After you bought your house…what horrors/inconveniences did you discover?

[Teaandsleep]

I bought in January and the entire house was wallpapered with anagylpta wallpaper, woodchip and stinking p*shy carpets that are easily 50+ years old due to the old woman that lived there (95+ years old).
Once ripped up (wallpaper and carpets) seen loads of settlement cracks/borderline subsidence cracks.

-Gutters completely blocked both front and back
-Lots of DIY electrics done throughout the house which is a big safety issue, well hidden in the attic £2000+ to fix
-Huge leaking Velux window in attic which was also a bodge DIY job. £980+ to fix
-Bathroom that has had NO VENTILATION in years. Smashed the tiles off the wall to reveal slight damp/mould…window vent opened for the first time in 21 years and bathroom airing now before total refurbishment. £3-4,000 to fix.
-Disgusting moulding stinking fridge and washing machine…washing machine which had dirty black stagnant water in it for 7 months.

• Digusting 25+ year old cooker complete with grease splashes, ingrained cooker dirt.

-Upstairs toilet that doesn’t flush at all and stinks of body odour? Not pee or poo but body odour. -Downstairs toilet that you need to flush multiple times before it does flush and sounds like a Saturn v rocket. Would not trust it with a number 2, due a total refurbishment.

Paid just under a quarter of a million for the house. The sons who are the beneficiaries did bloody well out of us, not bothering to clean anything at all!

The house has HUGE potential but by God does it need a lot of time, money and hard graft…

What did you discover?

Carpeted bathrooms that smelt of roasted onions when you ran a bath/added heat 🤢. They were quickly taken up and replaced with Lino but when they were there were lots of little egg looking things near the toilets (where the boys had peed and missed).

Gas leak from the boiler, the plastering of the ceiling didn’t go under the existing light fitting, but around them, the cooker hood didn’t have a proper filter just two sheets of kitchen roll.

Diy electrics so dangerous it needed a complete rewire.

A self-installed gas fire that was promptly scrapped by the gas safe man.

I've spent 10 years fixing bodge it and scarper cheap fixes. Just about finished now

The OP has stated that what she paid is not a bargain but average for where she lives.

We bought a house where the American fridge freezer was included. By the time we had the keys it didn't work. It was so big we couldn't get it out in one piece. Took four of us three hours to manoeuvre it out and we had to rip the doors off, and loads of disgusting water leaked out onto all the carpets on the way out the front door.
We also found water spurting outside of the garden tap which had broken and loads of letters to the 'home owner' threatening them with court action. We promptly took these to the estate agent.
Oh and the lock on the front door jammed in day two and we couldn't get back in.

So far:

• cleared the ivy off the front to find HUGE deep cracks from the upstairs windowsills down to the tops of the downstairs windows. The render had crumbled so the damp had got in and rotted the wooden lintels. So basically one side of the house has dropped and it's noticeable. All the stone window ledges are fully cracked through.
• they didn't bother to fix the kitchen sink leak so they just dug a hole in the floor and filled it with sand.
• the 'handmade' kitchen was disgusting and had several dead mice rotting within the cupboards. It was covered in dog grease and filth too.
• mouse infestation that they didn't bother to disclose.
• no drains under the down pipes, water just running and sitting against the house.
• the one drain they'd put in wasn't long enough to reach the manhole so they just wrapped it in a towel. This meant the water backed up and soaked back into the house through the wall and knackered the lime plaster.
• all the chimneys and fires (3) had been condemned. We were told they'd been checked and okayed .
• they swapped out the appliances for old shitty ones after contracts were signed.
• the carpets were so filthy each bedroom filled a hoover at least twice.
• the fitted wardrobes are damp and mouldy.
• the doors don't close in most of the rooms. Georgian house so will be expensive to replace.
• they lied extensively about the flooding and there's a weird smell in the house downstairs.
• the outbuildings that they couldn't find a key for but were definitely in great condition are actually only fit for knocking down as dogs have chewed them inside and they all stink of dog piss.
• had 2 heating systems and boilers as they couldn't be arsed to pay for it done properly. It cost us a fortune to have it all replaced and was a huge job.
• main bathroom is so disgusting it's unusable and appears to be leaking.
• en-suite was full of mould within a couple of weeks of us starting to use it.
• all 3 toilets were vile and they clearly never bothered to clean them.
• kitchen wall switches were black with dirt.
• dodgy external electrics that blow the fuses when turned on.
• our cat caught fleas as soon as we moved in.

I'm sure we'll come across much more as we're only on our second room renovation so far. We definitely paid too much for the house :(

@Walesrecommendations I expect that is just wall insulation like this. It's designed to be papered over. Like this
www.diy.com/departments/diall-thermal-insulation-roll-l-10m-w-0-5m-t-2mm/1906878_BQ.prd

Downstairs shower room flood and gas leak ,
Previous owners had painted grout in bathroom - after a few weeks it washed off to reveal black mould.

@AwkwardPaws27

A dustbin full of rotten bags of dog shit in the garden. It was horrendous. The worst job in the world on a hot August day. It was too heavy to move full, full of liquid too, so had to be tipped over, drained, contents triple-bagged & then the whole patio cleaned.

🤢

The people who owned my house before me were complete DIY bodgers.

For the first few months I owned the house there were always slugs on the kitchen floor in the morning. Took us ages to find the slow leak behind the kitchen units where they’d plumbed in the outside tap themselves and not sealed everything up properly.

The toilet cistern was 4 inches away from the wall and ‘buffered’ with offcuts of that polystyrene stuff you can put around pipes to stop them freezing.

None of the tiles in the kitchen or bathroom floor are level.

Asbestos covered pipes - well hidden in the loft.
Told us chimney had been swept, we had a chimney fire Christmas Eve and had to call out the fire brigade and pay for chimney repair.
Rotten flat roofs. Utility room leaked.
Tiles and wallpaper stuck in places with blu tack.
Bins full of bottles, the guy was an alcoholic.
All carpets filthy.
Toilets so filthy under the rim I was boaking as I cleaned.

@Teaandsleep

I bought in January and the entire house was wallpapered with anagylpta wallpaper, woodchip and stinking p*shy carpets that are easily 50+ years old due to the old woman that lived there (95+ years old). Once ripped up (wallpaper and carpets) seen loads of settlement cracks/borderline subsidence cracks.

-Gutters completely blocked both front and back
-Lots of DIY electrics done throughout the house which is a big safety issue, well hidden in the attic £2000+ to fix
-Huge leaking Velux window in attic which was also a bodge DIY job. £980+ to fix
-Bathroom that has had NO VENTILATION in years. Smashed the tiles off the wall to reveal slight damp/mould…window vent opened for the first time in 21 years and bathroom airing now before total refurbishment. £3-4,000 to fix.
-Disgusting moulding stinking fridge and washing machine…washing machine which had dirty black stagnant water in it for 7 months.

• Digusting 25+ year old cooker complete with grease splashes, ingrained cooker dirt.

-Upstairs toilet that doesn’t flush at all and stinks of body odour? Not pee or poo but body odour. -Downstairs toilet that you need to flush multiple times before it does flush and sounds like a Saturn v rocket. Would not trust it with a number 2, due a total refurbishment.

Paid just under a quarter of a million for the house. The sons who are the beneficiaries did bloody well out of us, not bothering to clean anything at all!

The house has HUGE potential but by God does it need a lot of time, money and hard graft…

What did you discover?

This is bizarre - surely most of these things are things you would have noticed while viewing , and other things should have come up in the survey you had done? Did you pay the asking price ?

@NotThisWeekSatan

An oil painting of Robert Mugabe in the attic.

Not as inconvenient as OP’s or PPs’ things but … very random

friends of mine discovered a large statue of the Virgin Mary in their attic. She was wearing a football scarf, not saying which team as its outing. It was many years ago and they left her there. They have now moved out of the house I wonder if she is still there.

@Walesrecommendations

A polystyrene wall! Ok I exaggerate, a sheet of polystyrene glued to the interior of the wall, wallpapered over. I'm terrified to take it off and see what it's hiding.

@Walesrecommendations that used to be common lining paper for insulation before central heating was really common. I remember having it on our walls as a child.

@mama4321 thank you! The decorater who spotted it said it might be insulation because its a cold wall or because the plaster behind is a right mess.

@PissedOffNeighbour22

So far:

• cleared the ivy off the front to find HUGE deep cracks from the upstairs windowsills down to the tops of the downstairs windows. The render had crumbled so the damp had got in and rotted the wooden lintels. So basically one side of the house has dropped and it's noticeable. All the stone window ledges are fully cracked through.
• they didn't bother to fix the kitchen sink leak so they just dug a hole in the floor and filled it with sand.
• the 'handmade' kitchen was disgusting and had several dead mice rotting within the cupboards. It was covered in dog grease and filth too.
• mouse infestation that they didn't bother to disclose.
• no drains under the down pipes, water just running and sitting against the house.
• the one drain they'd put in wasn't long enough to reach the manhole so they just wrapped it in a towel. This meant the water backed up and soaked back into the house through the wall and knackered the lime plaster.
• all the chimneys and fires (3) had been condemned. We were told they'd been checked and okayed .
• they swapped out the appliances for old shitty ones after contracts were signed.
• the carpets were so filthy each bedroom filled a hoover at least twice.
• the fitted wardrobes are damp and mouldy.
• the doors don't close in most of the rooms. Georgian house so will be expensive to replace.
• they lied extensively about the flooding and there's a weird smell in the house downstairs.
• the outbuildings that they couldn't find a key for but were definitely in great condition are actually only fit for knocking down as dogs have chewed them inside and they all stink of dog piss.
• had 2 heating systems and boilers as they couldn't be arsed to pay for it done properly. It cost us a fortune to have it all replaced and was a huge job.
• main bathroom is so disgusting it's unusable and appears to be leaking.
• en-suite was full of mould within a couple of weeks of us starting to use it.
• all 3 toilets were vile and they clearly never bothered to clean them.
• kitchen wall switches were black with dirt.
• dodgy external electrics that blow the fuses when turned on.
• our cat caught fleas as soon as we moved in.

I'm sure we'll come across much more as we're only on our second room renovation so far. We definitely paid too much for the house :(

Oh gosh, I'm nervous about the ivy on the house we're buying.... Vendor has said they're gonna trim it before exchange so we can double check it before signing in pre exchange walk through

Lots more final checks to add to the list (like checking taps /flush toilets /check cupboards).

We know it's a fixer upper so hoping for minimum surprises.

Viewed a house at Christmas where vendor had lots of lovely lamps lit, very Chrissmassy. Bought it and moved in (on April Fool's Day ) to find that there were no ceiling lights or light switches in some of the rooms. Not spotted by us or the survey.

What an odd thread. Did you not notice this all when you viewed? It must have been obvious.

I assume this was all accounted for in the price? At less than £250k it’s well below average so I assume the condition was reflected in the proce?

A loft filled with polystyrene, the large packing pieces from washing machine and fridge transportation. We didn't realise just how much untill we'd chucked it all down the stairs unto the hall and then had to tunnel our way to the front door to get out

I moved into this 3 bed bungalow in March, and had curtains made. Man came to put the rails up in November and the floor went KERACK - he refused to put the rail up as he said the floor was dangerous. Pulled the carpet back and the floor was rotten :(

Surveyor has been and every floor is rotten, just had his £11K quote to replace all the floors. I'm packing again and have to move out.

[quote Teaandsleep]@A580Hojas definitely noticed it…obviously once ripping it off seen all the cracks and burst/blown plasterboard ceilings/walls…

I’m in Scotland so it’s bang on the average price…hell of a lot wrong with it for the price though. Loads of things the beneficiaries intentionally failed to admit and covered up intentionally! They done bloody well and I hope karma gets them![/quote]
Majority of what you've listed would have shown up with a decent survey.
I don't think that anyone has hidden anything. It's just what happens when someone is elderly and struggles to maintain a property as well.
The joys of ownership.

The armchair the previous occupant had died in. Still sat in the back bedroom 😱

We bought our house in 2019, it’s beautiful and in the middle of the countryside so has a septic system. Found out when we moved in the whole system was completely broken. It basically had water going into it and had to be pumped out every couple of months! We’ve finally installed a new sewage treatment plant at the small cost of £15k!
Oh and also the road out floods constantly so sometimes we get stuck in.
Still love it here though

Friend found 2 dobermans- it was a repossession
Luckily she went on the day of completion
She kept them