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

Lavendyr

Blimey, we didn't get anything quite so surprising! We did find a very odd collection of at least 10 curtain tiebacks (the frondy kind with tassels) up in the loft hooked around a nail. Apparently the owner before the people we bought from was a bit of an opera nut and had decorated the house in the style of the Royal Opera House (as context, this is a 1980s modern box we're talking about...)/

Our lovely sellers left us a card, a bottle of bubbly and instruction manuals for boiler etc which was very helpful and nice.

delain

Davesnave wrote: »

To be fair, we knew the place had issues, we just didn't expect quite so many!

The latest one, a telegraph pole, mysteriously re-located onto our land by a neighbour in 2007, is on-going, but we are in sight of a resolution...... I think.

And the previous owners, bless them, cannot be blamed, except perhaps for not noticing its arrival! :rotfl:

I would think that with all that junk in the garden they'd be hard pushed to notice anything!

Mylo_The_Moggy

pawsies wrote: »

That was nice of Screwfix to let you use their shower

Lol that just made me chuckle!!!
You know what i meant though, we had to go buy a new shower!

Davesnave

delain wrote: »

I would think that with all that junk in the garden they'd be hard pushed to notice anything!

That was quite a long way from the garden, on the other side of a field and behind some trees. All the same, 2 years is a fair time not to notice a 20' pole, especially when there's a wayleave worth £150 for each one.

YoungBusinessman

This thread is brilliant. Another is how cold it was when we moved in. Seemed the temperature inside wasn't far off that outside. Speaking minus 8 in scotland. Ripped off plasterboard to see there was no insulation at all. We have replaced 3 walls with plasterboard with putting in kingspan, another 3 to do this summer. Also never realised but 2 of our radiators are in the most ridiculous places, one has been shifted one to go.

The one we haven't moved yet is in the entrance hallway it's open planned all the way through and around the corner to the kitchen. There's no heaters near the front door but 2 actually facing each other on narrowest part of hallway right before kitchen. One getting shifted over beside front door. Horrendous set up!!

CCP

In my last rental flat, I arrived to find no gas, a hole where the gas meter used to be, and a badly damaged front door where the bailiffs sent by the gas company had kicked it open to remove the meter as the LL's management company had run up £5K of unpaid bills. I had to pay to install a new landline as the existing one had been cut off due to non-payment of bills, and I spent months fielding letters and visits from his many [STRIKE]debtors[/STRIKE] creditors.

There was no guttering or external pipework, so water from rain or neighbour's showers / washing machines all ended up in my flat, resulting in six feet of black mould which I couldn't get rid of no matter how often I cleaned it. The council's environmental health team got involved when the LL refused to do anything about it, and found evidence that the mould had been there for years and was just painted over before I moved in. :mad: The council rehoused the people in the flat next door - who had a young kid - as apparently it was even worse there, so at least something good came out of it!

To top it all off, the landlord insisted on keeping my deposit when I moved out because "there was dust on one of the skirting boards". :mad: (This was in the days before deposit protection.)

I'm still furious with the LL four years later, hence the rant - sorry!

Money_Bunny

When we moved into this house we found it had been professionally cleaned, the booklets for all the appliances had been left and there was a sheaf of useful notes.

I was mortified, because....

We'd done our best not to leave our old house in a tip. But, on the day before we left the hoover had malfunctioned terminally. Also, when the removal guys took a cupboard out of the bedroom it turned out there was a huge damp patch complete with mould and peeling wallpaper behind it. We had no idea!

If our buyers are reading this, sorry!

securityman

A house, double garage, garden shed and garden full of junk.
That junk made about 2k on eBay. The best one was an old motor bike that you could not see under weeds in the back garden from the late 1970 that made about £500.

kizkiz

grifferz wrote: »

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 went to a set up like this where upstairs had a bad leak....so bad that downstairs literally had no ceilings. They were hanging off everywhere, with buckets all over the floor.
Poor guy had finally had enough and turned the water off.
Such a stupid set up

lincroft1710

OK I'm a guilty party!

Following the death of one of my parents, after a few months surviving parent decided to move to somewhere smaller. So just before moving day I went into the rather large loft and found 2 non working clocks which were my grandfather's long service and retirement gifts, plus the metal stand for a clothes wringer and the actual wringer.

How the stand was ever manoeuvred up the loft ladder and into the loft, I just don't know! I couldn't see a way of getting it down easily, so I made an executive decision and left the lot!