What "surprises" did you find after moving in?

[thekaratekid]

I seem to find that most people upon moving into their new home discover something bizarre or something completely bodged (usually hidden) by the previous owner.

In our first house we found that the garage access door had obviously been broken during move day and as we opened it...it completely fell apart and was covered in still wet glue!

In the same house we also found the previous owners had lazily carpeted around large pieces of furniture...so two tone carpet in the bedrooms. Cue scrambling around trying to get new carpet fitted asap.

Current house, I assume that the vendors only ever cleaned what could be seen immediately at eye level or used useless cleaning products. The kitchen cupboards were a sticky, dusty mess of 15 years worth of grease and oil. The venetian kitchen blind was also sticky with grease. The sink drain brown with tea stains etc. I had to invest in heavy duty chemical degreaser and a drill brush and spent approx 10 hours scrubbing and breathing chemical fumes the day after moving in. Bizarrely the dirt was not particularly obvious when we viewed, I guess we didn't actually touch anything too much due to covid etc.

I appreciate the above is probably not as horrific as what some people find, but it always surprises me what people see as "normal" or feel they can get away with.

Anyone else find any horrors worth sharing?

Gosh our 1st house was horrid! When we went to pick up the keys from the estate agent on moving day we were told the owners couldnt find their cat and it could still be in the house! Then when we were decorating the previous owners had radiator covers and when we removed them we found used (YES USED!) tampons and condoms!

We took down the light fitting in the babies room and it fell down in a cloud of dust! The kitchen cupboards were full of cat hairs and the house just smelt of cat wee!

Isnt it funny how you never remember these things from the initial viewing!

God it reminds me of moving day, I couldn't believe what we missed. Cat piss soaked carpet in living room which they covered by using a full can or cans of airfreshener right before we stepped in. Botched kitchen cupboards, the patio door wasn't secure as lock broken, weird electrics. They painted round furniture and weirdest of all had random bits of skirting missing, like the one above door, random bits in living room.

We are discovering loads of inexpert DIY... while doing DIY ourselves. Luckily we have helpful friends whove sorted bizarre wiring for example.

We also found a saw under the bath.

We found a load of camping gear in the loft. We’d been in ages and had not gone up there so it was an unexpected surprise but not a nasty one!

i love threads like this lol!!

Rented house... Viewed once by nigh on candle light! With an aggressive ddog trying to free it's self from owner's grasp....
Discovered house had 2 flights of stairs on each floor and a downstairs loo!!

Lots of stuff, I’m still recovering from the shock
Main ones
*all the woodwork that looked so nice and white was due to slapped on water based emulsion- as soon as I dried to clean any woodwork the paint came right off. Now got a massive job to gloss all woodwork in house

• they told me the garden gets “soggy” but failed to mention the critical issue with drainage at the front. My home flooded twice in 8 days within 6 weeks of moving in. Have had to do a crash course on flood management. They lied basically 😡 as they stated on the questionnaires they never had flooding- I’ve found out they had sandbags *bins left full of maggots and other stuff I don’t want to think about. A heep of rubbish deposited behind shed- wasn’t there when I looked round.
• chewed dog toys left in garden for me to pick up and dispose of.

Generally they didn’t really clean, left all the holes from fixtures unfixed, despite agreeing they’d make them good

Some people don’t give a shit.

I moved because I divorced and had to sell the family home, it’s taken me 3 months to even begin to like my new house. It still doesn’t feel like home. I’m 3 rooms done on decorating so beginning to get there😌

Fancy BBQ in the garden with a charred sausage under the lid.

@umbel

We found a load of camping gear in the loft. We’d been in ages and had not gone up there so it was an unexpected surprise but not a nasty one!

I just came on to say I found a pair of hiking boots in my size in the loft. The previous owners denied any knowledge of them so I wore them for 10 years until the sole came off last month. Must get myself a new pair!

That they had taken the loft ladder, the screwed down proper loft ladder. They also had a timer light switch, a wired in timer that turned the hall light on. They took that too.

The kicker? They were moving into rented accommodation so would have been storing those items for months before being able to use them. Just completely weird.

A huge bag of weed and a bong in the back of a cupboard..

My DS had something left behind in each and every room;
eg dead plants, half bottles of (supposed) wine,
kitchen herbs, foil,
Bathroom products, including a 'deposit' in the toilet.
Stuff in the loft from a previous owner to the vendor,
Hangers in builtin wardrobes, some with stuff on them.
It all required several bin bags to remove it all.

When we looked around we noticed the rug was in the floor, we thought this was a great idea as it looked really neat and stopped you tripping. Turns out the hole in the floor is such an odd shape we had to get a completely new floor. Such a shame cos it was lovely

Patio doors didn't unlock
Garage door didn't lock
Central heating controller didn't work due to a blown capacitor
Saniflo toilet churned at random due to a perished gasket...

There were earrings and tampon wrappers everywhere. I even found earrings in the dishwasher.

Thankfully, we knew it was scruffy despite having been renovated 12 years before and we offered accordingly.

And thankfully dh and I are both handy because we spent the first few months constantly fixing things that fell apart in our hands, door knobs that spookily creaked all night, sockets that didn't work and so on. Even the oven door was broken.

We got a man in to fix the patio doors, mind as our windows also needed locks adding.

Prev house was council and empty when we viewed it (metal shutters on windows etc), so no daylight.

After we got the keys we went to clean and discovered the kitchen floor was brown with dirt which I had to scrape off with a scraper, then scrubbed with boiling water and bleach.

The internal doors had all been replaced with new, as had some of the kitchen cupboards.

The bloke next door said the people before us were mucky buggers.

House was nice once it had been cleaned top to bottom.

Our current house - prev owners left a shed full of old falling to bits furniture, which was nice.

A tree in the garden that fell down when DH leaned on it.

Previous occupant died, council had been in to clean, repair and replace a few bits. Son was a few months old when we moved in, age 4 he had a bunk bed put in his room he climbed on to the top shelve of the walk in wardrobe and found a tin with £40 of old £5 notes and some coins from bride we went decimal!
In the gas cupboard is a meter reading book from 1973, it’s still in there

No idea how any of missed this run either

Tin not run

After day one of moving in, the smell of air freshener faded to be replaced by the stench of dog pee. The carpets throughout the house, which we were going to live with until we could afford new ones, had to be ripped up and we had very bare floors for months. The lock on the patio doors in the living room was held in place by a bit of twisted wire - we hadn't noticed when viewing because it was hidden by the curtains.

We moved into a new house some years ago to find the vendors had taken all the lightbulbs, taken every little shelf off one of those metal shelf holder thingies that you screw shelves to in whatever positions you want, and left a motley collection of insects on each windowsill.

Some weeks later when walking down the landing, I stepped back against the landing wall to look up at the light fitting - and put my foot down a hole! There was a large hole in the floorboards which they’d simply spread the carpet over 🙄

Well... the builder ripped up the carpet in the living room - and I mean ripped as is was welded down by a huge patch of dark red gloop (which we decided was blood - and we are only half kidding).

Underneath was a lovely, well-preserved parquet floor (after we sanded off the blood).

Trophies and medals for cricket in the loft.

All the taps were plumbed in wrong either hot when cold or the other side of the sink to the other bathroom- it was a roulette to know what you’d get.

Loads of crappy old furniture they clearly didn’t want

The builders found a dirty jock strap behind the bath panel...

The charming collection of display plates on top of the kitchen cupboards hid spaghetti junction of pipe work. Paid a plumber a days rate to work out most of it went nowhere.

The dishwasher was holding up the worktop.