Should the landlord repaint our house?

[reddaisy]

We have been living here for three years and the walls are grubby. Clearly this is mostly because of our wear and tear but not all of the house was painted before we moved in.

If I ask the landlord to repaint the house, will they do it? Or AIBU and should we have to foot the bill? I don't want to spend money on a house that isn't ours but I want it to look nice too!

No, we have rented a few houses and have painted all of them, we even painted just before we moved out so it was clean and tidy. If you have been living there for a while then its just general wear and tear, if you have just moved in and its grubby then i would expect the landlord to have painted before you moved in. It doesn't cost much for a few pots of paint.

I doubt the landlord will be willing to incur repainting costs in this situation.

I also don't want to do it Marne! I absolutely hate DIY. Urgh. I wish I could just paint over the grubby sections and be done with it but it would just look patchy and awful.

I hope someone comes along soon to disagree with you

Maybe you can do a deal with your landlord (you pay for the paint and they can pay for someone to do it)?

Paintings easy, just find a teenager who's on summer holidays and give them a few £ to do it or invest in a paint pod .

We moved to a council house last september and had to paint the whole house, to start with it was fun but after doing the first room it got a bit boring .

Good luck xx

Painting is boring and it is the moving around of furniture etc that would piss me off the most though to get to the walls.

I have thought about just doing the problem rooms but fear it would show up the whole house.

Thanks for the advice, I think I am going to take a punt and ask anyway, they can only say no!!

Have you tried sugar soaping the walls to clean them? After 3 years I wouldn't be happy to be repainting for my tenants -I've lived in my rental (MOD) for 5 years now, and it hasn't been painted for 8 years at least. I clean the walls and they look OK.

I haven't tried sugar soaping but I have tried a damp cloth but it just takes off a layer of paint. Is sugar soaping better then?

I use sugar soap to clean before I decorate, but at the moment I'm using dettol spray as I have pantry moth and there are smudges from the corpses over the walls. A spray of dettol surface cleaner and a wipe with a damp cloth - clean wall.

If our tenants asked us to repaint the flat we'd probably agree, assuming it hadn't been done for a few years and was due for a lick of paint. We normally do big maintenance between tenants, because of the upheaval, but if the tenants are prepared to move furniture and live with the mess and smell then we'd do it while they were there.

What I'm trying to say is...... ask your landlord. The worst that can happen is he/she says no.

I'm told the deposit protection people assume that landlords should be redecorating every 3 years (so if you move out after three years and the landlord has to redecorate you are not liable to have your deposit withheld). Not sure if that helps at all in your instance though...

We are renting at the moment and do all our own diy, I am going to do some painting next week. We are also about to recarpet.