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?

My favourite was the deep hole under the sink filled with sand to catch the drips from the leaking sink. They'd left it that long it had rotted through the surrounding floorboards. The door doesn't seal either so all the floorboards and joists are rotten there too.

The place is FILTHY. We now realise they never had the heating on when we viewed because it brings the stench out of the carpets. The switches were all caked in dirt and there were no drawers in the kitchen so where the frig did they keep their cutlery?

Within a few weeks use the en-suite walls and ceiling were covered in black mould due to the lack of ventilation, the heating cost us £8k to replace, we found loads of dead mice in the kitchen and keep coming across isolator type switches that do nothing! Also the sauna in the garden blows all the electrics if you turn it on.

They did leave quite a lot of toilet rolls behind - maybe to help with all the Victorian era diseases we're likely to catch from the filth

@Aprilinspringtimeshower

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😌

My last house the owners lied about a flooded basement. Cost me $15k to remedy and that doesn't include actually making it livable, just waterproof.

The master bedroom had an airing cupboard that was flush to the wall, the wall at the back of it was the wall of the second bedroom, which now it had the free standing wardrobe removed by the previous owners, revealed a massive hole, which looked straight into the airing cupboard.
If you opened the airing cupboard door, you could see straight into the second bedroom. I didn't notice the hole from the airing cupboard side when we viewed the house as it was full of towels. I also didn't notice the stash of 70's porn mags hiding in there too.
Under the bath, behind the panel, was an entire false leg, complete with a shoe and sock on it.
In the attic was a large box full of those creepy victorian dolls.
In the pantry was a few jars of home made blackberry jam....dated 1956!!!
In the garage was a heated hostess trolley, fully working and a cupboard full of ancient 78 records.

House before this one - we found a stash of magazines dedicated to women with large breasts on top of a cupboard - but - that I can cope with - just a binning thing - the evening we moved in we could smell gas - we had a 4 yr old DC & had to get it all switched off so no hot water / heating etc. I do not believe the vendors did not know - & I think it was naughty of them to leave the house with a gas leak.

They did leave two ( modest ) chandeliers which I auctioned to pay towards the gas invoice.

House before that the previous occupants took every doorknob , lightbulb , taps etc and gave all their dogs a bath in the bathroom before they moved out.

@TheRealHousewife

One cottage we moved too the previous owners had painted the walls around furniture and heavy mirrors and vanished floors around the rugs!!! So come moving in day it looked liked a cartoon house with outlines of furniture and rugs visible in otherwise empty rooms.

Did you take photos?

As someone at the start of a long renovation, this thread has bizarrely cheered me up!
We had no surprises really. It was all as shown in the survey.

Faded worktop, coloured in with shoe polish, couldn't understand why my cloth was black when I cleaned. Textured wallpaper covering massive water damaged wall, the plaster looked like a river delta where the water has been running for years, dog chewed skirting boards and the "birdcage" handles in the kitchen full of dog hair, although it was quite satisfying to jet them out with a steamer, none of the top shelves of the cupboards had been cleaned in decades. Carpets that stunk of dog piss, so all had to be ripped up, wasp nests in the loft. Had been rented for 20+ years. Thought I had made a huge mistake

[quote swapsicles]@polarbearoverthere if you live at num 58 they may possibly be mine! I think only baby clothes though, had to leave that house in a hurry several years ago [/quote]
I don’t but imagine if we could reunite you with them!

I actually feel a bit more confident about finally dealing with these suitcases thanks to this thread. I’m hoping they’re just wallpaper as someone else suggested.

When we moved into our house we found a rather old looking, as in design, Mickey Mouse toy. We threw him out as we were renovating the whole house. When we physically moved into the house 8 weeks later Mickey was on the side in all his glory. No one knows how he got there. I rang the old owners, they only moved a couple streets away and we got to know them. They said they had found Mickey on the side when they moved in, 1st occupiers as new build. They threw him out and he reappeared. They rang the developers who said that Mickey was part of the house. That each time they threw him out he reappeared. So i now have him proudly displayed on a shelf and we call him Mickey House now. He's clearly here to stay.

We had a gas leak, moved in, noticed a slight smell around the boiler, called the emergency number, guy came out and confirmed a slight leak he did a repair, been fine ever since. Our property was an executor sale, so I am sure the family were not aware and they left the property clean, the sale was very straightforward etc.

@Seeleyboo

When we moved into our house we found a rather old looking, as in design, Mickey Mouse toy. We threw him out as we were renovating the whole house. When we physically moved into the house 8 weeks later Mickey was on the side in all his glory. No one knows how he got there. I rang the old owners, they only moved a couple streets away and we got to know them. They said they had found Mickey on the side when they moved in, 1st occupiers as new build. They threw him out and he reappeared. They rang the developers who said that Mickey was part of the house. That each time they threw him out he reappeared. So i now have him proudly displayed on a shelf and we call him Mickey House now. He's clearly here to stay.

Garden full of broken toys, broken panes of glass and general junk. There was a section of the garden that they used as a mini - tip. Took 3 skips to empty the garden and loft of all their crap.

@Seeleyboo

When we moved into our house we found a rather old looking, as in design, Mickey Mouse toy. We threw him out as we were renovating the whole house. When we physically moved into the house 8 weeks later Mickey was on the side in all his glory. No one knows how he got there. I rang the old owners, they only moved a couple streets away and we got to know them. They said they had found Mickey on the side when they moved in, 1st occupiers as new build. They threw him out and he reappeared. They rang the developers who said that Mickey was part of the house. That each time they threw him out he reappeared. So i now have him proudly displayed on a shelf and we call him Mickey House now. He's clearly here to stay.

Sounds haunted...

TheRealHousewife
One cottage we moved too the previous owners had painted the walls around furniture and heavy mirrors and vanished floors around the rugs!!! So come moving in day it looked liked a cartoon house with outlines of furniture and rugs visible in otherwise empty rooms.”

Did you buy it from Mr. Bean

In our first flat the owner had our in loads of sockets in the kitchen (yay). We had a problem with fuses blowing and called an electrician in. He took one look at the fuse box and said ‘Christ, yo lunch when been in here have you???’. Apparently the electrics was don’t by a complete cowboy ant it was very dangerous. Plus the previous owner subscribed to some dodgy magazines (holocaust deniers, conspiracy nonsense, racist crap). Grrrrrrr.

This thread has put me off ever moving again!

84 bottles of home made potato wine in the space under the bathroom floor!

@Notalotofinspiration

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

so they left you a welcome meal? not sure why you’re complaining, that’s lovely of them

Loving this thread.

We've just had our bathroom done (professionally ) - stripped all the way back beyond the plaster and lathe to the stud walls. We found a void behind one wall (above the cupboard in the hall): didn't find anything in it but before the guys put the plasterboard up to seal it off again, I put together a wee time capsule in a box, with pictures and a description of us over the years (including spare school photos of ds, also over the years), how happy we'd been in the house, pictures of the old decrepit bathroom (had only taken 22 years to get round to it ), a current newspaper and a few other bits and bobs.

Heaven knows when it will be found if ever

@Mammyofonlyone

I inherited, amongst other things, a multi generational porn DVD, a pot of lost teeth, a diary detailing an extra marital affair and an actual live goat. Not to mention a house full of bodged jobs. We may be broke but we will finish the house eventually

That sounds like a good starting point for a plot for a novel....

Moved into my housing association property last year. Policy is to gut the house before new tenant moves in. I thought i’d be ok apart from the terrible paint job.
Spent a day cleaning the house- had to use a scraper to get the grease off the kitchen cupboards and discovered they were a totally different colour. Then over the course of a few nights I tackled the radiators with some tweezers. Some of the greats from this include:
Knickers
Pens
£2
The spare keys (locks were changed anyway)
Alun keys
Pencils
A ruler
Toothpaste
A bus day ticket
10p
Crayons
Cotton buds
The finale- a used pregnancy test!

@Andthenanothercupoftea

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.

One house w moved into had a burglar alarm and panic buttons. Wires and sensors everywhere, both for that, and a previous system. Under the floors was like a rat's nest of cables, you couldn't get down one of the trapdoors for the cables. Every time you moved in the house, even turned over in bed, a sensor flashed red. Every time you opened an external door, it pinged the whole house. The system itself was so sophisticated our electricians were impressed (if also enmeshed by the cabling). You'd think the place had been a bank. The previous owners didn't seem to have anything valuable in the way of furniture or anything (this is an understatement). And it wasn't a high crime area or anything.

After living with it for a while just in case there was some weird thing going on we didn't know about, the pinging and flashing lights were driving us mad and the sensors and cables got in the way of redecorating, so we stripped the lot out.

We are probably every seller's nightmare. We have a huge list of what to check. Meaning that once we think we are serious we go in, pull away curtains, open every door, check every door/window, look under carpets, try every switch and water based stuff multiple times. We tap all walls, shine a torch at an angle to easily see hidden defect..... and the list goes on.

Our first home we stripped it to the bare bones, redone everything. We found that the prev owners put on the kitchen tiles with superglue on one part. it took about 3 days to take them off in mm tiny bits.
Under the bathtub there were kids and dog toys. The bath had a drywall built to hide it, so no idea how they got in there.
The toilet had a push thingy to flush, which was directly put on the main pipe. Fairly common way, seen many. Few days after moving into the fully renovated (yes, new laminate flooring as well) my H flushed the toilet and the main pipe burst. Bright side: it was the clean water pipe. We flooded all 4 floors under us before we could get it turned off centrally.
Had to redo flooring, skirting, electrical wires behind skirting... added an extra month back at my parents as we were doing all the work in the evenings.

In the 2nd flat we brought the owner left a few furniture pieces. And all the degu (mice type things) shit in/under them. And one drawer had a dead, desiccated degu. Compared to that, finding a scalpel at the top of of another bookcase was only a mild surprise.

First house, got the keys in mid summer, wasn’t moving in for a few weeks. While I was measuring for carpets I noticed a tiny piece of paper sellotaped to a radiator. It was covering a rusted through hole. So they hadn’t drained down the heating system as part of their standard thing to do in the summer as we’d been led to believe.
They weren’t all bad, they left garden tools and a lawnmower that we used for 5 years and left there again when we moved out.
And there was an old steamer trunk left in the loft, which I’ve brought with us and am intending to restore and use as a blanket box.

Previous house I found used sanitary pads shoved down the back of radiators 🤷🏼‍♀️

Current house, they took the toilet roll holder and cut all the light pulls off 🤣 The toilet was splattered with poo. The carpets were so filthy at the end of the day your feet/socks looked like you'd been walking on coal. The place was also hopping with fleas from their 4 cats. Everything was covered in tar from their heavy smoking.

It's nice now everything's been changed and decorated but I still get the odd whiff of stale fags.