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?

Only ever rented but one house had no lightbulbs whatsoever, we moved in after work in the wintertime so not ideal!
Another house I viewed again in the evening, spotted a nice big shed at the bottom of the garden came to discover it was full of stuff, one was a very old horsehair mattress stinky and very wet, had to make friends with the neighbour quickly as access was through his garden.
Did speak to the landlady but she said I rented it as seen and wouldn't help at all.
Plus side there was som useable shelving(for the shed) and a decent butlers sink I used in the garden

Completely knackered boiler despite having a service certificate from a mate I presume. Plus a packet of Viagra!

The first morning I had a shower and came downstairs to find water dripping through the ceiling. They couldn't have not known about that. Cheeky Fs...

And we also discovered a broken down freezer in the basement that had to be chopped in half to get out...

A packet of cigarettes and lighter at the back of the kitchen cupboard . Behind the hot water tank 50 shades collection and a few other bits and pieces

Well… where to begin!

Our first house we knew was a fixer upper. You name it, we fixed/replaced it. Everything from the kitchen/bathroom/flooring etc. All brand new.

This house, however, was supposed to be in decent nick so we could take our time doing things to it and save for an extension (think forever home). We’ve lived here a year and have basically had to find £15k+ to pay for essential repairs:

• new Windows- the latch/ lock was broken on every single one, including patio doors
• rewire and fuse box- burnt sockets (and singed wires and joists under foot!)
• dodgy loft conversion that needed fixed
• the above plus double layer of lining paper on EVERY wall has meant full replastering
• kitchen falling to bits, we’ve had to just patch that up

-bathroom leaks, again, had to be patched until we can afford to replace!

I mean honestly, you’d think we didn’t view the place- we did! It’s amazing what can be hidden by decoration and furniture.

Sex toy in the walk in wardrobe

We moved into a brand new house which they'd forgotten to put a door to the under the stairs storage which they fixed which was fine but they then left a present unflushed in our ensuite toilet

They had a beautiful victorian style street lamp/light in the back garden. It was beautiful and I loved the look of it. It was fixed to the ground and wired in.

Moved in and they had taken it. Absolutely gutted. Never thought to clarify with solicitors if it was staying as it was fixed.

They had...left 3673 holes in the walls were pictures had been.

You were lucky. We had 3673 nails in the walls where pictures had been. We've been here over 20 years and I suspect that there are still some hiding even though we have repainted all the walls several times!!

We just moved in last week and are discovering a world of dodgy electrics. A couple we'd spotted on our viewings, but the rest has been quite impressive - random things powered from normal sockets, chains of extension leads powering kitchen appliances etc. The best part is that the previous owner did work involving electrical equipment!!

Oh and we also discovered that the previous occupants were very odd people, paranoid about security (think cctv and razor wire) and moved without telling their neighbours (no for sale board, insisted RM listings removed the second it was sstc). They'd been here 20+ years and barely spoken to the neighbours except to be rude/threatening.

• Used pads sticking to the ceiling
• 1980's porn collection. Women in lacy suspenders and LOTS pubic hair!
• 4 layers of carpet and bathroom tiles- one on top of the other through the eras
• A handwritten name and date of 1936 in beautiful writing, found under a floor board. Presumably when the house was built. Still unsure if he was the owner or builder?

Aside from finding out pretty instantly that the boiler was so corroded it had to be condemned... There are loads of things that just make no sense. None of the ceiling lights are central, some are only off by a small amount whereas others are noticeably off. Every single pair of curtains in the house have been cut so that there's a 30cm gap and you can't fully draw them, including in the lounge they even cut the bottom off just one side so that it would sit flush to the TV cabinet... So not only does that pair not fully draw closed but there's also a 50cm gap along the bottom of one half 😂😂

Our buyers were moving abroad and I assumed they just gave up towards the end of moving out. The kitchen cupboards were full of food. Cups, glasses, saucepans...the garage was completely full so all our stuff had to just be dumped on the grass. There was also an old ceramic bedpan in the loft.

The house we moved into 2 years ago was full. Actually full. Food in cupboards, clothes in wardrobe. Fortunately it was bigger than our last house so could move stuff into one room and clear it to add our stuff. Sad really, the owner had died and had no children so left everything to nieces who didn't care. We have tracked down friends to give photo albums and keepsakes. Kept some lovely furniture though

A huge flea infestation

A cat cemetery in the garden as well as markers of 3 beloved pet sheep graves. (It's a farm, so it sort of makes it okay)

A rug covering a massive hole in the floor. Under the remaining floorboards we found loads of marbles. Apparently the old boy who owned it before us had dementia and thought the house would fly away if he didn't fill the floors with gravel, marbles, bricks, etc. He'd even left stones in the kitchen cupboards and fridge.

I pulled out the drawers in a built in unit to clean them and found the previous occupants, sons (I assume) porn stash from the 90s 🤣

Same as you OP, carpet laid over old carpet and cut around furniture and manky, greasy kitchen that I ended up scraping grease off with a wallpaper scraper. Also a window that they’d tried to fix themselves but had used the wrong size bracket so it was just perched in the frame and when I opened it it dropped down, the repair man said I was very lucky it didn’t just fall out and hit someone on the head, it only cost me £40 to get it fixed properly so I can’t understand why they tried to bodge it themselves.

Oh and I forgot they left some frozen fish in the freezer except DH did the food when we moved in so about two weeks later I asked him where this open bag of fish had come from because it was from a supermarket we don’t ever shop at and he said “oh yeah, they left that in there” and when I asked why he hadn’t thrown it out he said he thought I might want it

In addition to the tea/coffee splatters all over their bedroom walls and the overwhelming smell of dog (I had wondered what the scented candles were hiding...), a cupboard full of shoes! They did come and collect them pretty quickly though.

@Cherrydown we had that once too - painted round mirrors, pictures, shelves (that they then took with them). Fortunately we were young and found it amusing to spend our first weekend there painting over everything with our friends.

@Councillorbrian we have one of these too! The seller denied knowing the code. I haven't started trying yet but I might do now. I don't even see how we can remove it if we don't know the code.

Viewed during a Canadian winter, garden covered in snow. By the time we moved in, the snow had started to melt, uncovering endless sloppy orange dog turds that had accumulated over the winter. Heaven knows what the poor dog had been eating. We had to step around them while unloading our furniture and do a daily clean up for the first couple of weeks as the snow gradually receded.

We found the cremation urn for the previous occupant in the bedroom cupboard, fortunately empty.

I found a cupboard above our shower room, which didn’t have a door per se but a panel with screws in. We assumed it had shower related mechanics or something inside until the panel was removed to be painted. It contains suitcases and to this day we’re too scared to look inside them or even open the space to throw them out.

We've discovered that the kitchen and bathroom were installed DIY by the previous owners, which is fine. Except they'd done the electrics themselves too!!!! When we had the kitchen done a couple of years ago (6 years after we'd moved in) they ripped the existing kitchen out and refused to do any more until an electrician had made the electrics safe. It was a massive fire risk, and they were amazed it hadn't all gone up in flames before we got it done.

We're in the process of having the bathroom done and they found similar things with the DIY plumbing. The toilet hadn't been screwed to the floor so it should by rights have been leaking the whole time instead of just the past few weeks. And the electric wire for the whole of the upstairs lighting randomly just went up the wall of the bathroom, so that's had to be rerouted. And the floorboards needed to be replaced because they'd been patched and were almost rotten.

That's aside from the several bits of furniture they left in place. Dd1 is still using the wardrobe, shelves, drawers and bedside table they left. And the wardrobe they left in our room is far better quality than we would ever have bought.