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

Lemoncurd

A poo in the middle of one of the bedroom carpets.
Sitting on the downstairs loo to find it moved halfway across the room! it was plumbed in but not attached to anything else.
Poster of a naked lady in the kitchen.
Leaking roof and collapsed ceiling.
Drains blocked and according to neighbours had flooded their garden for years every time the washing machine ran (Dynorod later pulled out a full beer bottle).

Numerous other issues, we ended up spending thousands putting things right and couldn't move in for a couple of months. Bizarrely the previous owner was an estate agent who had bought it to do up!

patricia..xx

Didn't realise just how filthy walls can get. Sugar soaped them all and it was running black. And I think they must have deliberately damaged the toilet cistern as it had a massive leaking crack down the back that came straight through the ceiling as soon as we moved it, so they can't have been living with it.

And the roof leaked within a couple of months due to a 10 year old problem on the roof. The guys who fixed it said it must have leaked and been repainted inside ever year - cost £250 to fix! Why would you not just do that

pawsies

Mylo_The_Moggy wrote: »

Ended up having to go to nearest Screwfix as the walk in shower was the only thing we had, i.e no bath.
Really don't know how ex-vendor put up with that.....

That was nice of Screwfix to let you use their shower

spannerzone

We put in an offer and told the seller not to continue doing the bathroom decorations as we'd be painting it another colour. We moved in, I sat on a the loo and it nearly fell over, the loo wasn't fixed down... same for the sink.

He'd taken my instructions litterally and must have dropped tools after we said not to bother finishing the decorating!

Also we arrived on the moving day to find no one home, a skip full of crap and things still in the house. The dopey bloke turns up an hour later oblivious to any problem caused. Finally he moves the remaining stuff into his car and is about to leave and I ask for some keys, where's the boiler settings etc.

Some people are complete idiots!!

tanith

When we moved here the previous lady of the house had left all her full length/evening dresses in the wardrobe , a triple ladder in the garage along with a snooker table and all the paint pots to touch up inside the house.. she came back for her dresses but left the ladder and snooker table. Her husband had tied labels on all the pipework and stop-cocks in the house so we knew which to turn off for bathroom, kitchen etc including in the loft.. all paperwork for the boiler it was a very easy move ..oh and the house was clean.

mkgirl1981

The flat my brother bought, when he went to view it the owners had already moved out but all there stuff was still there - Clothes, furniture, family photos, knick knacks - there was even food in the cupboards.
They did arrange to have it all removed before he moved in at least.
We found out from the neighbour afterwards that apparently they left in the middle of the night, she woke up one morning to find some flowers & a note saying thanks for being a good neighbour & that was the last she heard of them.
I think they went into witness protection lol

grifferz

Callie22 wrote: »

We also found a huge pile of post, including a whole load of catalogues for DVDs of the seedier kind.

Reminds me of stuff we found in this rented flat when we moved in. I noticed a corner of paper sticking out from under the wardrobe, and when I fished it out it was a delivery note for a DVD called "Celebrity Porno Wh---s"! (w word for ladies of negotiable virtue)

In the loft were lots of boxes of a previous owner's possessions. I did not pry into them, but on the top of one was a postal catalogue for tacky "sexy" clothing (i.e. not serious bondage gear, more like cheerleader and sexy nurse outfits)!

A few years ago some of our pipes started leaking. It was at that point we discovered that our bathroom is supplied water from the downstairs flat and is impossible to isolate without also turning off their water at their stopcock.

I recently fitted energy-saving LED bulbs to replace halogen spotlights that take 50W each and there's 9 of them. Once the LED bulbs were put in, they started flashing on for a fraction of a second every 4 seconds, even though their wall switch was in the off position. We discovered this only happens when a particular other wall switch elsewhere is on. We've reported it to the landlord but their opinion seems to be that it is not dangerous and as we're moving out soon they don't intend to do anything about it.

We're hopefully completing on the purchase of our first home in about a month so we'll see what surprises we have in store there.. if it is no worse than !!!!!! receipts and sexy outfit catalogues I shall be quite happy!

Ronaldo_Mconaldo

What did we get left with, hmmm. We got a nice card with useful details in like when the bin men come round and the burglar alarm code, a nice bottle of red wine, some loo roll. Also we got all the stuff we asked them not to take like the curtains, the oven, the fridge and freezer-we thought it would be normal to expect all this stuff to be passed on to us but apparently we were very lucky there.

arbrighton

Badly painted wallpaper peeling off the walls, mould behind a cupboard from leaks, leaking conservatory, leaking outhouse, garage doors that don't really open, a variety of rubbish in said garage including bottles of dubious engine oil. They did leave a bottle but it was off.

bizzybee

After a couple of viewings of our current house we knew it would need updating but we could live with the grey carpets and off white walls for the time being.

On the day we moved in and with the previous owner's furniture gone we discovered that those grey carpets had once been bright purple and goodness knows what colour the wallpaper had once been but years and years of cigarette smoking meant that all kinds of chemicals had impregnated both the wallpaper and the carpets.

Every single wall in the house had to be stripped of wallpaper and every carpet replaced.