What's the worst cover-up you've come across?

Tiger_greeneyes

The nature of this thread is to give other purchasers an idea of things to look out for when they're viewing. These things all add up and can end up costing you money.

We moved into a Victorian house recently...

The soil stack had it's top removed by the replacement window fitters as the window wouldn't have opened otherwise. The problem being whenever we open the bedroom window, we get unwanted fumes entering the room. The soil stack terminates about five inches from the window opening :rolleyes:

The house is on three floors and was, in the past, set up with a separate electrical installation on each floor. We had an electrician test the installation prior to buying - the three installations had 'sort of' been reverted to one again - the cables were joined together with insulation tape and a floorboard nail was driven straight through another cable. There was no earth bonding anywhere and the lights on the top floor were run off the sockets

The vendor said she'd leave the gas fires in the living/dining rooms - but she failed to mention that they had both died a death and had been capped off for safety. We had to pay to get rid of them :mad:

Check behind sheds. We found a car spoiler the other day - it was really well hidden :rolleyes:

If the vendor has pets, be prepared for niceties such as fleas cosying up in your carpets. Thankfully, the carpets were way past their sell by date and we were going to get rid of them anyway, but it still wasn't pleasant to find the stowaways. When we lifted the carpets, it was painfully clear with the dust and dirt that billowed into the rooms that they'd never seen a vacuum cleaner - and they'd been laid at varying times during the 60's, 70's and early 80's according to the newspapers underneath the carpets (viewing tip - always keep an eye out for the presence of a vacuum cleaner, my vendor didn't have one). The vendor had the bare-faced cheek to ask us to remove our shoes when we did our viewings :rolleyes:

Lots of tips there, I hope they help someone save a bit of money/aggro

silvercar

made me laugh!

We moved into a house once to find some guy removing the gas fire from the fireplace (this had been agreed beforehand). He gets the fire out and then tells me that I'll have to get someone in to sort the pipe out before I turn the gas on as he'd left an open gas pipe! A quick call to the vendors resulted in a BG van turning up and sorting it out, but only because I threatened to tell all our friends about it (we were buying off friends of friends).

Moved into our current house in the Summer. Built in 1937, the original doorbell was wired into the electric mains. Fine except they had sited the ring part of the doorbell in the understairs cupboard; nobody could here the doorbell ring. Attached to the inside of the understairs cupboard door was an inverted hook and looped piece of string, just long enough to reach the banister end. I can only guess that for the last 80 years, they had lived with the hook rather than moving the door ringer!

We have nice french doors from the lounge to the garden, but sadly no opening windows!

Doozergirl

The house we have bought is the house that Jack built. It should be a lovely Georgian house but had been stone-clad so we knew that something was amiss. We asked the vendor why and he said that the window fitters had messed up the brickwork. Oh my word! When we removed it, there were broken and missing bricks and huge gaps between the windows and the walls just stuffed with newspapers.....and they'd removed all the lintels :eek: There was not a lintel in the whole house!

When we pulled up the carpet, the end of every joist for the dining room floor had rotted to the point where there were just tiny bits of rotten wood resting on the walls. It was being propped up by a piece of wood in the cellar which was also sucking up water from the stone floor like a straw. I'd seen that so knew we had to replace some of the joists. I asked the vendor about it and he said it had all been done properly?! Then he painted the piece of wood with some random stinking black paint to try and hide the fact that it was wet.

They'd also filled in the alcoves either side of the chimney breasts with built in shelving units. When we removed them, the biggest mountains of polystyrene fell out from behind them; the little pieces they used to use for packing, thousands upon thousands of them!

Luckily none of it has cost us much extra as we always planned to replace windows, rerender etc but that house was dangerous!

SkintMonkey

From our experiences, I'd recommend being really nosey! When we bought our current house we were first time buyers and really green about it all. Not a major problem by any means, but it was only when we moved in and took off the collection of postcards off the doors upstairs did we uncover lots of dents (looked like they were made from a fist :eek: !) on the doors and have to get them all replaced.

JennyW_2

When we removed all the coving (which was polystyrene) we uncovered all the lighting wiring pushed behind it :eek: the coving was simply glued over to hide it. Needless to say we've had a lot of chasing out to do.

Although not a cover-up, but most of the woodwork was painted brown so it's been a right pain trying to get rid of it :mad: and get back to white.

Phirefly

Good thread.

Serves as further cause for relief that for the time being I've sacrificed the character of period property for the simplicity of a newish build

Tiger_greeneyes

I can understand that, Phirefly!

It's got to be preferable to buying a three-storey Victorian seaside terrace with a baaaaad 80's multicoloured brick archway/fireplace-and-alcove-storage combo with anaglypta wallpapered sliding doors

And swirly artexed ceilings painted green.

Not to mention an avocado bathroom suite - with matching swirly avocado tiles (some have orange flowers on btw, the bathroom's not all green)

Actually, I don't even know what it's called, but there's a tardis type of arrangement with two sliding doors surrounding the whole bath. It's meant to contain the spray from the shower. Obviously my vendor had never heard of a shower screen

I'm focussing on the potential :rotfl:

nelly_2

Thick embossed wallpaper = plaster on walls is aweful

Thick minging Artex = Ceiling is awefull

Nearly all my work involves re-skiming walls and ceiling that have recently had the paper striped to reveal a nightmare

oldandhappy

Beware of lean-to type conservatories...our move here revealed a sloping roof conservatory with very little slope so the rain water would sit on top of the sectioned plastic roof causing the seams to part everywhere...now I know why they had only plastic table and chairs plus plants in there!!!!
It was not fun when the rain came through the light fittings....

Redbedhead

Woodchip - it was put up for a reason:rotfl: There is a reasonable chance the walls underneath are rubbish!

MJMum

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