our house was on the survey or visible, but I was caught out on day one by the cleaning company I hired to deep clean the place. They ripped out the mouldy sealant from round the shower base without telling me, so the first time we used it, water came through our kitchen ceiling! 😬

When we moved into our first house, we discovered that the hob and oven were powered by gas cylinders. We had been told the house had mains gas etc, which it did, but for some reason, they were attached to bottles in the outbuilding! This was in 2012, so not do lies years ago or anything. I was livid, especially as the bottle was empty and we couldn't cook anything the day we moved in.

I assume it’s an auto correct…suicide idealisation

When we moved into our first house, they left us loads of broken furniture, a filthy washing machine and broken dishwasher, a garage full of old engines that we had to get a hoist in to remove, an illegal pit in the garage to work on cars, no flooring downstairs, piss soaked floorboards, half a carpet, a leaking bathroom, shoddy electrics, and a broken front door. No lights worked, the ceiling lights had been taken and live wires were hanging out of the ceiling.
The solicitors weren’t interested at all. I was gutted. I thank my lucky stars we were living with my mum at the time so we had time to sort it out before we moved in.

Our second house was lovely. Sellers were lovely. Aside from a clean which you expect to do on moving in, everything was absolutely fine. Lovely house, lovely garden.

@Lollipopsicle 😂 but also it was meant to be ‘we found some suicide idealisation stuff from their teenager’ - which was very sad indeed. Hope they are ok wherever they are.

Was some of this stuff (thinking grim carpets) not obvious when you viewed? I go around rattling doors, running taps, opening windows and poking at boilers when looking at houses

in an ideal world yes. But the property market last year was so bonkers that you would be lucky to get a 10 minute viewing slot alongside 20 other people the same day and no chance of a second viewing before best and final offers.

Bought house from a very sweet elderly couple who had lived in it for decades. They told us how lovely it had been to raise tbeir family here. It was full to the brim of clutter and memories but we could see the potential.

Tbey asked if we wanted anything as they were seriously downsizing to move in with their daughter who lived some distance away. We agreed on a few things, mainly outdoor stuff as we already had everything we needed from previous house. They promised it would all be cleaned and ready for us.

When I got the key, they had already left town and I discovered that 95% of their stuff had been left. Clothes, sheets, towels, photos, cards, 'I love you Nana' cups, old medication, food etc. I think they literally packed a couple of suitcases each and just walked out the door on the morning of the move.

On the same day our moving truck arrived. My husband and I were both due to start new jobs the following week and didnt have much time to get sorted plus trying to settle kids/pets. A fecking nightmare as we literally could not move for stuff for weeks.

I know they were old and it probably just became too much but surely ask for help? They have 4 children and loads of grandchildren judging by the photos they left! It took us a good 12 months between both of us working ft/kids to clear every part of house out. Garage/sheds/attic was full to brim also. We laugh about it now but was really pissed off at the time.

DDs first house that she had to go over asking for and looked lovely at viewing.

boiler Fucked
radiators fucked
All walls have been skimmed over Artex so cracked in loads of places
electrics in kitchen dangerous, certain sockets sparked
oven took two hours to cook anything
kitchen sink &
outside drain blocked
facia boards rotten
TV ariel didn’t work and was fastened on next doors house and loose
bathroom sink gunged up to high heaven
spotlights badly wired by DIY-er
bathroom fan unvented and sending damp air into loft space
walls in bathroom full of bubbled, painted plaster

it’s been a very stressful, expensive year and she hasn’t started on the outside.

Used needles in the shed 😱

When we moved out had to use small vans very rural. First van arrived at new house to find the previous owners wife having a panic attack nothing had been moved out. Meanwhile at our old house the new owners had arrived and emptied our furniture onto the lawn to get their stuff in. Was a nerve wracking day

That’s absolutely terrifying!!

When we moved into a doer upper we had a fireplace that leaked co2… good job we didn’t try and use it when we had a baby. But your story, jeez 😱

We were left:

2 beds (broken)
1 mattress (filthy)
1 large armchair (ancient and stained, obviously)
Several framed pictures
A collection of broken dolls
Horse equipment (tack, rugs etc)
Vwry old fridge with random old food (eg half block of vegan cheese, out of date bacon, etc etc)
Various tins in kitchen cupboards
Dog bowls, leads, etc.
Toilet brushes and half-used toiletries (eg part used shampoo bottles, used disposable razors, etc)
Broken lamps
Broken kitchen equipment (kettle, toaster, soup maker, none of which worked)
A bucket of mixed keys. Some for this house, some for god alone knows where. If you’ve lost a key I probably have it. Took us ages to get back door & windows open as we’d no clue which key did what.
A crack in the oil tank which they’d temporarily repaired (with soap). Fortunately the oil delivery guy spotted it before pouring heating oil everywhere: doing that tends to lead to fines and having to professionally remove contaminated soil.
A leak in the cistern outflow in downstairs toilet - they’d just turned off the water supply to the toilet to hide it. If they’d told us then it’d not have been a problem for us to fix, and would’ve saved us loads on having to replace the floor and replanted the wall...!

And thats just what I remember left in the house. There is also a double garage filled with broken tools, old crockery, chemicals in unlabelled bottles, dried-out paint, etc.

And an outside area behind the garage with kids plastic toy cars (broken), animal crates, metal bedsteads, old washing machine... etc etc.

Needless to say, we knew the house needed work but assumed they’d be removing their (deceased) parents possessions out....

In the loft boxes of holy water in little bottles.Statue of the Virgin Mary.Pictures of Jesus on the wall.Boxes of pepper in. Vinegar hidden in the bushes along. With 24 tins of dried milk.Hundreds of plastic flowers for shrines.An old television with no inside made into a shrine. Fridge defrosted complete with food running out of the door.Bags of dog hair.3 skips later we could see what we had bought.Lovely man but lost control of his life.

Not as bad as most of these, but huge ikea wardrobes bolted to each other and bolted to the walls and skirting boards. It took ages to take them apart to get them out.

And once they were moved we discovered that the floorboards had been varnished around them, so they were a completely different colour where the wardrobes had been.

There were lots of other problems (leaky toilet, dirty walls, crumbly plaster etc) but the wardrobes pissed me off the most.

Garage had not been emptied nor had the loft. Took us days and two skips to clear.

Cupboards left full of half empty bottles of detergents, shampoos, lotions etc dating back to the 1980s- left because they might be useful apparently.

Leak in the bathroom and a blocked drain 😩

It was a renovation project, but we had enough to do without adding these things.

The loft where they dismantled and stored all the furniture that was in the house when viewed couple getting divorced . Spotlights everywhere downstairs but fitted by cutting floorboards and laying cables over joists upstairs. Kitchen floor vinyl was tatty and when we ripped it up there was random bits of ply and hardboard and no floorboards , turns out that's how they got rid of woodworm.
All the bedroom carpets must have been sprayed with urine and dirt in the 3 months from viewing and ripped out on day one.
We are still finding horrors - have not tackled the bathroom yet.