What did your vendors leave?

[happyhouse2]

Following on from other thread about what vendors took from house, one about what they left. My goddess of a vendor left washing machine, tumble dryer, two fridges, large freezer, beautiful arm chair, a few lovely upcycled little tables, mahoosive wardrobe, antique dresser, gorgeous wooden chest and all leftover paint named for each area of the house it belonged to. We were able to donate extra white goods etc to charities. Any other happy tales?

A gerbil, but they came back for it when they remembered.

Some retro porn vhs tapes!!!

Our house previously belonged to an older gentleman who had raised his family there. His daughter was selling the house and we found them tucked up in the eaves of the garage.

An immaculate house. Clearly had gotten professional cleaners in. Carpets had been shampooed, built in appliances (fridge, freezer and oven) had been cleaned.

Bread, milk, sugar, tea and wine along with crackers, cheese and butter was left in the fridge along with chocolates and flowers and some disposable crockery and a travel kettle.

Printed instructions on how to use all appliances, boiler and burglar alarm.

An ecstasy pill which I found on top of a kitchen cabinet the week before last when decorating.

An unflushed shit...

They also left the house as a complete deathtrap and every time I started any job in the first few years it became apparent that the bloke liked to do DIY but he was both clueless and careless. The house is now thankfully structurally secure although the memory of the shit will be imprinted on my brain forever!

An expensive American style fridge freezer, much better than anything we could have afforded back then. Still going strong over 15 years later!

A genuine police officer's hat was left in the loft. So random as the were priests....

Some nice wooden furniture that we still use.

A ladder.

Me too!

A dog

They left a spotlessly clean house for me to move into. They'd even cleaned all the insides of the kitchen cupboards, spotless toilets abd bathrooms, and I'm pretty sure they'd even washed down all the skirting boards!

They left one roll of toilet paper in every bathroom, they left the curtains (some we replaced, some we still have up 10+ years later), they left amazing retracting washing line thing in garden.

It meant that i was always happy to forward any bits of post that got missed by their post office redirect.

A fridge, all the curtains and lampshades, an old school desk and a copy of the tiger who came to tea for the children. The also left her piano until she could find someone who wanted it. We were already neighbours before though so we lucked out

New carpets (were the cheapest horriblest ones they could put down just to sell the house but we made do with them until we renovated), curtains, light fittings, fridge, iron (think this was just forgotten!), some martini glasses (ditto!), oven, no furniture etc.
Most of what was left behind we kept until we renovated room by room and got rid of so it all served us well!

When I brought my current home 32 years ago, it was a probate property that the previous owner had lived in since the late 1940s. The family had cleared all the furniture from the house but left boxes of crap in the loft and the shed. It was that bad we needed two skips to clear the lot and that wasn’t gutting the place neither. You can imagine the whole place needed completely renovating from top to bottom and since we’ve owned it, the house has gone through further renovations.

In contrast, In one of my old BTL properties I purchased about 13 years ago, the owner had cleared the entire house and even took the light fittings and left bare wires (illegal I know) - had to get an electrician around that same day we got the keys as it would have invalidated our insurance if there was a fire.

I would never dream of leaving any belongings in a home only by prior agreement. In fact, we are in the process of preparing the house to go on the market as we want to move!

The house we bought in the UK had been let for a while, and was fully furnished, carpeted and curtained. The vendors asked us was there anything we'd like to retain to tide us over, otherwise they'd clear the place. We wanted carpets and curtains and that was it.

The house was spotless clear of all furniture, and a bottle of wine was waiting for us on the kitchen counter when we moved in.

When we bought in Australia, the house had also been let for ages so a bit worn, but spotless and emptied, and yet another bottle of wine, though this was from the estate agents.

Happy stories

A horse 😁only until she could find new stables! 😢we fell in love with her.

£95 debt on the electric metre and £700+ debt on the gas metre.

A lot of spiders.

A dusty hair brush.

Framed original deeds & covenants for the house (it's Victorian, so the document is all done in fancy handwriting and quite attractive). It is currently hanging on the wall of my study, and I will leave it for the next owners.

When my family moved into a new (very old) house when I was five, the previous owners took all the lightbulbs and various other shelves and fittings, but left behind a huge farmhouse dresser, covered in multiple layers of paint. My father had it stripped and cleaned up, and it is still the main feature of the kitchen fifty years later.

Current house (1999) plumbing and electrical problems, coat hangers
Previous house (1993)
A dead lion. No, really.
A weird chaise longue in yellow and black leather.
A dirty bathroom.
Previous flat (1989)
A wooden picture frame from the 1930s art deco, which I found last week, and was pleased to see again.

A filthy carpeted house reeking of cat’s pee.
A live corn snake loose in the living room
A 6” deep rectangular hole in the garden that they were intending to dig as a swimming pool.
Hideous colour schemes (she reckoned she was an interior designer 😳), one bedroom was completely painted dark purple, ceiling as well with fluorescent stars stuck to it. It took 5 coats of of paint to cover it all up.
The extractor fan in the kitchen dripping rancid fat when you cooked or turned it on, the cooker was so disgusting I replaced it as soon as I could.
Ex army family so you would have thought that they’d have some sort of standard of living from living in married quarters!

The house we are buying is Victorian and has a weird covenant from the church in the 1880s that it basically can't ever be used as a brothel or a brewery. It would actually be really cool to have the original hand written copy.

Someone hadn't flushed the toilet.
Plans for an extension that were professionally drawn up.
Lots of weeds
A badly wired boiling water tap that somehow ended up with a current through the outside tap which gave our dog an electric shock.
So many dead wasps in the down lighters the rooms were dark
But the house had never been lived in since a major refurbishment so it was otherwise in really good condition

A falling apart 4 door wardrobe, 4 layers of carpets, walls where they had painted around things (wardrobes, chest of draws) several framed frozen prints and a garden full of dog solids from 3 great danes

Decades of filth, a happy birthday banner (still hanging in the front room), a garden full of broken ornaments, used toilet brush complete with pool of piss and poo in it, lots of furniture that stank of fags and was broken, including an operators chair from i assume the 80s, electric lawn mower that was a death trap, an oven so filthy we didn’t even try to use it and had it ripped out, large chest freezer that they had turned the electricity off too and was full of rancid water, broken Christmas decorations (that were on the estate agents photos in the same place we found them) several years previously when they had put the house up for sale, fake plants absolutely covered in dust. Oh and recycling and black bins were absolutely rammed (moved during the heatwave last year so had 2 weeks of having to take our kitchen rubbish to the tip).