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AIBU?

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Original poster

To charge tenant for how much?

27 replies

Robinredbreasted · 21/08/2025 20:13

Have a small rental cottage (my home I rented out after moving back in with mum to help care for her as end of life). Tenants asked me to see them and they gave notice. All very nice etc. but on leaving (which was quite rushed) I noticed there’s some quite sizeable holes in the walls (they’ve not mentioned before). Problem is the walls are covered in anagalypta type wallpaper so if I filler and repaint them you’ll still see the patches, it’ll look really untidy. The main walls are papered in this old design so it’s not like I can re plaster or re wallpaper small sections.
They’ve asked that they get all their deposit back as they are moving away and need the money. But I don’t want it to be left as it is.
AIBU to charge them the full cost of re plastering/rewallpapering (which I imagine would be more than their deposit anyway), or what should I do?

OP posts:
PoshDuckQuarkQuark · 23/08/2025 13:22

Robinredbreasted · 22/08/2025 22:10

It’s really old wallpaper, I’m guessing at least 30 years old but it was painted just before the tenants moved in. The wallpaper is in excellent condition mostly as is the whole cottage-it’s got many many original features all in excellent knick. I understand how to use the deposit scheme etc but I was wondering what to do re repairing the holes eg just filling them in (either they do it or I get someone in to do) will look really silly as the hole will be flat but all around is highly patterned wallpaper. But, I imagine it would be very expensive to replaster everything over as surely I’d have to do each whole room rather than have some walls wallpapered and some flat, and would remove some of the character perhaps.
yes I’ve got lots of before and after pics, there’s 3 holes each the size of my hand, two in hallways and one at the bottom of the staircase. I looked today but tenants weren’t available, their friend showed me around. There’s also huge weeds growing out the gutters but the tenancy doesn’t mention gutters being cleaned. I checked last in March.

30 year old wallpaper has zero value.

But you can charge them to make good the damage at a sensible price - I'd suggest filling the holes then having someone paint the wallpaper pattern onto the plaster so that it doesn't stand out too much.

It's always sensible to retain a spare strip of wallpaper for exactly this reason, but as it's so old that's probably not feasible. You could have then charged them the labour cost of having that line of paper removed and a new strip put up.

LIZS · 23/08/2025 13:27

You can’t charge for 30 year old wall paper! Ask your decorator how much to make good the holes and put that towards redecorating. Gutters are ll responsibility.

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