And to the people who owned our current house BEFORE us...

[notasize10yetbutoneday]

...Thank you so much for leaving over 20 hideous wall shelves on the walls of each bedroom which took ages to take down and a tube of polyfilla to rectify. My fingernails will never be the same again.

I cant beleive some of the horror stories on here!

Mermaidspan constructed out of drainpipes?! how? And did they hide it during the viewing?

What's the 'sleeping baby' trick? Does it involve not letting viewers into a room because you'd disturb the baby? I love the trick of putting a toddler in the dirty bath so you didn't have to clean it! Well, I don't love it, but it shows last-minute resourcefulness to cover up slatternly ways.

Thank you, previous owners, for:

Fixing the (crap, useless) kitchen cabinets to the wall using no less than four different types of screw, necessitating constant searches for different types and sizes of screwdriver to remove them. Oh, and you obviously decided all those screws weren't sufficient, because you also glued the cabinets to the walls. Freaks.

Never, in ten years, putting in any new plug sockets, so each room had one socket (not always double).

Painting the (nasty 80's) panel doors that charming menage of pink and grey.

Having the brass neck to ask for 'your' loft ladder (screwed down and very much a fixture) back after we'd been moved in a couple of weeks.

2006 : TY for not telling us that the adjoining neighbour used a baseball bat on shared internal and our external walls whenever he had drunk to much - 4+ times a week.

For leaving a skip load of detritus in the rooms and loft.

For lying about the age of the windows and doors.

For covering up the leaking sink, and we had looked!!

For papering around lights, mirrors etc.

2009 : TY for living the house as you said you would.

Yep. Honest.

The inside has that plastic tongue and groove stuff covering it and it was raining the first time we came and they "couldn't find the back door key" on the second.

When we moved in, the first time it rained, we counted 23 places where the water was coming in.

A couple of weeks later, one of the neighbours told us haw he had done it and that he'd had a delivery of 35 (3m long) square white drainpipes and the lorry driver thought it was a mistake.

Unbelievable. DIY Conservatories. I'm guessing the charming structure in question is no longer a feature chez Mermaidspan?!

I've uploaded a photo on my profile so you can see what I mean.

Thanks for leaving a blocked sewer trap filled with over 2 tonnes of liquid human waste in it and then hiding the manhole cover with soil so we didnt know until it overflowed into the garden.

Unfortunately it is notasize10yet.

We sealed it to make it watertight and it makes a good playroom for dd until we can afford to replace it

Ah yes forgot (how could i) the sewer blocked with kitchen roll, took 3 weeks for 2 sewer covers to fill to the brim, thankfully 3rd by the street was free, it took me 3 hours, a bowl&spoon and a bucket and a rodding kit to clear it.

It looks ok! But yes can see leaking when it rains is a major downside of a conservatory when you live in the UK...

Reshape whilst damp we had that too- the family of 5 lived there for 20 years and there is 1 single socket per room. How is possible to live like that?!

TY to your cat who threw up on the windowsills, and to you for letting it dry there so nicely in the sun so it looked like rock hard oatmeal cookies.
Also, why paint all your woodwork bright green and sludge brown??
and for all the woodchip - the wallpaper of the devil

Dear people who lived in my Flat beofre me..... your all clearly as mad as a bag of Badgers.

We had Brown carpet up our walls, up the Bath panel and right up the toilet???? WHY??

The Cielings had all been sprayed silver with a horrid Pink textured wallpaper on every wall in the house, and for some bizarre reason they had thier tumble dryer in the lounge and bored a sodding great hole in the wall for the ventalation, we now have a cap on it so its like a very draughty, big vent....

Oh and please change your adress we get everything from bank stuff, insurence details, passports!!!! and fecking filthy porn sent here in thier name, they collect thier post once a month, we have lived here nearly 3 years now and i have told them i am not doing it anymore!!!!

Were HA by the way i would never buy this place.

thank you for not cleaning your oven since the day it was fitted badly in some cheapy handmade wooden shelving designed to look like it had been fit properly. When we redid the kitchen 4 months after moving in and pulled the oven out the wood was all charred and looked like it could have gone up in flames at any time .

Thanks also for putting a fake ceiling in the kitchen to cover up the polystyrene tiles in half the kitchen and adding spotlights, far too close to said polystyrene tiles. Also looked like a fire or toxic fume hazard

Thank you also for dividing the garden into 4 sections; a large bumpy grass section, a patch of bark shreds, a patch of tiny gravel and a patch of slightly bigger gravel. I realise it may be difficult to choose a covering but going for all 4 was not a pretty solution and was bloody hard work to get rid of.

TY for building the raised beds in the garden up against next doors wall and bridging the damp proof course so that when we invite them round for 'hello we're your new neighbours' drinks they go "so that's why our kitchen is damp"

for fitting the boiler in the back bedroom - mmmm cozy and warm and so sleepy with all that carbon monoxide...

for scratching your names into the brickwork by the front door, and that of your favourite football team.... about 30 times

for walpapering over the cast iron fireplace in the bedroom - we could tell it was there from the way the mantlepiece you'd papered over still jutted into the room by 6 inches...

For not mentioning that you can hear quite so much through the walls - there's something very disconcerting about lying in bed listening to the bloke from next door having his morning piss into the toilet just through the wall behind your head.

For not telling the Italian Embassy that you've moved and therfore allowing us to vote in the Italian local and general elections for the last 5 years....

And for generally being colourblind and painting most of the rooms turquise with red swirly carpets....and not having repainted for 30 years

For:

Replacing every brass lightswitch and plug socket with white plastic and leaving them all hanging off the walls for us to screw in.

Leaving the conservatory with live wires hanging out of the wall and celing with no replacement at all so we had no light in there.

Leaving a bin bag outside of the house with your dirty saucepans and cooked FOOD still in them where you couldn't be bothered to clean them and take them with you.

Not being packed and out of the house at 7pm on the day of completion because you didn't want to leave meaning I had to pay the removal men for extra hours and extra guys.

For having the heating on full blast permanently so we had no idea the the boiler was too small and the timer and thermostat didn't work.

The list is endles....

Oh and....

for fitting the carpet in the bedroom over the lino you'd had down before, and for fitting the lino over the previous lino you'd had down and for putting a useful layer of 1954 newspapers down underneath that- at least we had some entertaining reading as we hauled the lot of it downstairs...

And for doing the same in every other room in the house....

.. for not telling us that water bubbled up under the dinning room floor when it rained, and you'd removed the pump that had been fitted previously.... (luckily floor height was about 18" above water height - but even so )

Thank you for leaving a box with your father's ashes in the wardrobe! It gave me the shock of my life when I realised what it was.

This was in addition to loads of other crap that she'd promised she'd take with her.

We did give the ashes back once she realised they were missing (after about a week).

For:

Tiling over woodcip

Woodchipping over tiles

Woodchipping over woodchip

Woodchipping over live electrical sockets (loads of fun with steamer / metal scraper)

Telling us the neighbours were nice. They aren't, they were alcoholics nutters

Squashing a dead fly in the hinge of the bathroom door

Carpeting in the bathroom. In maroon. FFS.

Having absolutely no taste whatsoever and dpoing ervything as cheaply as possible as if you are Laurence Dooberrywhatsit himself. You are not. Pretend wood, woodchip, pretend gold taps and putting everything up and leaving it WONKY, DIRTY and SHODDILY.

Oh yeah, and registering with everyone in the world who ever wants to phone you up / send you mail. Aaarrgghhh.

at the rat Sooz

Hi Notasize10yet,

I was thinking about moving soon, but after coming across your experience,
I'm terrified at the prospect of moving!

Have you got a few tips on what to look out for when buying a new house, I'm a little out of sync with the property process.

I don't want any hidden horrors like what you discovered, I don't think my acrylic nails could endure the same trauma your nails went through

Thank you for leaving the pink, fluffy, piss-soaked, shit-encrusted toilet seat cover. Gave the children something to stroke when I was busy herding removals men

TY for leaving 3 skips of rubbish in the backgarden for us to remove.

For concreting over the soakaway so now rain soaks away into the utility room.

For telling us the loft was boarded when it so clearly wasn't.

For doing DIY repairs to the gas pipe feeding the boiler and cooker. Now we need the whole lot replacing due to to the bodge job.