To The People Who Owned My House Before Me I Would Just Like To Ask

[MintyyAeroEgg]

Why, why, why, when the kitchen measures 25ft by 12ft, you chose to confine the kitchen area (all the units and appliances) to about 1/3 of the available space, and devote the remaining 2/3 to a dining area - which you chose to CARPET in dark green carpet. I just cannot get my head round what you were thinking of, you silly silly silly twunts.

Anyone else?

Why did you paint and plaster in the dining room without putting down dust sheets, ruining the lovely Victorian tiled floor, and then glue the disgusting carpet to the floor?

Was there a glut of fake wood panelling in the late 70s? Is that why you covered every fecking wall and panelled the (aqua)bath with it?However, it was nice of you to just nail it up over generations of wallpaper and paint. Did you also lose a tape measure as not one was either straight or the right size (nor was the bleeding awful nylon shag pile you tried to charge us fir, but when we said no left anyway). Nice of you to just use 6inch screws to put up the kitchen cupboards too. (Wood panelling on the doors too-nice touch) thanks also for having a shave and a shit and not cleaning up after either.
However,to the people after us, sorry about the Thomas the Tank engine wallpaper and the bed base that dh forgot to have put on the moving truck.

why did you plaster over wallpaper

why did you not connect the toilet cistern overflow to the overflow pipe.... and then box in the toilet cistern so when it starts to leak it takes hours to work out where the leak is coming from.

why did you carpet the kitchen

why when replacing the windows did you fill in the gaps with wet sand. Wet sand dries into dry sand. Which then pours out when someone takes the wall paper off.

Why build a wardrobe over a beautiful original fireplace, destroying the fireplace sufficiently to make it unsalvageable, but not enough for us to not notice it ever existed and therefore be able to mourn its destruction.

Why did you plant raspberry bushes under the washing line, meaning anything longer than a t-shirt gets raspberry stained in summer.

How me and DP laugh....

House before this one: When we came to look round you told us that most people pointed out all the good things, but you were going to point out all the things that needed doing. Very refreshing, but you somehow forgot to mention that the roof leaked, the wiring was dodgy, there was no heating system and the kitchen was so damp that the wallpaper was held up with blutak. Also, it was not kind of you to leave all the furniture you couldn't fit in your new house - it was laziness, wasn't it? Especially as it all smelled so badly of dog that it stank the house out and was so clapped out that we had to get it all to the tip.

Current house - to whichever previous owner or their builder did this: when your cold chisel got stuck in the wall a few inches below the ceiling, wouldn't it have been better to get it out and fill the hole in, rather than leave it there and build a little box out of plywood round it to hide the chisel?

To the previous owners of my parents house:

What induced you to wallpaper the tiny box room with a wallpaper based on that painting of dogs playing cards?

And to my parents- why did you keep it on the walls until I was about 12?!

Why was the smoke alarm connected to the burglar alarm?

When we got the key and started knocking walls down it took forever to work out that the smoke was triggering the burglar alarm.
It's a miracle that the neighbours are still talking to us.

(Although previous owner had form for midnight burglar alarm sessions)

Why did you think that we wanted to keep 40 year old wet carpets which had been soaked over a period of months due to a broken water tank in the loft? You put them all back the day before we got the keys - and we ripped them all out again. Madness.

not smoke but dust triggering the alarm

1st home - why did you have sky blue on the bottom half of the walls in the living room and navy blue on the top half? It looked really odd. What was with the bar at the top of the stairs? Did you really like dark blue gloss? It took months to get rid of it.

2Nd home - I take it gold is your favourite colour? And thanks for the mice.

curRent home - why did you bury binbags full of 4ubbish in your back garden ? Are you ever going to tell anyone you moved out? I could have assumed your identity by now, looted your bank account and raided your pension! And why did you leave me a safe in the kitchen and no key? It drove me nuts not knowing what if anything was in there and for 7 years I tried to break into that thing before giving up when we had the new kitchen fitted and letting them throw the thing out.

Did you have a weal pelvic floor? (there were five loos)

Did you ever go to the loo while loading the dishwasher?

Did you enjoy watching people going to the guest loo? (It had some glass panelling on the door)

Also why did you patch up the window sills so they looked alright then dropped off within two months of us moving in?

Why did you leave us a silly note saying that the mirror in the bathroom had actually been your aunt's dressing room mirror, like that was a selling point? Yes, she was quite famous but it is a hideous mirror.

Had the windows been cleaned since Queen Victoria was on the throne?

Orange varnished pine cladding in more rooms than not. It might have been stylish in the 70s. Now, not so much.

Wood chip on just about ever ceiling. Fake beams.

A 12 ft by 12 ft bathroom but a 6ft by 8ft cupboard bedroom. Really?

And thanks for the attic full of your crap treasured stuff, and the broken dishwasher that we specifically said we didn't want.

To the random couple who owned our house prior to us...Would you like the "swing" back which you ever so kindly left behind in the loft? And, no thanks, we are really not interested in joining your bizarre sex club so please cancel your membership for the swinger magazine or at least get your money worth and change your address!

Just how long was it since you cleaned the bathroom or ensuite? Both were so dirty that a full day with Cilit Bang and smokers' toothbrushes ended with us giving up and putting everything into a skip. I never knew it was possible to destroy loos, sinks and baths by simply not cleaning them.

I have told DH that I'm not moving again unless it's to a new build.

Did you mean to build a kitchen extension without any lighting, or just forget to put it in?

You know that little room off the kitchen that we use as a utility room? Did you use it for food preparation...or food fights?

Do you know that light switches and sockets can be unscrewed and pulled away from the wall when you redecorate? That stops them from getting covered in paint!

Why did you rip out all the lovely old fireplaces? Oh yes, it was to sell in your junk antiques shop. They are still there, unsold, over fifteen years later. Perhaps I should buy them back?

Why did you spend serious money having the house re-wired (you gave us the receipts with the legal paperwork), then use a hodge-podge of the cheapest, nastiest socket/switch covers everywhere?

Why did you then, when redecorating after the rewiring, fit the sockets/switches BEFORE painting? Every single one (and we are talking up to 8 double sockets per room) had been painted in and therefore pulled the paint and plaster off the wall. Just as well I'm good with polyfiller...

Why did you use six inch long enormous screws to fit all the shelves etc, including the lovely home made MDF built ins? Did you keep baby elephants on your shelves?

And why would you spend mega bucks (again, you left us the receipts) having a beautiful big studio built at the end of the garden, along with a state of the art alarm and CCTV system to monitor both house and studio, and having beautiful wooden shutters installed on most of the interior windows of the house, then sell the house to us almost immediately? I am very pleased that you did, but as you spent time moaning to me about how badly in debt you were and how you weren't making any money on the house sale, I do question your sanity...

Oh - and thank you so, so much for all the fun architectural salvage we found hidden in the garden. The enormous old wooden ship's rudder, the ornate (and heavy) wooden church panels and the huge cast iron ornate grills have been particularly fun to try to cart to the tip. No idea what we are going to do with the cart wheel, or the massive pile of slate....

Why, when you had the new double-glazed windows installed, did you decide to put non-opening casements in both loos? Every other window in the house opens. I can only assume that you liked being sealed in with the smell of your own poo, especially as neither room had an extractor fan.

Why did you remove the perfectly good internal kitchen door and dump it in the garage, meaning that there is now no way of stopping cooking smells filling the whole house, and that the smoke alarm in the hallway outside goes off incessantly?

Why did you decide that your quilt-thickness, super-insulating curtains should be floor-length when all the radiators are under the windows? Every time they were closed, over the top of the radiators, you were insulating the heat out. I mean, thanks for leaving them n'all, but they're useless. Plus the ones in the dining room, with the green fringing, were absolutely hideous. Not even people on Freecycle want them.

Why, when you had the doorknobs on the doors changed, did you paint over the marks left by the old ones in a different colour to the rest of the door?

And why, in the name of all that is holy, is everything in the house sodding beige?

Oh, and (reminded by DH):

You know those railway sleepers that you used to landscape the garden? The ones that you made the steps out of, right next to the large pond? You know, the ones with no grip or textured surface finish on them. Just bare-wood steps. Yeah, those.

Did you realise that when they're wet, even just a little bit wet, they are slicker than black ice?

For six months of the year, they join forces with the pond to form a lethal landscaping trap, designed to deliver people a sharp blow to the head before depositing them in a foot of water.

Good work.

Why did you wallpaper the kitchen in rust coloured fake brick wallpaper?? And use breeze blocks to make the 'quaint' fireplace in the lounge?

Oh, yes, and the new door way through from the kitchen, shame you didn't bother including a lintel to support the wall above - the standard of your other D-I-Y just made DH a teensy bit suspicious, just as well he checked...

Mintyy so how is your kitchen now after this time lapse?

To mine: Why did you feel the need to put so much trellis into the garden. I know the idea of 'rooms' but honestly we lost half the garden. To get out the back door and into the garden I had to walk under at least three arches.

Why did you put a rambling rose by a small arch. I loved the flowers but the poor thing was over the top of the arch and reaching another 3 metres into the sky... if you'd planted it the other side of the arch I could have trained it through the holly tree. I miss that rose and it's been 10 years.

Why paint the dining room creamy orange. It went a little too well with the orangey varnished pine floor, picture rail and window surround.

Dark terracotta is not a bedroom colour.

But really why sell the house? It's been lovely to live in, even the first year when we saved to replace the windows (you could poke your finger through the rotten wood under the glass in the living room) and didn't have a sofa. I've heard through the local grapevine that you'd love to move back but we're not selling.

Could be here all day but here goes

Why did you lay a wooden floor in the kitchen over a smelly old carpet?

Why did you put the wrong type of roof on the extension?

Why did you pour concreate on the drive over the manhole that covers the pipes we need access to?

Why did you fit the worlds smallest oven in the kitchen with plenty of space?

And last but not least ...

Why did you fill the old loft hatch with your granny's curtains then try plaster over it so it falls down on my head one day?

Thanks for the shit-stained pants you left in the cupboard under the sink.

Why did you paint over the front door bell, which won't work? And why did you knock a huge hole through from your study to the kitchen, in order to thread your speaker cable through?

Did you not realise that the porous tiles you used in the bathroom wouldn't do anything to prevent water seeking through the wall? And that a shower door on a hinge would leave a gap for water to go on the floor? The rubber seal you stored in the shed fixed that.

What year did you stop cleaning your oven? Was it because it had stopped working? And no, I will not continue to keep forwarding on mail from your DM for ever because you don't want her to know you've moved.

To the little old man who sold us our family home, which will one day (but not this day) be beautiful:

Why, why, when this house was built new for you in the 1970s, was psychedelic blue de rigeur in the kitchen? Blue doors with razor-sharp metal openers, stained white Formica worktops, crazy blue tiles, bonkers blue lino, and a ruddy great gap all around the cooker so food can fall in but not come out. Thanks for that. We've run the budget carefully and it will only be four years before we can afford to fix it.

Why shut up so many rooms in the house leaving them to moulder? We've seen the tape on the doors. Was it the vomit-orange carpet and wallpaper that put you off?

Thanks for all the shrubbery in the garden. We particularly enjoy the hypericum with nice toxic berries to poison our toddler; oh yeah, and the toxic yew as well.

Why put in hedges four feet from the fences boundaries? I know it's the done thing to maintain hedges this was but the garden is 100ft long with hedges which require strimming on BOTH sides and the top. Brilliant. And it leaves a massive gap for our child to hide in, and the bloody cat when she escaped outside on the second night in the new house.

What the actual jeff did your 'cleaner' do when you paid her to clean an empty house weekly? The kitchen, floors, skirting, and walls were all filthy. The bathrooms (carpeted) were soggy with old man wee. I still can't go in the downstairs loo from lingering memories of inhaling stale urine as I scrubbed the walls, toilet, and floorboards (carpet having been evicted).

Why why why glue the 70s Laura Ashley wallpaper back down on the seams? And all that wallpaper paste... We had to wash every wall 3 times before we could paint.

Oh and we adore the secondary glazing. Thought I could live with it but it streams with water and we're now forking out for new windows years ahead of where we'd budgeted (though admittedly this was our own ignorance).

Thanks for leaving the firewood though, we now have a lovely fire to keep us warm

Have you ever heard of the mail redirection service?

Where is the stopcock? We found the external one, but assume there's one indoors.