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?

Some seriously dodgy electrics! Literally, if you turned the kitchen light on the living room went off, and vice versa. No electrician would touch it as it was such bodge job, and we couldn’t afford the £££££ to get the house rewired.

eww, so he's like a ghost or something?

The previously nicely tended gardens front and back were left to go to rack and ruin once they’d accepted our offer - house was unoccupied and when we moved in the grass was up to the window sills, weeds everywhere. But the best part was the line of trimmed conifers at the bottom of the garden, which we’d earmarked for cutting down and replacing with fencing. When we came to do it, we found that the previous ‘trimmings’ in the form of huge logs, were hidden amongst them along with enough bricks to build a barbecue !! Between that and the crap left in the garage and the loft, we ended up having to pay out for a skip to get rid of it all. We’d been advised to contact the solicitor if anything was amiss on the day we moved in, but there wasn’t much he could do as the vendor had moved abroad. Other interesting finds were that the light switches had all been installed upside down and they had tiled round a bathroom cabinet - and yes they’d taken it with them, leaving an attractive gap in the tiling, which revealed the shitty green paint underneath !!

First flat we rented had a mouldy take away rice dish left in the grill in the oven (had not used grill yet and it was one of the seperate grill/oven combos) possibly 3 weels old. We thought the flat came with washing machine but that was took when we arrived and also the back door had been kicked in near the door handle so obvious a recent break in!!! Was boarded up but took 6 weeks for someone to replace it!

@Whenigrowupiwanttobea

First night in our new house other half had a bath before work and gave baby bath at same time. He gets out and says he'll dress baby while I round up the laundry. Go downstairs to find an interesting water feature in my kitchen... the contents of the bath cascading through the kitchen ceiling. Took the side off the bath to investigate to discover that it wasn't a leaky pipe that was the problem. Nope just that the newly fitted bath was not plumbed in. No connection between the plug hole and outside waste pipe just thin air!!! Took 6 days for the ceiling and electrics to dry out before we could have a new ceiling put in! Previous owners had decided that as long as it looked neat and tidy and they never used a bath why bother plumbing it in but forgot to tell us!!!

@Whenigrowupiwanttobea wins . That is utterly shocking but funny too (looking back).

In our house, the fridge freezer was left full of food. Sounds nice, doesn't it?

Previous owners emigrated about 2 years before selling the house.

When we moved into our old house and went up into the loft months later. We ended up finding a load of brand new items such as a vacuum, kettle etc. in their boxes and a envelope with bail money written on it 😬

Two years after I moved into my current house I found a very nice rice cooker behind one of the kitchen cupboards. All built in units so must have fallen down there sometime. It would be great to use the thing but the instructions are printed in Japanese on the side.

Anyone who left their rice cooker behind when they moved. Do get in touch, I have it safe waiting for you.

@ColdTattyWaitingForSummer. We had something similar. There was a two gang light switch on the wall in the hall and a corresponding one on the landing - we naturally assumed the switches were to turn the hall and landing lights off on both levels - er, no. The ones at the top operated the landing light and the downstairs hall, but the hall switch operated the hall and the upstairs bathroom !! When we refitted the kitchen, the fitter had to get the electrician to do a lot of remedial work because the electrical sockets at the backs of the original cupboards into which the appliances were plugged, had all been a bodged job - strung together with electrical cable and not even attached to the walls or cupboards and literally hanging like hammocks !! Even the gas hob had been fitted using a rubber hose to connect from the gas supply - and it was perishing. The gas fitter said he was amazed the house hadn’t gone up in flames long ago. Makes me wonder what surveyors actually do for the fee !!

Mine have similar themes 😂 First house a pair of boxers and a sock when we removed an old radiator.

Current house a bra stuck down the back of the fitted wardrobes when removing.

@Highfivemum, I'm feeling emotional today and your story has brought a lump to my throat. How lovely of you and your family to involve her in your lives and I am certain you all did enrich her life and diminish the utter cruelty of her niece.

Weeks after we moved in we dug up a pile of ivy to find a very large goldfish in a small concrete rubble filled dip in the garden (it couldn't ever be described as a pond. I have no idea how it had survived. We rehome him to a friend with a large pool, the relief on the fishes face was visible
We also discovered that the home made Wendy House was made of asbestos

Oh another for current house.

The bloody bathroom taps hot comes out cold and cold out the hot! It had just been refurbish I think it was a diy job and some of the finishing like the silicon wasn't great on closer inspection 🙄

When I looked in the oven, the grill pan was encrusted with grease and had a rasher of bacon in it. However the worst thing was that they left the carpets infested with fleas from their two dogs and a cat. We were sleeping on a mattress on the floor while we waited for our new bed to be delivered and ended up covered in flea bites. We spent our first weekend in the house ripping up all the carpets and taking them to the tip and spraying the mattress and all the furniture with flea spray!

When my friend and I moved in to our tiny attic student rental flat, we had to scrub the… ahem… “circles” off the velux windows. The previous tenants obviously had some kind of competition going on.

Bleurgh!

The previous owners had left a chest in the main bedroom. The top drawer was full of shaved pubic hair. There must have been several years worth there. This house had warm air central heating with the vents in the floor. Some sort of smelly spice had been put down the vents and when the sytem was turned on the whole house stunk.
Also, when we viewed I thought the kitchen cupboards were yellow, in fact they were white but covered with a thick layer of grease.

The whole house was absolutely filthy, but we bought at a very reasonable price as no one else could face it.

House was grubby & needed a good scrub. Nothing unusual there. Shower didn't have hot water. Didn't test this so ok fix and move on.
Years of dodgy landlord quick fixes & 'decoration'. Want to make it our own anyway.
Thermal sheeting, an extra fuse box and shrivelled up weed plants in the loft.....yeah great job mr surveyancer.

Yeah maybe should have gone into the loft but left it to them & trusted the outcome. Which didnt state there was a miniature weed farm above our heads when we went to get all the electrics signed off.

The gas boiler was condemned. The dustbin was filled with dogdirt-and-newspaper 'sandwiches'. The toilets all leaked. The carpets by the beds in all the bedrooms were rotten with urine and poo where the people hadn't bothered to go to the toilet at night. A rolled up carpet full of vomit and dogdirt. Granddad's mattress. Every floor needed stripping, scrubbing and sanding. Kitchen cabinet shelves turned clean-side up and thick with dirty grease on the underside. Two years and I'm still not straight.

My surveyor had found that the vendor had not had a damp proof course put in so the mortgage was made contingent on it being remedied. The vendor did not want to do it so had to pay me the money. He was OK about it but his wife was furious about it. When I got the keys, all the indoor doors were locked and it took a while to work out which key opened which door. When I got into the kitchen I found that one of the gas burners had been left on and the room was absolutely full of gas. Didn't turn the light on because luckily she had taken all the lightbulbs. She had also taken all the plugs.
We've been here over 20 years and have had no end of trouble with it - he was a 'builder' and had bought it as a wreck and 'done it up' - so far we have had to have a new kitchen, new windows, new doors, work doen on the roof etc - we also had the water running through the kitchen ceiling problem. It's never ending. A complete bodge job.

@aerosocks

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

Sorry for laughing at this

Oh and all the time they were working on the house and then living in it they never paid a single bill. It caused me no end of problems with utilities and Council tax.

Flea infestation!
Half inch of grease on top of kitchen cabinets.
Missing radiator
Dog piss on carpet.
Dirty carpet on top of even dirtier
carpet.
Water leak behind kitchen cabinets.
Betamax videos.
Bathroom tiles stuck down with silicone.
Shelves in living room stuck to wall with no more nails.
Leaking main roof.
Leaking flat roof
Still doing UP that house of mine.

Dry rot that had been hidden behind a ‘home improvement’ bathroom makeover and sheets of asbestos rolled up in carpet in the cellar (we had worried it might be a dead body so were mildly relieved to discover it was asbestos!)

Oh and a used nappy in the middle of the floor and a maggot- infested chicken in the dustbin! Oven was filthy as well!

Moving in day in my new house, the previous owners had taken the oven and washing machine, but as a by product they were the only things holding the kitchen upright...cue new kitchen . Decided to get the house rewired as a result. Electrician told me it was just as well because the previous owners electrical handyman attempts had left the house within a hairs breadth of going up in flames.

Rented my house out for a few years while I worked abroad. Not only did the renters not feel obligated to pay rent but cleaning wasnt high on their agenda either. Everything was soiled, carpets, floor boards, walls, and a 2 inch layer of grease in the oven. Opened my shed door to be met by a wall of stuff, bags of rubbish, clothes, childrens toys, nappies (used) broken hoovers and the like, I literally couldn't see over the top of it...had to hire a skip to clear it alone. The clincher though was the bucket of rainwater in my back garden which camouflaged the vomit at the bottom of it. Sold it once I'd cleaned it though, my previously very pretty house just didnt feel the same after that.