Good or bad....what surprises awaited in your new home?

SailorSam

This is going back 30yrs now, the people wanted a quick sale and said if we couldn't do it they'd get another buyer, they were getting a 'new build'. We struggled to get a buyer that quick for our ex-council, and had to drop the price. But then they kept slowing things down their new house wasn't ready, finally moving day arrived and we arrived at the house only to find the wife still there and all their stuff still in it. She said you can't come in, the new house isn't ready and her husband had gone to the site. We had no where to go and the van wanted to go so everything got dumped in the garden. It was Saturday morning and we couldn't get in touch with the Solicitor so just sat outside in the garden. Finally in the afternoon the husband got back to say they could go. But by the time they moved their stuff and we moved ours into the house (the removal men and their van was long gone) It must have been getting towards midnight.

rrtt

phoebe1989seb wrote: »

In our current house (purchased May 2011)
The only real surprise was the sheer quantity of hooks we found hammered into the beamed ceilings throughout most of the house. Consequently we now refer to the PO as 'Captain Hook'!
.

Am in the process of buying an old farmhouse where there are numerous hooks in ceiling of what was an old dairy, now pantry - fine - but what on earth the old iron hook in the beam of the bedroom ceiling was used for I dread to think :shocked:
Any ideas, or perhaps we'd better not go there?!

GwylimT

Our current home was brand new so no surprises, I think we're just starting to get the settling marks on the ceiling though.

In our last home there was a brick built ledge either side of the fireplace, when we moved in we discovered this was just balanced on the carpets, nice and dangerous. Although as we wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible it was in a way a good thing.

phoebe1989seb

rrtt wrote: »

Am in the process of buying an old farmhouse where there are numerous hooks in ceiling of what was an old dairy, now pantry - fine - but what on earth the old iron hook in the beam of the bedroom ceiling was used for I dread to think :shocked:
Any ideas, or perhaps we'd better not go there?!

Mmmmm - sounds a bit kinky! :rotfl: Was the room always a bedroom?

Ours used to be a saddlery with house attached - Georgian/slightly earlier - so guessing some of ours dated from then, but some were definitely more recent. DH thinks they were used to drape electric cables about the place whilst some of the work the PO did manage to do was being carried out, but I thought maybe he had cannabis plants growing there and the hooks were for additional lighting (there was no electric light in parts of the ground floor btw) He also had an attic bedroom painted in lurid shades of red and pink - like a tart's boudoir - and the hooks were up there too

Old_Git

I bought in May this year .
The estate agent had used 4 year old photos .When I arrived at the house the back door was unlocked ,I never did get a key for it .
The vendor was an alcoholic ,he did no maintenance not even replacing a light bulb . Broken shower door ,no toilet seat .He left a filthy cooker ,and freezer for me to dump .He painted halfway up the stairs and couldn't reach any higher then stopped .All the guttering where blocked .All the internal woodwork was painted chocolate brown and the oil tank was empty .

Jazee

We moved into a house that was just filthy (expected) but had dog poop in the bathroom (unexpected). Once we'd got our belongings in, we just locked up, went down the pub and once we'd had a few drinks, went back to tackle it all. Took weeks though.

andyuk01

When i purchased my new flat i found out that they had fully networked it with LAN ports in every room, no mention of this in the spec or in the show flat and it doesn't exist in the otherwise identical flat opposite mine

A pleasant surprise all the same

WellKnownSid

Turned on the water to hear water rushing everywhere. But it wasn't just the sound of the tank filling, water was also running down the walls of the bathroom and also in one of the bedrooms due to burst pipework.

Crawling around in the loft to locate the pipework I realised the extent of the mouse infestation.

Then the letterbox went and an £800 electricity bill arrived addressed to 'the occupier'.

Grrrrrr.

shegar

YoungBusinessman wrote: »

That was a nice finishing touch of him, how many people actually drink champagne though?

We dont drink champagne either, but we shared it amongst the people who helped us move in that day ..............
He was a pleasure to deal with all through the buying process ..........

mysk_girl

The vendor and all his stuff. He somehow missed the bit of selling a house where he moved out... He finally left 3 days later leaving us with a garage full of his stuff. Luckily we were renovating and not moving in, but still... Oh, and he included the disgusting carpets in the sale - we were going to leave them down to protect the floors during the renovation works, but we got there the next day to find them burning in the garden, creating a plume of acrid smoke over the whole village.

Ah, the good memories!