Stuff your vendor left in the house you bought

RuthnJasper

Some very worrying (and a few improbably located) stains. Until the place had been professionally deep-cleaned (twice), even Jasper the dog refused to sit down on the floor. Ewww...

theartfullodger

I bought a repo:

Left behind were...
- One room with "Rangers Football Club" wallpaper (go figure..)
- A set of dumbbells & a rowing machine..
- A semi-working cooker (I fixed it..) with grill-pan with about 1/2 inch thick congealed grease & on the grill-rack what appeared to be a fossilised chipolata sausage...

And in the (unlocked) garage a car: I enquired of neighbours if anyone knew who's it was: Turned out to belong to another neighbour who, if returning from a local hostelry somewhat influenced, being unused to strong liqour, would be refused entrance (in all senses..) by his wife, so he'd sleep in the car: I politely asked him to remove it: He did, 6 months later.

Elsewhere

There wasn't much left in the loft except some spare wallpaper and carpet offcuts that matched that in the house, however the shed was pretty cluttered...

A large lead-lined wooden box (I think it might have been an icebox, pre fridges?) full of Kilner jars wrapped in newspaper from the 1940s

A fruit cage and rolls of chicken wire

A wooden loft ladder

An old wooden draining board

Tins of rat killer, creosote etc

A set of blue-prints showing that the shed (it's a substantial stone building) once contained a generator and a water pump from before the house was on the mains. There's also a pipe in the floor of the shed (about the size of a gutter pipe) going down about 250ft, which is the borehole for the water supply.

We have also suffered from buried objects in the garden - a toilet bowl, a bathtub, an old water cylinder and a double butler's sink. The latter has been recycled - it's now in use in the utility room in our exrtension!

The other thing buried in our garden is one of these

http://pillboxstudygroup.freeforums.org/auxiliary-units-t88.html

We were told about it when we bought the house, but what we discovered after living here for some years (and the previous owners didn't ever know) was that it had a second entrance at the edge of the lawn well concealed in undergrowth - and the trapdoor had rotted away leaving a hole with a 12 foot drop into dirty and very deep water with no way out! :eek:

andilong1

ok, so we have been in 4 weeks and this is the list of delights we have found in and around the property, left by the previous owner :-

large double wardrobe (green laminate ?)
large sideboard (laminate chipboard type)
40 various size ceramic pots in the garden
12 x various garden ornaments from ducks and frogs to St Christopher.
5 large black dustbins
10m of black guttering
25m white guttering
1 x toughened glass (table top maybe ?)
75 x house bricks
1 x electric fire + surround
10 x flag stones
20 x square patio slabs
5 x round paving slabs
8 x large double glazed windows (no upvc surrounds just the double glazed glass parts ?)
1 x 2.5m length worktop (not attached to anything ?)
25 x plastic pot movers (just stacked behind the garage)
approx 100 x lengths of timber various sizes ages and conditions
4 x wooden pallets
1 bird bath base
10 black plastic buckets ( with holes drilled in the bottom )
25 garden canes (behind garage again)
2 bags of builders sand
30-40 ornamental garden rocks
3 x plastic bread basket things
1 x lawnmower in need of repair
10 x sheets of thin perspex
50 x pieces of green plastic trim, off a green house maybe (no greenhouse tho)

On first impressions the property looked "empty" until we started moving all the bits left scattered around into one location (the external concrete detached garage) now we require at least 1 skip to get rid of all this and eventually the garage too, but i didn't expect them to take that, but i would have been grateful :rotfl:

ben_m_g

My last house was a DIY'er and an odd sort if the neighbours are to be believed.

In the garden
I had two dozen cigar butts.
Smashed glass
marbles lots of marbles
a shed full of blunt and broken tools, the garden was only 5 x 10 meters.

in the house
an industrial roll of tissue paper at least 5 foot wide
a lock on the outside of the bedroom door
a soup can that turned out to be structural support
a light fitting that was wired up to the socket and nearly killed me.

avenida

a cat and its cat food!!!!

Hoploz

My sellers have left a Portacabin. Agent called on completion day to say the company collecting it's truck had broken down so they would be along next week to collect it.

Is it legally ours now? Could we deny access to the collectors?

Alsothe agent informed us they would have to leave a hamster which is trapped under the floorboards. I can hear it scratching and am worried it will chew through cables before it dies - what can I do?

Davesnave

Hoploz wrote: »

My sellers have left a Portacabin. Agent called on completion day to say the company collecting it's truck had broken down so they would be along next week to collect it.

Is it legally ours now? Could we deny access to the collectors?
If it isn't on the fixtures list it's not yours. It may belong to a finance company, or even a model train club. Who knows?
Also the agent informed us they would have to leave a hamster which is trapped under the floorboards. I can hear it scratching and am worried it will chew through cables before it dies - what can I do?

I am worried it will die before you acquire the initiative to get a floorboard up and rescue it. Failing that, contact the local RSPCA for further advice.

jules888

When moved last year they left a vax,washing machine still plumbed in,so put ours in garage and using that.Also left pictures in porch,wine rack in garage and a bike which a young lad came to pick up a week later as they"d just been storing it for them!
Mind you realised we"d left about 8 boxes of cereal in kitchen cupboard which i was a bit annoyed at myself about actually as had none in new house!

Pixie5740

Hoploz wrote: »

Alsothe agent informed us they would have to leave a hamster which is trapped under the floorboards. I can hear it scratching and am worried it will chew through cables before it dies - what can I do?

Lift some of the floorboards up and put in a little ramp, the hamster should be able to find it's way out. To catch Houdini hamsters I put a large plant pot in the middle of the room, put something soft in the bottom with some food on top, and a ramp going from the floor up to the top of the plant pot. The hamster smells the food, runs up the ramp and falls into the plant pot.

Failing that just contact the RSPCA. I'm rather cross that the previous owners just left the poor thing trapped.