Stuff your vendor left in the house you bought

pixnmix_2

What a fantastic idea for a thread! I've sat and read all the posts and had a great time doing so.


I bought an old Victorian house in 1990, and the elderly couple who were selling it were doing so as he was going into a care home. His wife had cared for him for a few years 24/7 (he had dementia) so had neglected the house and was worried about clearing out all the 3 garages worth of tools/ equipment etc that her husband had used before his illness. We offered to sort it out after the sale, and split the proceeds of any sale of things (she declined to accept a penny, saying that the relief of not having to deal with it all was payment enough). When we moved in we found too much to be able to list here but the items included:

shelving units in the downstairs study room.
a complete grocers shop counter, complete with an old enamel advert for soap (the previous owners before them had used part of the house as a shop).
30 old LP's from the second world war (we left them there when we moved out 20 years later. It felt right to do that as they had likely belonged to the house's original owners, not us)
A garden full of buried car parts, including 3 engines, a dozen or so steering wheels and rusty tools. Oh, and a butler sink!
We had great fun..yes really... over the next few years finding buried treasure. The kids loved it too
Happy memories

mizdooleys

When we moved in, our lovely(!) vendors left the following:

Polystyrene boards in bin bags in the loft
A bike frame (also in the loft!)
Remains of their takeaway all over the passage floor
the worse one though - knickers down the back of the radiator.

Cal2051

we moved in to a house that was previously tenanted ....

The garage had a gigantic pile of rubbish in the corner (think filling up the back end of the garage), after about a million tip runs to remove the black bin bags we found the following:

a plugged in fridge underneath everything (containing a range of beer, cider and white wine) still working!!
several large dehumidifiers (???)
bowling shoes
two boxes of coat hangers (thanks, needed them)
xmas decorations
two older computers and a box of older video games (think 90s DOS games, sold a few to a retro game place near me for a tidy profit then had lots of fun playing command and conquer and the original warcraft!!)
range of useless rusty tools and a bike
box of old tapes (haven't played these yet to see what's on them)

we've converted the garage into a gym now... took ages but the sale of some of the stuff we found allowed me to buy most of the weights I needed so all worked out well really...

Pixie5740

I was left one of these in the loft...

Former_MSE_Andrea

Pixie5740 wrote: »

I was left one of these in the loft...

hahaha! no way!

Person_one

Pixie5740 wrote: »

I was left one of these in the loft...

I think I would have had to try and get in touch to find out the story of its origin!

Cupcake85

My house was build in the early 70's the same man owned it till we brought it in 2014 as he had died, his wife died 1996

We found ladies shoes in the loft
3 rolls of carpet in the loft
In the fitted bedroom units there was women's magazines dated pre 1996
Birthday cards to the man from his wife
In the garage we found about 5 boxes of men's incontinence pads (these had also blocked the toilet!)
Computer desk
Beer making bottles
Old tools and paint
Dog collar and leads

When we done the garden and took the bushes out we found several dog toys and balls, my dog thought she was in heaven with loads of new toys so at least they came in handy

Former_MSE_Andrea

Someone in my village recently posted photos of Victorian children they found behind their chimney, complete with first names and ages on the back, but no surname. It was fascinating googling to see if I could help them find them. They're checking ancestry.co.uk for census records.

Indout96

We moved in in 1989 and inherited a large scaffolding board in the garage, hopefully we are moving next week (fingers crosses, still waiting to exchange) and the board is still there so will be passed down to the new owners.

McTaggus

In my very first house we discovered 893 bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale buried in the back garden when we started landscaping…..