Stupid things the previous owners did to your house

[Katie&Micah]

Even though I'm not a homeowner yet I loved this thread on the *other* board. Share your stories and pics please!

[Sevilla]

1. Put about 20 nail/screws into the walls of each (small) room
2. Fried food in oil often and never cleaned the kitchen (our small 10x10 kitchen took over 20 hours to clean, and we had to repaint over the ceiling and replace the ceiling fan b/c they were beyond cleaning from all the grease--it was DISGUSTING)

[southerner]

Yes, this is a wall with wallpaper from Mrs. Brady herself

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a131/wcsoutherner/47b5dc01b3127cce94a7df38dac50000003.jpg

They had covered these up

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a131/wcsoutherner/47b5dc01b3127cce94a7df275bea0000003.jpg

The wall was in pretty bad shape, so we faux painted it to try and blend in the spots from three layers of wallpaper.

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a131/wcsoutherner/47b5dc01b3127cce94a7df20dadd0000006.jpg

[QPDoll]

The previous owners had their daughter/son-in-law and their children move in with them (in our small 2 bedroom/1 bath house). Total occupancy = 6.

So, when they put the house on the market and to call this a 2 bath house, they installed, what we call, the "Prison Toilet" in the unfinished basement.
The basement is so short, my DH can only stand inbetween the beams, he has to crouch down when he walks around down there. (basement leaks, its a huge area, but not exactly livable!)

In a corner of the basement, they installed a toilet and sink and built a wall on one side. (no door, and no wall on the end where the door should go, just completely open on the end) We put up one of those Japanese folding screens. We have a couch, TV and foos-ball table in the basement, which we call "The Man Room". Perfect bathroom for a bunch of guys who do not care. LOL

Now, a bathroom wouldn't be complete without a shower! Our house is old, and has a drive in garage on the other end of the basement. Of course, its such a small opening that only a small compact car (think VW Bug) could fit. But there is a floor drain in that area. So they ran a pipe and installed a shower head. Not enclosed, just a shower head in the middle of the garage part of the basement.

And they called that a full bath. LMAO

[oceaneast]

Wow those windows add so much to the room. I can't believe they covered them up.

[houseblend]

Refilled the freon in the A/C so we didn't know it had a leak until after we had lived here for 6 months (we moved in in the Fall, so we didn't need the A/C much right away).

Put up crown moldings the wrong way so there are huge gaps in between where the boards meet.

Planted trees 6 inches from the house without realizing that trees do grow up and the roots will destroy the foundation. We now have the fun project of getting to move these trees one of these days.


As a first time home buyer, in all fairness I really didn't know much about the ins and outs of owning a home. We will definitely be much smarter buyers next time around!!!

[oceaneast]

In our current home the builder painted the deck with interior paint as well as using cheap door hinges that rotted within the first three months (I live on the waterway leading out to the ocean).

[stevesbabygirl]

The sellers put this God-awful texture coat on the bathroom walls, and it's just hideous! They also put in this fugly chandelier, which we promptly removed. They never cleaned their bathtub, so the stains in there are permanent, yuck!

[QPDoll]

They never cleaned their bathtub, so the stains in there are permanent, yuck!

Gross!!! Have you thought about having it resurfaced?

[stevesbabygirl]

Hmm, never thought of resurfacing. When we have money again, we'll probably just replace it. I also think they did a back job of adhering the backer board to the bathtub, because there is a lot of mold/mildew in that area. Ew.

[juliemag]

southerner - holy crap I can't believe they drywalled/wallpapered over windows?!! That's the oddest thing I've ever seen!!!

[jennylou]

The sellers put this God-awful texture coat on the bathroom walls, and it's just hideous! They also put in this fugly chandelier, which we promptly removed. They never cleaned their bathtub, so the stains in there are permanent, yuck!

Have you tried Zep Mold and Mildew remover (I'm thinking that's the name, it has something with mold in it). You can find it in the cleaning supplies at Home Depot (Lowe's does not carry it). Anyways, this is SUPER powerful stuff. I just cleaned a bathtub in a rental unit that looked like the people hadn't cleaned it in the year+ that they lived there. It was disgusting. BLACK, instead of white like it should be. Anyways, it's toxic smelling, so if you decide to use it, keep the window open. Also, I'd recommend leaving it on about 10 minutes and leaving the bathroom during this time. The small spray bottle (they also sell in gallons) was about $3.00.

[stevesbabygirl]

I'll have to find that, thanks for the recommendation :D!

[flygirl]

Thanks for reminding me why we bought a new-construction :D

[isign]

When we were house shopping we found a house that said looked perfect on the outside - 2 bathrooms. I always look for the bathrooms first. I found the 1st one and then went on a hunt for the 2nd. I found a sink/vanity area but not toilet, no tub. DH opened a 'closet' door and almost fell in - there was a tub/shower in this closet. There wasn't room to walk in, you opened the door and stepped in. There were wires hanging from the celing. In order to take a shower you'd have to move the wires. We said no on the house.

[camberne]

There were/are no toilet paper holders attached in the bathrooms, so we have those standing ones. It's amazing how much those things get in the way!!

The wiring is totally screwed up, but that is a stupid builder issue, not the previous owners' fault. Who puts all the kitchen and living room outlets (two of the biggest draws in the house) on the same circuit!?!? I actually blew the circuits vacuuming. Idiots.

I know there are more, but as soon as I pushed "reply" I forgot what I was going to write. Darn memory.

[lml41981]

They:

Had urine-and-poo-stained burgundy carpet throughout the house (except the upstairs bath, kitchen and half bath and entryway). The bad spots were conveniently covered with furniture. In places, the carpet and concrete was still wet with pee and poo when we pulled it up.
They had a red fabric wall that clashed with the burgundy carpet. They stapled it onto the wall with staples every inch and a half or so. Their cat also used this wall as a climbing wall...we saw claw marks near the top of the wall.
They had red countertops in the kitchen that clashed with the carpet and the wall
They had pink wood-like tile in the kitchen that clashed with the carpet, the wall and the countertops.
They had built "custom shelves" in what is now our dining room and drove 2-inch long nails into the wall at 6-inch intervals - regardless of whether they were hitting stud or not. We ripped them out.
In addition to the plenty of nails they used, they failed to take the light switch into consideration when designing the shelves. So, they made a cut out for you to slip your hand through the shelf to turn on the light.
They hung towel bars on the master bath closet doors, but they used super-long screws and nuts and left the excess exposed on the back of the door...those doors must now be replaced
They built custom shelves in the closet - after the carpet was put down...so it was a task to get the carpet out from under the shelves and then we had a 3/4 inch gap between the shelf and the floor. We ended up sawing off the bottom part of the shelf. Fortunately, like in our now dining room, they used plenty of nails...so the shelves aren't falling anytime soon.
Anywhere they needed to use a nail or a screw, they went overboard and used really long nails or really long screws with huge molly-bolts that left massive holes in the wall when we removed them.
They left so much trash in the attic that it took our trash-guy 4 runs (two weeks worth of trash days where we put out nothing but their trash!) to get it all. This was after we reminded them that we wanted their trash gone.
They used a chemical to try to cover up the cat pee. Whatever chemical they used caused me to have a migraine.
They poured concrete in the backyard so they wouldn't have to mow.

[thedoorchick]

Oh dear. The previous owners of our house fancied themselves home-improvement DIYers but they were sadly mistaken.


They painted the master bedroom VERY sloppily.
They added fake wood paneling to the den walls that is so thin I could probably punch my fist through it.
They added crown molding which was not cut right - there are a bunch of 6" long random pieces in many places instead of one long one.
They tacked some sort of odd "extra" piece over the baseboards.
They painted two of the bedrooms lavender and mint green, respectively, and one bathroom was Big Bird yellow.
In the den they added some homemade shelving in the wall which juts out into the garage.
Half the carpet is a funky blue-green color.

[JillyBean]

Have you tried Zep Mold and Mildew remover (I'm thinking that's the name, it has something with mold in it). You can find it in the cleaning supplies at Home Depot (Lowe's does not carry it). Anyways, this is SUPER powerful stuff. I just cleaned a bathtub in a rental unit that looked like the people hadn't cleaned it in the year+ that they lived there. It was disgusting. BLACK, instead of white like it should be.
OMG, not a home owner yet, but I'm going to have to try this on our nasty apartment bathtub. Thanks, Jenny :)

ETA that my mom went to Home Depot one day when the Zep Rep was there and he said that HD has a policy to allow returns on all Zep products if you're not satisfied with them.

[Aimee]

Oh jeeze, where to begin...

When they laid the tile in the kitchen, they put it on top of PLYWOOD. Not wonderboard/backerboard (it's a raised house). So when we put in a laminate floor, we had to make our own transition pieces from scratch because the height difference between the two floors was nonstandard.

Both of the bathrooms had this hideous sponge-paint look to it. Turns out it was because they'd painted over wallpaper. In the hall bath, they actually started to peel some of the wallpaper...then stopped. They took spackle and resurfaced the wall on the places where they had peeled and painted the whole thing in this metallic gold sponge paint look.

When we went to peel the wallpaper in that bathroom, some of it wasn't coming down...becasue it wasn't wallpaper. We ended up having to resurface the walls in the whole place to get them even.

They painted over every single a/c vent, light switch and outlet. We've had to replace everything, or at least replace the plate and chip the paint off the outlets

In the guest bedroom we tried to take down an awful wallpaper border. And found an even worse one underneath it.

Wallpaper over wallpaper and painting over wallpaper are the greatest house sins. When we finally sell this place, it'll be like a new house compared to the condition in which we found it. :mad:

[looty]

They:

They had pink wood-like tile in the kitchen that clashed with the carpet, the wall and the countertops.

They poured concrete in the backyard so they wouldn't have to mow.



Pink wood-like tile? :confused: I can't even imagine what that looked like. I probably don't want to know.

Pouring concrete in the backyard has got to be the laziest. I have heard of people having rock yards but concrete? :rolleyes:

[greenbunny]

Oh, man, I don't want to try to remember everything I posted in the old thread...but here are some new ones.

I just found out the overflow in our master bathroom sink is sealed shut, with something I'm praying isn't concrete. Given the two sons' proclivity for smearing Playdough and Silly Putty over every surface in the house, I'm hoping it's that.

I posted before about how they never cleaned the toilets and they are permanently stained. Well, the one downstairs is ALWAYS getting what looks like mold in the bowl. It's green and fuzzy. And I clean the toilets with clorox every week. Well I really got in under the water this weekend and the texture is different, it isn't smooth porcelain like a toilet should be. It feels like a rock-hard sponge, like the finish has been eaten off and the material is decaying or something. It's beyond gross. I have a feeling she was too lazy to clean and so just dumped some liquid in the bowl that ate away the porcelain, and now that it isn't smooth the grimies can latch on easy and breed like mad.

DH has started shampooing the carpets this week. I cannot even begin to describe how black and foul the water is when he empties the rinse canister. It is so dark I think it absorbs all light, like a black hole. He's had to rinse each room five times or more to get just light gray water.

But you know, I don't mind so much. It's our house now and we're going to do things right. Plus I think we're going to invite the previous owners to our annual summer party (they still have friends in the neighborhood) and I'm kind of looking forward to them seeing how we've made the place so much better. ;)

[BethElena]

1. On our second walk through, we encountered a USED cat dirt box "hidden" behind the TV. Yucko! (had to show...sorry!) http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid175/p6fee4c02823d2f5f158a5850fe23b25a/f381da57.jpg

2. Under the fridge, the flooring needed to be replaced b/c the fridge from 1986 had dripped all over and rotted the floor. We only realized the fridge dripped when our NEW floor began to get brown water spots on it.

3. The bedroom carpet had a HUGE red paint mark that was cleverly covered by the night stand...

4. Did I mention that the previous owner ONLY painted around furniture? So when the house was empty when we moved in, it looked like a puzzle !

5. The living room had cat pee stains all over the floor. We had to rip out the whole house carpet and replace it. During this process, my FH mother was getting sick b/c of the cat pee smell. We had to paint the floor before laying Pergo over it...http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid173/p0b48488e82be5dcd066d4197bc8ef0c7/f3b46a24.jpg
Too many other things to list!

If somebody told me how to post pics, I would.

[BethElena]

I know toilets aren't too costly in case you have to replace.....With my birthday money this year :( I had to purchase one...like $120 for Kohler? If that gives you any peace :)

[al'sgirl]

When my DH and I purchased our first home last year, we saw it's potential ... and tried to look past the interesting construction choices.

** The man that owned the house previously "finished" the basement. There were random mismatched shelves and cupboards *everywhere. Even a 2 foot square box shelf attached to the ceiling in a little hallway. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I discovered new areas every time I went down to the basement for 2 months!
** The man believed that he was a "handyman". However, everything that was nailed onto the walls was held by *one nail. I'm surprised that anything stayed together to look decent. Not to mention that some of the walls were only attached to the floor by one nail. We had a few accidental walls come tumbleing down. Also, the wiring in the "finished" basement was all installed backwards. We'll be redoing the whole basement eventually.
** When redecorating our master bedroom, we removed the wall paper to find a huge molded area, patched and repatched drywall and plaster, and a leak in the chimney causing the whole problem. We kept asking ourselves "why did they just continue to patch it instead of fixing it?"
** There was an extra bathroom in the basement (so discusting that I've only every used it once ... in an emergency). The next "cupboard" to the bathroom we found pipes and knobs for a shower, but there were more of the mismatched shelves installed. Very odd indeed.

It really is a cute house, and we love it. But, we are still sitting back and seeing something and say "Why?"

[looty]

I guess I have a few but not as bad as some of yours.


The guy did everything himself, and he did is all halfway. There is
crownmolding, tiles, and trim missing throughout the house because he
never finished it. DH said he would take care of it and three years later I
am still looking at the 'naked' spaces.
He also did the siding himself, most of which looks good...well except
where he didn't put the eave pieces in, did flsh it properly, and where a
few pieces have fallen off. :rolleyes:
They put up striped paneling up on three walls and fake wood paneling on
one wall in the living room and dining room.
Lastly they took the old oil tank out of the basement for a friend to pick
up, which never came. When we saw him was asked him about it and his
reply was, "Well we didn't realize that there was any oil in it so he couldn't
take it." :eek: Duh! it was only so heavy to move it that you told us you
needed 4 or 5 grown men to push it across the floor on broomsticks.

[jennylou]

OMG, not a home owner yet, but I'm going to have to try this on our nasty apartment bathtub. Thanks, Jenny :)

ETA that my mom went to Home Depot one day when the Zep Rep was there and he said that HD has a policy to allow returns on all Zep products if you're not satisfied with them.

I like every Zep cleaning problem I've tried. The orange citrus is also beyond fabulous and we use it to clean a lot of other areas in apartments that are grimy.

greenbunny - you can get a new toilet for less than $100. The toilet in a box comes with everything you need to install one. They aren't all that difficult to install yourself, either.

[BrownEyedGirl]

Southerner...that wall paper sooo reminded me of this:

http://www.eyekyu.com/images/gardenstateshirt.jpg

And who in their right mind would cover up three windows???

[JillyBean]

I like every Zep cleaning problem I've tried. The orange citrus is also beyond fabulous and we use it to clean a lot of other areas in apartments that are grimy.

Jenny, I tried the Bathroom Cleaner, and it worked great! It got the grime off of our bathroom tile (I had tried every other cleaner including bleach to get it off) and the tub is really white now.

[Reebs]

Carpet in the master BATHROOM!! Yuck. Its really gross. We have yet to rip it out and put in tile, but that is the next job on our list. For now we use the guest bath to shower. Thankfully they were wise enough to put the toilet separately and tile that area. We're going to gut it and start from scratch. New everything.

Here's are beautiful carpet:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b5df05b3127cce9f42b4167d5600000026118AaM3DNq0aNV http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b5df05b3127cce9f42b41e7d5e00000016108AaM3DNq0aNV

[juliebug]

We're pretty fortunate that our house's previous owners were pretty good about doing things right - like had all new electrical and a brandy new furnace put in (by people who knew what they were doing, too!).

One minor complaint is that in the upstairs bedrooms of our cape (think slanty ceiling walls), they put up new wallboard over the old wallboard. It's not entirely even, but I can deal with that. Where they really cut corners was where the sloped part of the ceiling/wall met the straight wall - they didn't join the pieces of wallboard and left a huge gap (~2"). They wallpapered, then covered the gap with fugly molding. We ripped down the wallpaper and molding and discovered we had alot of work to do before we could paint.

The real headscratcher though is the brick patio which abuts the back side of our house. They did it themselves and did quite a nice job with it. However, they knew that in order to connect to the town sewer (which was already on the horizon when they did the work), they assumed that the sewer pipe could connect out where the pipe coming from the house connected to the septic tank which is well past the edge of the patio. Umm, nope. It had to be ripped up. Let me tell you... it's alot of work to relay it. It's currently dubbed as our 'project that never ends.'

Southerner - Fabulous job reclaiming those windows! I wonder what possessed them to do that in the first place!

[jaredsgirl]

I have to reply to this thread. Ok, first, love my house, it was one of the best places we saw in our price range when looking two years ago. But so many issues.

1. All the woodwork is wacky in the house. First there are places the trim is missing, and we think it is because it was a small space and they didn't want to bother with it. Then other pieces aren't even the right length, there is no mitering of the ends so they don't match up well, I can't even describe what one pieces looks like that meet in the middle of the wall!!! Then in our bedroom they replaced HALF of the woodwork, and in a completely different color, so the door frames and some of the baseboards are different colors (honey vs that dark chocolate brown) than the rest of the baseboards, completely obvious!

2. The basement that was finished. I believe and one point it was all wood paneling, and at some point redone with sheetrock and wainscoting, very nice down there. Well I always wondered way the wainscoting was sticking out from the wall more than others that I saw but didn't get it much thought. We went to paint and DH was changing the outlet covers and he wondered why they were so deep, well it is because the wainscoting is over the old paneling, but they took half the paneling down to do the upper sheetrock!?!??!?

3. All the outlets and vent covers were painted white (which of course was peeling off). Ummm...doesn't cost very much (we are talking cents!) to change one of these!

4. Did not remove wallpaper where there were things, like the fridge, which you could see when standing at the counter, we took all that down.

5. I saved the best for last!!! The basement bath/laundry room. Ok, when you walked in there as a little wall, maybe 1ft in length that held a light switch and it bumped up right next to the dryer. Well that wall had no reason to be there, behind it was a big gaping hole where anything that fell off the dryer fell to never be recaptured again. The walls sole purpose in life was to hold the light switch!!! Then the tile on the wall. The original color was avocado green. It was painted baby blue and they didn't know what to do about the grout, so instead of taking a little paint brush and painting the grout white, they took, and I am not joking, skinny white tape and put that as the grout lines. It went to the floor so whenever I would sweep the tape would pick up. Then they never painted anything behind the toilet, so when we replaced that, there was avocado green tile for the world to see. Above the toilet the wall jutted out and there was a medicine cabinet (all rusted out on the inside) and above the medicine was a hole in the wall covered with a valance, that was where the towels went. Lovely. There is more to tell with this bathroom but I will stop there, I hit the major things. Needless to say we are in the process of remodeling it right now!

Sorry, very long post, but had to post in here. Even with these problems the house is very cool and overlooks a lake, so we are just going to fix things (if we haven't already) to make it livable for the next several years!

[Tempest_too]

1) They messily painted all the kitchen cabinets hunter green. I say messily because there are permanent paint drips all over the place.

2) In the large laundry room, they put the washing machine on one wall and the dryer on the opposite wall clear across the room.

3) Another perma - ick - stained toilet, here. You can't really see it because it's high up below the rim, but there was so much build up, I don't think she ever scrubbed it up there. I can't get it off.

4) The deck is built out of untreated boards. The part where the outside faucet is located has rotted out and we're replacing it this weekend.

5) One bedroom has gray carpet, latte-beige walls with a 12" thick pink border.

6) There were small brass hooks permanently screwed into fireplace mantle... for ?

We knew we'd be redoing everything when we bought the place, but it's got great bones and when we are done, it'll be just the way we want it.

[stevesbabygirl]

Reebs,

My DH grew up with carpet in his bathrooms, and he loved it because then the floors weren't cold. But ugh, the carpet gets ruined a little more everytime someone steps out of the shower.

[Reebs]

stevesbabygirl, I have to admit, reluctantly, that when I was really little we had carpet in our bathrooms too! My parents ripped it up and thankfully put in tile. I mean, we had to put a mat over the carpet in order to not get it wet. I do agree it is nice in the morning to step into a "warm" carpeted bathroom. But since my DH brings the entire shower with him when he steps out, we NEED tile!!

[villanelle75]

My parent's house (and the house I lived in for many years) has carpeted bathrooms. We begged my mom to put in tile or something when they bought new carpet, but they decided it was too expensive. Now they are starting to plan a major bathroom remodel for their master bath and my sister and I are trying desperately to get her to put in tile rather than carpet. She keep ssayign she doens't like the cold way tile feels under her feel and she doens't want to feel that when she steps our of the shower. Hello mom! Can you say, "bathmat"?

[mimieliza]

Yuck. I hate carpet in any room, let alone the BATHROOM! Can you imagine how nasty it gets around the toilet? (Unless every man who ever uses that potty is insanely neat - and forget about ever having a potty-training son).

Totally no offense to anyone who likes carpet, but I just helped my parents tear up their 17-year-old carpet, and I could not believe the filth that was underneath - and they vacuumed twice a week, and had the carpets professionally cleaned once a year. It definitely helped me decide that when I buy a house, I'm going to go for hardwood or laminate throughout, with tile in the bathroom.

DH loves carpet, though. He's trying to compromise by telling me we'll replace it every ten years. Do people end up doing that? Is that average lifespan for carpet?

[stevesbabygirl]

My DH takes the shower with him when he gets out too, it's so annoying! We live in California, so we don't really have a problem with stepping out onto cold tile floors.

I think replacing carpet every 10 years is pretty standard, maybe even kind of long.

[MrsTazlvr]

The previous owners of my FIL's house took ALL the light bulbs with them when they moved- INCLUDING THE OVEN AND THE FRIDGE!!!

The previous owner of our house unlooked the splitter in the wall that connects all the TVs to the main line in. We had to find the loose wires in the wall.

[mimieliza]

"I think replacing carpet every 10 years is pretty standard, maybe even kind of long."

Okay, so from a cost perspective, it's better to put down laminate or hardwood because you don't need to replace it all the time?

And maybe that's why my parents' carpet was so yuck - it had been 17 years. They now have lovely refinished hardwood with rugs - it looks really nice.

[Aletheia]

The previous owner of our little home LOVED LIQUID NAILS. See the mirrors on the wall below? EVERY INCH WAS GLUED TO THE WALL USING LIQUID NAILS. A lot of the plaster came down with the mirrors, and most of the mirrors came down in 1/2 inch pieces. It was a DISASTER.

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b5d811b3127cce92cce17562c600000016108AcuGbZy1ct5

Here's us trying to deal with the mess (you can see how happy DH is about all this):
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b5dd34b3127cce9094c5af152400000016108AcuGbZy1ct5

More pics in the Before & After thread!

[tgray99]

6) There were small brass hooks permanently screwed into fireplace mantle... for ?

Christmas stockings or garland.

[Graffy]

The previous owner of our house had 2 mastiffs. They not only lived indoors, they had the run of the house all by themselves all day while the owner was at work. The neighbors told us this after DH (who was not yet even BF at the time) moved in.

DH bought the house from the bank and the neighbors said there were 2 massive dumpsters that the bank filled with trash while they were fixing it up. They then whitewashed all the walls, laid some carpet (I can just imagine what the hardwood floors underneath would have looked like), and sold it. The tub was one of those previously mentioned blackened things. I really wasn't looking forward to having to deal with that once we were married, but my FIL came in while we were on our honeymoon and did lots of stuff including scrubbing that tub for what must've been hours to get that stuff off. He's a cool guy.

It's a 100+ year old house, and most of the previous owners have just kind of cobbled things rather than update or improve them, but it has a lot of potential. At least that's what DH keeps telling me... :rolleyes:

[octoberkate]

Apparently DH and I had "SUCKER" temporarily tatooed on our heads when we bought this house... We'll start from top to bottom.

1) We have a 3rd floor with halfbath and guestroom that is a converted attic. The previous owners never put any insulation up there, so it's sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter.

2) They installed a ceiling fan themselves and, truth be told, did warn us that "it sparks when you turn it on"

3) There is some mystery substance that has turned all the white grout in the bathroom black or removed the grout in some places. It all needs re-doing

4) We have a very narrow iron spiral stair to get to the third floor. The removed the safety hand rail and didn't tighten the steps so they were unsturdy when we moved in

5) They painted over all the smoke detectors in the house - and certainly didn't paint behind them.

6) They left pen and crayon marks on the walls that WEREN'T there at our walk through a week before.

7) The left paint stained knobs on the sink.

8) They had a mysterious hook and eye lock on the outside top of their son's door.

9) The re-hung the door to their sons' room three inches off the ground, with no threshold underneath.

10) Their little girl clearly threw up on the carpet in her (now our) room - they hid it with a nightstand without doing a deep clean. (Conveniently we were planning on ripping the carpet up).

11) They painted every window in the house shut.

12) They threw out some screens and some storm windows so no window in the house has both.

13) The ran the cable for the cable tv from the outside of the house, across the front of the bottom of the kitchen cabinets, up a wall, up the stairs on the side of the stairs and all over, on the outside of the walls. Then they painted over the cable and the things affixing it to the wall.

14) They re-painted a spot on the wall in the family room with different color paint.

15) They retiled the kitchen floor without pulling up the THREE layers of laminate below and, when the reached an edge where tile didn't fit, they used whatever odd and end pieces they had, not trying to make it look uniform.

16) They DIDN'T tile under the stove or refrigerator.

17) The didn't paint behind the stove or refrigerator.

18) They didn't tell us the repair the faucet to the backyard - if you turn it on for more than 5 minutes you get a slow leak under the kitchen sink.

19) They didn't clean up THE DEAD MOUSE AND MOUSE SHIT under the sink.

20) They didn't tell us the truth when they said the only water damage in the basement was from when a kid left a window open.... as the FLOOD two weeks after we moved in ensued. When we had to tear down the wall board and rip out the new carpet my husband found years of mold - and I was so allergic that I was having severe breathing difficulties and had to move out for a few weeks.

21) The didn't remove their son's army-guy graveyard from the plant beds in the back (although I'll admit, it is kind of funny to be putting in my impatients or whatever and come across random army guy, mortally wounded missing his head or leg or whatever, buried in the dirt).

There's more, I know there's more but I can't think right now. It could be the perfect house for us right now, great location, good size, good price. But we've lived there two years (next month) and we STILL spend all our free time trying to fix their mistakes!

[scout]

We moved into our new home last week and every day is a new adventure!
The previous owner was very, very fond of borders and stuck one up in every single room. She also liked to do "faux" finishes and wasn't good at it. It looks like a kid went crazy with a sponge. Her husband was a do it yourself electrician also apparently without any training. He has weird light fixtures attached to the middle of the walls, he moved the doorbell to a weird place, wired things improperly, installed a second sump pump that isn't working correctly, and used DUCT TAPE to fix EVERYTHING. It was apparently a miracle tool for them. Need to cover a hold in the screen? Duct tape! Need to fix a hole in a water pipe? DUCT TAPE! Need to cover some bad wiring? DUCT TAPE!!!!!!!

The female owner also loved her plastic flowers. We discovered some "growing" in the garden yesterday.

[IrisHope]

Drew a life size picture of a tree in our kitchen.

[tenofcups]

We've come across far too many to even remember at this point in our 100-year-old Victorian. But here are two recent ones:

- We needed to put new roofing down since we had developed some leaks. FH did it himself (yay for the hands-on guy who saved us thousands of dollars!). He intended to pull off the old roof and lay down a new one. Surprise--there were FIVE old roofs up there that all had to be pulled off before the new one could be laid. Yes, FIVE!

- I just pulled up the wall to wall carpeting in my office. It's an original wood floor beneath. And it's been PAINTED BROWN.

Ultimately it will be ok since we'd intended to put new carpeting down anyway, but I had to pull it up earlier than we anticipated and we won't be putting down new carpeting till we do the rest of the upstairs so the brown painted wood will be showing for a while. Yuch.

[Tanya]

Ultimately it will be ok since we'd intended to put new carpeting down anyway, but I had to pull it up earlier than we anticipated and we won't be putting down new carpeting till we do the rest of the upstairs so the brown painted wood will be showing for a while. Yuch.
Couldn't you just refinsh the floors and the paint would just sand off? Or are they in really bad shape that that would be a waste of $?

[gizzyntaz]

There was a leak from the master bathroom shower. They opened up the ceiling on the main level and caulked all of the plumbing joints :rolleyes: I mean, even duct tape would have worked better. It turns out it was the hot water line leaking, we had the whole shower redone...

[greenbunny]

The didn't remove their son's army-guy graveyard from the plant beds in the back (although I'll admit, it is kind of funny to be putting in my impatients or whatever and come across random army guy, mortally wounded missing his head or leg or whatever, buried in the dirt).


Okay, I was reading too fast and thought you meant their son was killed in a war and buried in the yard. God, I need to get the heck out of my cubicle and go home for a nap.

[tenofcups]

Couldn't you just refinsh the floors and the paint would just sand off? Or are they in really bad shape that that would be a waste of $?

We could, but--and I know I'm in the minority--I really don't care for hardwood floors! The floors are in good shape in the living room and dining room and we're leaving them bare. We're also most likely going to remove the carpeting in the foyer and leave that bare (if the floor is ok) since FH is a musician and is constantly taking equipment in and out of the house.

But upstairs in my office--I work from home--I really want the comfort and "warmth" of carpeting.

I guess I just can't figure out why anyone would PAINT a floor (especially a butt-ugly brown...)

[mrsdrummer]

When we ripped up the bathroom floor in our old house we found that when they "remodeled" that bathroom they used paneling instead of plywood for the subfloor. No wonder it rotted out. (especially since there's no ventilation under the house). So we one upped them we had to wrap the pipes but this was before we go home depot and went to Wal-Mart for our supplies. WEll we couldn't find pipe wrap so we used a bright green fun noodle (you know what kids play with in the pool) to wrap the pipes. Same thing way less price.

[nuhmah]

We are currently renovating our 1906 home we just purchased, and getting ready to move in. This is a pretty short list, but I am amazed, nonetheless:

* painted all the upstairs hardwoods this UGLY brown! (Yes, we are planning to strip and refinish)

* painted every single sill, trim, molding work, whatever white (it is all original wood, too) - and not just one coat! We have this gorgeous Arts & Crafts style staircase that has lost its detail to at least 7 coats of paint.

* when the house was converted from knob and tube wiring, they left it all in tact (and some of it is live!) and just ran new outlets right next to the old ones. So, there are two outlets right next to each other.

* left every single layer of kitchen flooring in, and leveled out the kitchen floor with random scattered pieces of different types of plywood and particle board. You can jump almost like a trampoline in that room.

* shoddily painted every room in the house (and over textured wallpaper), and it peels off like a banana - almost that easy, too! I can peel off all the paint with my hands in large strips.

* painted all the window shut... I am so tired of stripping paint, but at least my windows open!

[tenofcups]

* painted all the upstairs hardwoods this UGLY brown! (Yes, we are planning to strip and refinish)

How weird! That's what I just posted about too! Our house is from the same time period too (I forget the exact year, but first decade of the 1900s) -- I wonder if that was either "in style" at some point or if there was some "practical" reason for doing it?

[nuhmah]

How weird! That's what I just posted about too! Our house is from the same time period too (I forget the exact year, but first decade of the 1900s) -- I wonder if that was either "in style" at some point or if there was some "practical" reason for doing it?

That is really weird - they are like this "poop brown"... maybe it was the style, and thankfully it is gone? Like shag carpets and avocado appliances! ;)

[tenofcups]

they are like this "poop brown"...

that's the color! :rolleyes:

[nuhmah]

I thought of a couple more, concerning the outside

* the previous owners have left about 2-3 different kinds of siding on the house (instead of possibly taking them down)

* they have painted 2-3 times over the current vinyl siding; and in their current paint job, they didn't bother to paint near any of the corners or eaves

* they didn't hang siding all the way around the house - they ran out in spots, and so they just painted the foam/insulation board underneath to match the house

* they did a REALLY shoddy job of hanging the siding - it is all uneven and cut weird

- - - - - - - - - -

tenofcups - we will have to meet up in the "Before and After" thread to share how we are getting rid of the poop colored floors!

[alliannie]

Okay, I was reading too fast and thought you meant their son was killed in a war and buried in the yard. God, I need to get the heck out of my cubicle and go home for a nap.

Um greenbunny. I thought thats what it said to. I too should go upstairs and go to sleep. And I think my mother lived in the houses with poop brown hardwood floor and seven layers of paint on the stairs. She did both of these things to our house while I was growing up. It must have been cool in the 80s. :p

[LynzeyAHL]

that's the color! :rolleyes:

They painted them with cheap heavy duty paint and its probably lead based so BE CAREFUL. They did this b/c it was more cost effective than finishing hard wood in a bedroom and since rugs were made in standard sizes, and they didn't really have wall to wall carpeting back then it gave the room a nice 'framed' look. It's a throw back to the dying victorian era. Plus the paint preserved the wood from where the bedroom furnature sits around the perimeter of the room. My parents house has the SAME technique administered but in a 3 foot wide stripe around the edge of the room and the center of the floor is bare. Hope that helps with the mystery of "WHY?!?" :o

[December27JJB]

Wow! People are amazing sometimes!
Our story is a little different than your stories, the previous owners did nothing to the house. It needed a new roof, a new AC, etc.

2 things I can think of:

-When we had the house inspected, there was a hole on the floor (It was so bad that if you went under the house you could fit 3 fingers up the hole and see them from inside the house) and when we brought it up to the previous owners, they denied it. Later, they did a sloppy job covering it.

-They made a homemade rack in the backyard, using concrete and PVC pipes to hold up their canoe. It was so ugly and impossible to take out unless you dug. My father took a saw and sawed off the pipes.

[Kristi32302]

First off, the previous owners liked faux finishes ALOT. The kitchen, living room, hall, and two bedrooms were sponged. One of them horrible royal blue that hurt your eyes when you went in there.

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dc08b3127cce9c732476416200000016108ActW7Zo5ctH

It's now a bright yellow and even though there was primer we still have some bleed through. That's one project on our list, to repaint that room.

I guess when they decided to put the house up for sale they felt the need to paint the doors and molding in the house. However the original color of the molding and doors was almond and the finish was glossy, but they used a white egg shell and just did a quick coat. So now all the doors and molding looks dirty. They didn't even bother to tape off the door knobs so there is paint all over those.

While painting a few of the rooms the roller slipped and hit the window. Instead of cleaning the paint marks off the glass they just left them there.

The biggest thing that still gets me is the lint we found in the dryer vent. We had not been in the house very long and DH complains that the dryer is not drying like it should. (I'm thinking great now we have to go buy a new dryer). So DH pulls the dryer away from the wall and sticks his hand up the dryer vent and pulls out a handful of lint. He does this a couple of times and realizes that there is a lot of lint in the vent that he can't get to. Because the laudry room in the hall the vent goes up through the attic. DH gets up there and takes the vent apart to find out that the vent is jam packed with dryer lint from where it comes in at the laudry room to the attic. Major fire hazzard there. So we get it cleaned out and come away with a plastic grocery sack full of dryer lent. Looks like they were too lazy to clean the screen after drying clothes. Seems to be the theme for them.

They also ran the air conditioner with no filter so in the middle of summer we went two weeks with no air b/c we were waiting for a repairman to come out. Of course this happens over a holiday weekend. B/C the wonderful previous owners never had a filter the evaporator got filthy and had to be cleaned. The home warranty didn't cover this because it was considered maintenance. :mad:

All of this just helped prove that the people living here were POS. Not long after we moved in it was about 8 or 9 at night and we get this knock at the door. Two guys are standing there looking for the husband. We told them that they had moved and they started asking all these questions. Where did they go, was he married, ect. They claimed they worked with them. One of the guys was pretty built and we believe that he was packing...if ya know what I mean.

We've been in this house almost two years now and we are still getting their mail. And I'm talking bills, not just junk mail.

[Kellijo14]

- We needed to put new roofing down since we had developed some leaks. FH did it himself (yay for the hands-on guy who saved us thousands of dollars!). He intended to pull off the old roof and lay down a new one. Surprise--there were FIVE old roofs up there that all had to be pulled off before the new one could be laid. Yes, FIVE!

I can actually top you on this one. We had our roof redone and there were SIX layers of shingles. It was like a horrible horror movie, layer after layer kept coming. They never used the same color twice. We had quite the array. And quite the bill for the haul-off of the old waste.

[Lil_Mrs_0702]

When my parents bought their house, the previous owners had everything gray. Gray walls, gray carpets, furniture, window molding, doors, switchplates. EVERYTHING. They also left a ton of crap in the garage and their dogs behind. Then, they came to the house a year later asking for it all back!!

The only thing in the house that wasn't gray was the pink sink and bathtub in the master bath and the wall covered in bumberstickers that we had scrape off. The first thing my mom did was invite my grandma up from Florida and they painted everyroom!!

[jnettie]

This is an incredibly funny thread!

Not my house, my Dad's, but these are some of the things they did to it before they moved.

-There were 6 light switches for the hall light, one in each of 3 bedrooms, the bathroom, livingroom, and in the middle of the hall! And you could reach the hall light in the hall from 2 bedrooms and the bathroom, so I don't know why they felt they needed so many!

-Stuffed newspaper around the electrical work in the wall! Can you say "fire hazard?"

-Recently, Dad discovered they put up a wall between the kitchen and dining room right over the old carpeting! The wall wasn't even attached to the floor! It just sat on top of the rug! We don't even know why they felt they needed that stupid wall. It just closed off the kitchen.

-My favorite has to be that they took the kitchen cabinets with them when they moved! We moved into our house to discover that all the cabinets were gone! They decided that since they paid for the cabinets, they owned them, and could take them with them! Nuts! :eek:

[nuhmah]

-My favorite has to be that they took the kitchen cabinets with them when they moved! We moved into our house to discover that all the cabinets were gone! They decided that since they paid for the cabinets, they owned them, and could take them with them! Nuts! :eek:

This reminds me of that Richard Pryor movie "Moving" - have you seen it? He moves his family across country, and when they go to move in to the house they bought, the previous owners took the pool, the cabinets, the stairs... :eek:

[ManteoChik]

We are in a rental house right now until we move and we are the first tenants our landlords have ever had. They bought the house a few months before we moved in from an old lady to have as a rental property. The old woman that lived here had a HUGE thing for horses. There were horses EVERYWHERE outside all in the flower beds. This is what we saw when we came to see the house for the first time:

http://images.snapfish.com/344%3A8%3B%3B523232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E233%3C%3D%3A88%3 D%3C97%3DXROQDF%3E2323875534%3B%3C%3Aot1lsi

http://images.snapfish.com/344%3A8%3B%3B523232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E233%3C%3D%3A88%3 D%3C97%3DXROQDF%3E2323875533%3A5%3Aot1lsi

http://images.snapfish.com/344%3A8%3B%3B523232%7Ffp64%3Dot%3E233%3C%3D%3A88%3 D%3C97%3DXROQDF%3E2323875525474ot1lsi
*Our front yard is huge and these were all in the flower beds around the perimeter of the front yard...lol

On the small garage door to the side front yard:
http://images.snapfish.com/344%3A8%3B%3B523232%7Ffp3%3B%3Dot%3E2323%3D966%3D5 36%3D3232966445325nu0mrj

-Also the only way I can describe our kitchen color as "tweety bird / school bus yellow". It was sooooooo bad. Thankfully our landlords are super laid back and didn't care if we painted anything.

-The original owner replaced the carpet in the living/dining room/hallway with new berber. However, she left the old nasy looking dark brown carpet in the bedroms. It is sooo ugly and it's not shag....but its not short either.
You can kind of see the color in this pic from when we were moving in:
http://images.snapfish.com/344%3A8%3B%3B523232%7Ffp46%3Dot%3E2323%3D966%3D535 %3D3232966444%3C%3B5nu0mrj

[Boopy]

ManteoChik - OMG! LOLROTFL! Those horses in the flower garden are one of the funniest things I have ever seen. :D Such a wide variety, it looks like she even had one from Fisher-Price! That's definitely one of the most unique land scaping ideas I've ever seen.

[KarenS]

Originally Posted by octoberkate21
The didn't remove their son's army-guy graveyard from the plant beds in the back (although I'll admit, it is kind of funny to be putting in my impatients or whatever and come across random army guy, mortally wounded missing his head or leg or whatever, buried in the dirt). This just cracked me up. I think it's actually kind of too cute.

There's a whole list of things the owners did on our previous house (and one of the reasons we moved after 4 years) but the worst by far is that the guy there fancied himself a great electrician. He rewired every switch in the house multiple times for some unknown reason. Every single light had a minimum of two switches and sometimes three. And 1/2 of them were upside down (flip down to turn on, flip up to turn off). But not all of them were upside down. Oh, and there was a switch in the master bedroom that turned on the living room lights and a switch in the basement that turned on the kitchen lights. I can't tell if that was intentional or not! :)

Karen

[kindermom]

Ooh Ooh can I play too?

Our house is a brick row house built in 1952. We are only the third owners of our house.

The recent POs did take up the carpeting to reveal the original oak floors (thank goodness for that). But they also faux painted everything with at least 4 colors on each wall. For the record, she was NOT a good faux painter and was prone to giving up without completing all 4 walls. She also did not like to prep the room by doing little things like removing switchplates and taking the nails out of the walls! We had nails in the walls with several layers of paint on them.

The original owners did two really stupid things to our house and one that is kind of dumb. Back in the day before there was CAC, they had a window AC unit installed in the formal dining room. About 6 inches off the floor. By cutting a 2 by 3 foot hole in the brick exterior. And not saving the brick in case it was ever removed. Hmmm. When the CAC was installed, they simply put a wooden cover over the air conditioner. Now we have a large AC unit in the side of our house and have to find a mason to fix the wall. They also replaced the metal kitchen cabinets with wood ones they made themselves. The problem you ask? There are only two cupboards that are wide enough to hold a dinner plate and one of them is above the stove and the shelves are about 4 inches apart. Long story...we had to buy new dishes to fit into the cupboards. It is a good thing that we were planning on gutting the kitchen anyways. The kind of dumb thing is that they installed vinyl replacement windows in the house. But only the ones that face the street. Now we have to have mismatched windows in the house as we replace the remaining windows.

[Tanya]

-My favorite has to be that they took the kitchen cabinets with them when they moved! We moved into our house to discover that all the cabinets were gone! They decided that since they paid for the cabinets, they owned them, and could take them with them! Nuts!
Wow, that's ballsy! Did your dad get money back from them since they broke the contract? Anything that is attached to the walls (except art) stays unless explicitly written out. This includes drapes, which is an iffy thing since it's the hardware that's attached and not the drapes, so it's usually written into the contract either way. Our POs took a bathroom mirror down and replaced it with a crappy one w/ mirror clips which was technically against the rules, but it was just one mirror and we didn't push it.

ManteoChick, that is hilarious w/ the horses. Someone had a wee obsession.

[ginadc]

Oh god, we too had the "poop brown" paint covering our floors (1894 Victorian) when we took the carpet up. The guys who did the refinishing had to be certified lead abatement specialists.

It's interesting; some of the owners of this place over the years have done some wonderful things, like installing central air (how many 1896 Victorians do you know with A/C), and modernizing the kitchen and putting in a fab Viking stove (although it will probably need to be redone again in a couple of years, as the redo was about 20 years ago). Someone also closed in a segment of the big front porch to make an extra living space on the main floor, which was really useful because there's still plenty of porch space and we have a room that we can turn into a library/small family room.

But then there were the "what were they thinking?" decisions, like painting the beautiful old oak banisters a horrid hunter green. Fortunately, we've discovered the joys of Peel Away 7 and are having a surprisingly easy time getting that crap off.

Someone also painted white one side of the absolutely gorgeous pocket doors between the dining room and the living room. The other side is still the original wood, and it's stunning; can't quite figure out what they were going for. Again, Peel Away 7 will be our savior here.

[Asha]

did all handywork himself, but wasn't very good handyman and did a half ass job on everything.

there are mirrors everywhere!!!!!!!! it really sucks when you are having one of those fat days!!!

[TheFuture]

I have pics of the house prior to us moving in...they loved thier sponge painting!!

The daughters room - currently our guest room, soon to be our nursery (and was promptly painted once we moved in!!)
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3df02b3127cce9e394997930f00000016108IaN27Jy4Z0


Half bath...Oddest place for sponging:

Above the door:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3dd38b3127cce9e394986675600000016108IaN27Jy4Z0

Around the mirror:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3dd38b3127cce9e394987e66700000016108IaN27Jy4Z0

Around the window:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3dd38b3127cce9e394e74a60f00000016108IaN27Jy4Z0

This room was also painted as soon as we moved in!!

Guest bath upstairs - painted the base board, door frame and the back of the door this teal color:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3db32b3127cce9e394e5ffa0100000016108IaN27Jy4Z0

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b3db32b3127cce9e394e507b3e00000015108IaN27Jy4Z0

[KarenS]

Yow. That sponge painting isn't even good. It's just sort of random and there, isn't it? :)

Karen

[greenbunny]

Yet another addition to my "WTF?" file. Our shower drain has been clogged and stinky for a while, you're ankle-deep in water during a shower. Unfortunately we could't clean it because they used the wrong screws on the drain cover and stripped out the holes, which were also rusted shut.

My dad finally came over and drilled them out and pulled up the trap so we could get a drain snake in there. Not only did we pull out the biggest, grossest, smelliest wad of long hair ever (longer than mine, so it must have been the previous owners' hair) but we also found a KNIFE. A freaking knife in the drain. My dad almost cut his hand off rooting around in there. It was a flip-open blade, like a generic Swiss Army knife. The handle was wood and was all mushy and rotten. The only thing we can figure is that they were trying to cut the hair clog and dropped it down there, then never bothered to try to get it out.

[suzubeane]

The only thing we can figure is that they were trying to cut the hair clog and dropped it down there, then never bothered to try to get it out.Oh, good thinking. My first thought was they were trying to hide a murder weapon! (Think I've seen too much TV Crime Drama :o.)

[Jazz]

This thread is great! The previous home owners loved their TV. They had one in almost every room, and even outdoors. Now, to get the cable to their TV, they basically just ran the cable around the house (outdoors, thankfully), and drilled a hole through the wall -- didn't bother to put a plate on the wall or seal it or anything. They pulled some of the cables out before they left, and just spackled over the holes on the inside.

About a year after we'd moved in, DH went into the (rarely used) guest bedroom, and noticed that a 6"x6" area of the wall was pulsating. There was a HUGE wasp nest inside the wall, since they hadn't closed off the outside hole.

We sprayed from the outside to kill the wasps, and when we opened it up to clean it up, found that the bulk of the drywall was gone, and just a thin layer was separating the nest from bursting into the room. Eeek!!! After that, we immediately went around the house to fill in all the holes ...

[Quartercentury]

Carisa, that first room looks very much like the one my sister requested (and my mom did for her) when she was about 8. It's gone back to its previously civilized self since we moved out of the house!

Can I complain about my apartment?

My favorite thing has got to be that the fan in the bathroom vents into the hall closet.

The pepto bismol pink walls in the bathroom and the pea green walls in the kitchen are also particularly charming. Especially with the drips onto cabinets and fixtures.

:rolleyes:

[suzubeane]

My favorite thing has got to be that the fan in the bathroom vents into the hall closet.I've had to sit on my hands while reading this thread to keep pointing out all the code violations previous homeowners leave behind - I know it's a lighthearted thread, and most of us will fix these things as time and budget allows.

But, Quartercentury - your landlord has to vent that bathroom properly! That's a health issue, and if he rents the property, it needs to be up to code. You've got some leverage here.

[Tanya]

Oh, good thinking. My first thought was they were trying to hide a murder weapon! (Think I've seen too much TV Crime Drama :o.)
That's what I was thinking too. Test it for blood residue when you get a chance, and let us know, ok?:D

TheFuture, that is the worst paint "job" I've ever seen. Did they actually think the sponge-painting looked good in the bathroom? Crazy!

[ee_chick]

We've been at our new house for three weeks and it seems like we're constantly finding stupid things the previous owners did. They were so lazy. A sampling

*They still have the original (1980) phone jacks in there -- that are only a few inches above the floor. They upgraded to wide baseboards and rather than modernize or move the phone jacks, they just "worked around" them. Some have grooves cut out, some have holes drilled, all look horrendous. The best is in the master where they evidently decided they needed the phone jack at a more modern height. They have 8 inches of cable looping around outside the wall. It goes out from the baseboard then back in further up the wall for the new jack.
* They took all of the lightbulbs and some of the curtains and rods. As if we wouldn't notice the holes and white sections on the wall?
*They were too lazy to notch the studs in the garage when they ran some wiring, so I have conduit snakes that go in and out of the drywall.
*Our master has a sitting area which is separated from the sleeping area by a fireplace. They were too lazy to rewire the cable so they could watch TV in the bedroom so they just kept it wrapped around the fireplace wall. That's so easy that I could do it!
*They have carpet in all of the bathrooms. I know it was a choice, because there is no carpet upstairs except in the bathrooms. That's coming out quickly because all I can think of whenever step out of the shower is the carpet pad as mold central.
*They enclosed a loft to make a spare room, which I actually like. They didn't bother moving the electrical stuff so it made sense. The light switch is behind the door (!) and the outlets on one side are in the floor.
*They replaced several of the outlet frames/covers, but not the outlets themselves. So they had bright white frames and switchplates and beige outlets and switches. WHY??? They sell both colors at Home Depot
*None of the doors close properly. Some don't latch.

We bought knowing we would remodel the kitchen and bathrooms since they're looking every day of their 25 years. (plasticy faux marble bathroom countertops, anybody?) I didn't expect all of this though. :rolleyes:

[Quartercentury]

But, Quartercentury - your landlord has to vent that bathroom properly! That's a health issue, and if he rents the property, it needs to be up to code. You've got some leverage here.
Thanks, suzubeane, I'll check it out. I am suspecting, though, that it's somehow allowable. We're in the UK, which has non-existant laws, as far as I can tell, regarding health and safety in construction/housing.

The first apartment we lived in here was built and owned by a branch of the university, and had windows that opened from the ground up. That's ground level windows in apartments that were designed to have families living in them. You know, families with small children who could easily open those windows while toddling around and fall right out.

no carpet upstairs except in the bathrooms
What wackos!

[tgray99]

The previous owners of our townhouse installed some fabulous brass crown molding. Yes, that's right, BRASS. Stylin' huh? :rolleyes: We've pulled those down and have white wood crown molding up now. Wow did it improve the place! (That and a new paint job!)

They also glued an enormous mirror, think 5'x5', straight to the sheetrock over the fireplace. We had to shatter it in order to get it down. Not fun, not fun at all.

To fix the gap between the wall and the cabinets in the kitchen, they used spray foam filler. Ummm, why not just push the cabinets flush to the wall rather than trying to do some crappy quick fix?

None of the switches are grounded (ummm, safety issue?) and there is some horrible wiring going on.

The shower curtain decoration-thing in both upstairs bathroom is nailed to the ceiling using huge toggle bolts. They're made of cotton fabric and are dusty and mildewy. We've pulled one down, still waiting to redo the master bath (which is a nightmare in and of itself.)

[Twylla]

At least ours was easy to fix: The living room was sponge painted forest green. that alone I could handle, but the green was sponged on top of bubble gum pink. In the living room! Ugh!

I wasn't even unpacked before the primer hit that mess! lol.

[BethElena]

At least ours was easy to fix: The living room was sponge painted forest green. that alone I could handle, but the green was sponged on top of bubble gum pink. In the living room! Ugh!

I wasn't even unpacked before the primer hit that mess! lol.

We had bubble gum pink under the horrendous christmas wallpaper in the living room...I feel your pain :D

The previous owners had 1'x1' glass squares all over the one wall in there to form a "mirror" of sorts..was that ever in style?

[sue-bert]

In my parents' home:

- the entire house (stairways, kitchens, and bathrooms included!) was carpeted in bile green sculpted bi-level pile.

- The entire house was panelled (including kitchens and bathrooms).

- The living room had fake white brick and a fake fireplace along one wall.

[kindermom]

We like to include our bathroom mirror on every tour of our house. It looks huge from the outside...
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b5ce09b3127cce948ec0ac230400000025118AYtWjhs4Ztm

But then you open it up...
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b5ce09b3127cce948ec67d23d600000025118AYtWjhs4Ztm

...it is not so big! I think the piece de resistance is the textured palm print contact (or thick wall) paper that we found covering the walls and ceiling - but it was all painted over. At least it peeled off easily and the cabinet matches the green walls we have in their now.

[suzubeane]

Kindermom - that's funky looking, but it's actually a pretty clever way to get medicine chest storage inset in the wall without having to cut a few studs and install a header. At least I think so ... but this is coming from a serial remodeler. ;).

What I don't understand is why the didn't install more "slivers" between he adjacent studs.

[Janey]

But then there were the "what were they thinking?" decisions, like painting the beautiful old oak banisters a horrid hunter green. Fortunately, we've discovered the joys of Peel Away 7 and are having a surprisingly easy time getting that crap off.

Someone also painted white one side of the absolutely gorgeous pocket doors between the dining room and the living room. The other side is still the original wood, and it's stunning; can't quite figure out what they were going for. Again, Peel Away 7 will be our savior here.
Someone painted all of our woodwork (http://www.flickr.com/photos/seahills/6747763/in/set-168325/) a sort of hunter/kelly greeen as well. We used Peel Away 7 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/seahills/11964362/in/set-168325/) on one of the windows (http://www.flickr.com/photos/seahills/11964581/in/set-168325/), and then figured out how much work it would take to strip allll of the woodwork in the house. Previous owners also put a heavy texture all over the living & dining room ceilings (to cover cracks probably?) and textured the first lip of the crown molding, so we'd basically have to replace all of the ceilings as well. We decided - screw that. :p In the woodwork that we had replaced in our remodel, we used paint-grade, and painted it all white. It makes me a little bit sad every time I say that, but I know it wasn't worth it in this home. FWIW, I am glad we stripped that window even though we ended up painting it white again. The Peel Away 7 got all of the globby paint off, and now that it's repainted white it looks great. It is the only window in the house that is not on the Window Replacement Schedule, both because it is unoperable, and because we like the wavy glass. :)

ginadc, I admire your determination! I'd love to see before-n-after photos if you have them.

Here's a stupid (or at least interesting) thing the previous owners did to our house: Our house at one point in its history was a marijuana growing facility. The drug dealers attached the previously detached garage, we assume to get their product from the basement into the garage without anybody seeing. But when they did the attaching, they butted the roof right up against the master bedroom window, and they flashed & caulked right against the glazing. You could stand in the master bedroom and look either into the garage, or outside.

B cut the window out so that it was at least operable (http://www.flickr.com/photos/seahills/15202607/in/set-168325/)and put plywood over the bottom part. Then we replaced the window with a new awning window (http://www.flickr.com/photos/seahills/54604679/) in our remodel.

[LeslieandPaul]

We moved in about 10 months ago, so most stuff has changed, but when we moved in the bathroom had aqua green diamonds all over the walls and above the toilet they had painted a lovely window mural that was glazed over or something (it looked faded) and had paint drips around it. There were peel and stick tiles with aqua green diamonds in the center, in the kitchen and bathroom (we've since replaced the kitchen floor with plans to do the bathroom).
In the kitchen over the two entrances (galley kitchen) there were shelves with the brackets on the top. In our very small kitchen there were two cupboards without doors (luckily they were in a closet).
The hallway closet doors were painted green (the colour of the walls). I've since painted all the doors and trim white.
The tops of all the electric baseboards were painted the colours of the walls, which meant I also had to paint them when I repainted everything.
So it wasn't too bad, but it's only an 880 sq ft condo, so there's only so much bad stuff you can do.

[kemaji]

Our house only had one set of previous owners (it was a new build) and they didn't really have much time to do anything terribly drastic to it. We had a hideously teal bathroom and almost every single room had some kind of border, from cherubs to a patriotic border to sand castles and shells.

[lorbo]

oh the things i could say about this house!!! when i walked in to this house, i cringed and DH could only see what the house could become-let's not talk about his inability to finish a job he starts...i'm still waiting on a picture to be placed above the sofa!!!

let me give the tour-

walking thru the front door-the PO had ancient carpet that may have been blue at one point-we'll call it gray and moving at certain points-mostly high traffic areas-a popcorn sealing with silver sparkles in it-lots of 1 inch holes in the ceiling-she may have hung houseplants in front of the front window and had plants hanging on the steps leading down to the living room-PO let the wood around the front windows deteriorate-so i've had to hear how we'll have to replace those windows soon-the light in the dining area is ugly-but i did overhear MIL say how much she liked it, so i suggested to DH that he give her that light when we replace it:D .
the kitchen-ancient yellow linoleum-the refrigerator propped on one side-a big, oversized, out of place cabinet over the fridge(if we moved the fridge it'd would just be sticking out)-the wallpaper is old old old-it may have caught on fire where the stove is...but they had extra to replace it, so it's a less yellowed version of the wallpaper-the plumbing was done by the PO's deceased husband who half-assed it.
down the stairs to the den/office-this room was the best-dark grey paneling half way up the walls, all around the room-the same popcorn ceiling with silver sparkles from the top of the paneling, all the way thru the room-walls to ceiling. let's add in the very classy anheiser busch plastic lights on either side of the slide window-she knew we'd have a soft spot for them:rolleyes: -i made DH take them down and he pawned them off on FIL as a gag christmas gift.
follow me down to the basement area-it has a finished "room"-meaning there's wood paneling on the walls prior to the "basement", unfortunately it's warped and the ceiling tiles are disintegrating. into the basement-the 1/2 bathroom is the best!! it is a throne-a little box raised up 2 steps, with a curtain to close it-we never use it!
upstairs...oh where to start...the hallway-the PO and company painted the hallway a bright hideous blue-over wallpaper. when i was taking the paint down and planning on painting it the same color as the living room, my mom suggested a border to make it stand out a little more-my response was it was bright blue, how much more could it stand out?
down the hall to the bathroom-it's small, like the kitchen. there are sliding doors to the bath-something i don't like, especially with children that i have to bathe. the caulking needed to be redone and the tiling thru out the bathroom is a poor job. the toilet is again half-assed by previously mentioned plumber-and the linoleum is cheap and completely doesn't match.
DD's room-the same cheap clearance priced bright blue paint on three walls of her room, over wallpaper. the other wall painted white-and a few 1 inch holes in the ceiling-maybe for plants. PO left the oriental carpet, which we threw out-it was a paint catcher.
DS's room-bright orange on three walls-i'm thinking somebody went to home depot or lowe's or kmart and said here's some paint on sale, who cares what color it is. the other wall is again white, like DD's room-notable exception is that these walls had poster stickies on them, and PO and gang painted over the stickies:eek:
i have to say i'm less able to complain about my bedroom-our front windows will have to be replaced as they've deteriorated a lot and we get a cold breeze thru them in the winter.

we've gotten rid of the popcorn walls/ceilings and busch lights and dark paneling. the rug in the living/dining room was replaced a few months ago. the painting in the living/dining room was finished before we moved in. my DD's room is almost done-and it'll be adorable. DS's room i hope to have done before christmas, so i don't have to hear MIL rave about SIL's house-being that her husband does stuff around the house, whereas...mine does not unless i nag him. the kitchen-well, it's a disaster, it's too small and i cringe when i see shows where people say they have no storage space or counter space and my kitchen is no bigger than some bathrooms-and we can't use some of our pots/pans because we have no space. i'm desperate to tape this space and send it somewhere and have somebody come here and fix it!!!! the den/computer/office is supposed to be done by DH-yet again, whenever the urge strikes him-hopefully it'll be in the next 10 years. the bathroom needs a complete overhaul to give it a personality and open it up some more. the master bedroom is the least of our worries and will be done sometime in the next couple of years...after our windows are replaced, after our fireplace insert is removed(i didn't add that the chimney isn't covered and we had a tree where birds were falling in to the fireplace and couldn't get out-i've told DH when it gets removed, i will not be there, as i don't want to see all the bodies back there-we know there's a squirrel half cremated-maybe he's fully cremated now!!! and the birds-i've saved two of them, by prying the insert out and shooing them out the door. ugh, can't wait till i can say HOME SWEET HOME!

[Applebee]

Drew a life size picture of a tree in our kitchen.

OMG! This so reminded me of when my Aunt moved into her new house many, many years ago...


There was a full-sized tree painted on the wall as you entered the kitchen from the foyer area.
My one cousin's bedroom and a HUGE tree going up the way and the branches went onto the ceiling (about 2 feet)! The tree had owls, birds, squirrels, etc. in it!
My other cousin's room had a lock on the outside - apparently he thought his family was stealing from him.
The guest room had a farm painted on the wall - barn and animals!

I was young so I loved it. My Aunt however, didn't. They had it all painted within the first week, except the farm room...they kept that a little longer for me :p

For my own house:
The previous owner smoked and NEVER opened a window. We had to use TSP (I think that's what it's called) to wipe down the walls before painting them.
The kitchen cabinets had thick grease on them (that goodness for Mean Green)
The stove was over 20 years old and NEVER cleaned (inside or out)

That's all I can remember

[Standrea]

Ugh, if walls could talk, the stories my house could tell...

We knew some "minor" issues when we bought the house, and bought it as a "fixer upper"...

The walls-Panelling. They had either a TON of candles, or used some sort of oil heater, because the walls and ceilings were stained black. This was easy to take care of. TSP washed the walls down, and then we painted the paneling (more on that later). We replaced the ceiling (it was drop) with new tiles, and a new light fixture.

The kitchen. Whoever set it up, was on a complete drug trip. there is doorways on every single doorway, so there is NO cabinet/counter space. We are gutting the kitchen in February, and taking out some of the doorways to give us a little more space...

Bathroom-The ceiling was completely covered with mold. It was so bad that we had to tear it down, put in a new one, and then put in a light with ceiling fan (there were only lights on the walls next to the sink, so you couldnt see in the shower anyways). It was a plaster ceiling with that "spray In" insulation, and was VERY VERY messy. it took us about 1 week to clean up all of the insulation.

Electrical-My husband wanted to add some more lights to the basement so I wouldnt be afraid to go down there...When he was running the electrical, he realized that EVERYTHING for the basement, kitchen, garage and outside was off of 1 switch in the kitchen, then run to other switches. Can we say FIRE HAZARD? WHen he tried to rip out the electrical, it was CEMENTED into the walls...There were plaster walls, and it IS still covered by sheet rock. this is part of the reason why there is STILL paneling in the living room and dining room, and why we are gutting the kitchen.

I wont even get into the popcorn ceilings upstairs in our bedroom...

[Asha]

The stove was over 20 years old and NEVER cleaned (inside or out)

ewwwww!!!

[Asha]

the longer we live in this house, the more we realize the prev. owner was stupid.

when designing his kitchen he designed the space to fit his current fridge exactly. well, what fits a fridge from 10+ years ago, does not fit the fridges of today. i spent over 8 hours hunting for a fridge to fit the space. all the salespeople thought i was nuts when i gave them my size requirements.

[Ade]

My 1961 custom has changed owners several times and was a rental prior to the PO buying it. The PO were EXTREMELY lazy, so just did there bare minimum everywhere and as cheaply as possible. Some of my favorites were;

- Building planters up against the wood shingled house with untreated wood. Needless to say, the planters rotted out and rotted the side of the house too. They did this in several areas.

- Painting the wallpaper (which the owners prior to them put up on EVERY wall in the house) in the living room purple, rather than taking it down.

- Doing previously mentioned paint job themselves, and not taping the oak trimmed windows, so we have purple over paint on every window trim.

- Hanging pictures in the guest bedroom to cover the mold. You could see the spots underneath the wallpaper. We ended up having to rip all of the drywall out of that room

- Putting holes in the walls to put a phone jack on every single wall (we have a total of 10 in a 3 bedroom house) and half ass wire extra outlets to accommodate their flipping huge entertainment center and then just slapping a piece of wall paper over the hole, and not even match up the pattern.

- Putting countless holes in the walls, a staple gun was her second best friend

- Hot gluing things to the walls rather than taking the time to hang it with a nail (that was her first best friend)

- Putting up wood shutters on the inside of the bathroom windows.

- Placing a flush mount fixture over a can light and rather than rewiring the fixture, putting a socket/outlet converter in and wiring the flush mount light with a plug and just plugging it into the socket.

- Painting over dry rotted facial boards on our eaves to hide them from the inspector

- Planting ivy and oleander in the yard because it creates a low cost/low maintenance yard

- Placing metal arches in the yard for the ivy to grow over, so we have random humps here and there

- Random statuary, strings of Christmas lights and about 200 broken plastic pagoda style Malibu lights EVERYWHERE in the yard. Kind of like the army guy graveyard, we would randomly find a cherub head, friendly squirrel or broken angel wings while doing yard work, some were really rather frightening

And, my absolute favorite . . . hot gluing cinderblocks on to the top of a retaining wall to make it a bit higher.

My bones to pick with the previous PO are;

- Maroon carpeting everywhere, even in the master bath. You should have seen the sub floor around the toilet and shower when we ripped it out

- Wall paper on every freaking wall

- Floor to ceiling mirrors in the landing of the stairs, in the living room and in the master bedroom (can you say "porn star"?)

- Building out a support wall to twice the size it needed to be to accommodate said mirrors.

- Dry walling over a solid wood support beam in our living room.

- Not installing any built in lights in a living room with 14' ceilings

- Putting a soffet in the kitchen to give an illusion of a drop ceiling

- Polished brass and glass fixtures, everywhere

- Etched windows with horses on them bewteen the master bed and living room (there was a long history of my house and Santa Anita race track, 1 jockey, 1 trainer and a vet have owner it), so we also had horse wall paper in our office.

- Putting glazed ceramic tile in the walkway and entryway of the house. The walkway is outside, so, it it ever got wet, say, like on a rainy day, it would become a slip and slide

Thankfully the house had great bones and so looks amazing now that we have finished remodeling, but man did it suck for the 9 months that we worked on it and the year that we lived in it before starting the work!

[southerner]

bump for lil_geek

[Asha]

Etched windows with horses on them bewteen the master bed and living room (there was a long history of my house and Santa Anita race track, 1 jockey, 1 trainer and a vet have owner it), so we also had horse wall paper in our office.

i could do without the wallpaper, but the horse glass etching sounds pretty cool especially given the home's history.

[lil_geek]

Thanks Southerner!

Where should I start? We bought my DH's grandparents farm. The farm has been in the family for 90+ years, and the house was built some time before 1856. It’s so hard, I am always cursing what was done in the house… which means I am cursing DH’s family. I feel bad on one level… but seriously!!!

Let’s start with things you may ‘expect’ due to differences in taste!

- carpeted over really nice maple wood floors in the living room (thankfully they didn’t glue) with CHEAP industrial berber
- carpeted in the bathroom with really cheap industrial berber… didn’t put it under the cabinets or anything, but didn’t put trim on, so it just sort of curls all around the edges of anything!
- Panelling…. EVERYWHERE. The living room was at least done well, but the dining room/hall/stairwell they used stuff SO CHEAP that the painters tape pulled it off. It’s no more then wrapping paper on cardboard. On top, they did an AWEFUL job installing it (which makes painting over it even pretty temporary) it’d like they had a space just under 8 feet wide, so instead of cutting a sheet… the just jammed it in and let it warp! They also installed it over crumbling plaster, overtop of the 6 inch baseboards and who knows what else!!
- When they panelled the kitchen… they panelled over a door. I kid you not… left the hinges on and everything!!!

http://images1.snapfish.com/347663%3B66%7Ffp343%3Enu%3D3233%3E866%3E6%3B%3B%3E 23248667%3A%3C%3A4%3Aot1lsi

- When they painted the kitchen they painted around things (fridge/stove/cabinets). There were only 2 cabinets in the entire thing!
- Kitchen ceiling needed replacing… and they used the 1 foot square ceiling tiles like you would use in the basement. Bathroom and all the upstairs hall/stairwell have the same.
- 3 layers of subfloor in the kitchen and then linoleum installed in the 50’s (there are holes in it!) (The floor also has a 2.5 inch sag which we need to fix – not their fault)
- Windows in the dining room had been painted shut. Grand mother in law… lived in the house for over 60 years and NEVER opened them (the house stank of stale!!)
- The ‘old’ roof had leaked at some point, causing the plaster to literally fall off the walls, musty, moldy
http://images1.snapfish.com/347663%3B66%7Ffp346%3Enu%3D3256%3E345%3E258%3EWSNR CG%3D323383%3A37748%3Bnu0mrj

- ‘charm’ of an old house… the house is solid brick construction. Exterior walls are brick-concrete-wallpaper…. No insulation or anything
http://images1.snapfish.com/347663%3B66%7Ffp345%3Enu%3D3256%3E345%3E258%3EWSNR CG%3D323392%3B8%3A5645nu0mrj

-seems they removed a supporting wall in the basement – the base of a bunch of joists are flattened.
- door frames and such were painted, over stain, REALLY poorly
any EXTERIOR wood hasn’t ever been painted (window frames, sill, etc.)


Plumbing
- plumbing (all done by DH’s grandfather/father and uncles) is all rubber hose, all over the basement (unfinished dirt floor)…. No traps for drains, no shut off valves.
- We went in the basement in March and everthing was ‘fine’. We took possession in May…. I moved in June. First thing I said was the septic needs pumping, it smelled like sewage in our bathroom – finally get that done after it backed up (hadn’t been done in 6 years!) – still smells like sewage… last weekend my dad and I went down. The pipe to the septic is LEAKING ALL OVER THE DIRT FLOOR! Into buckets (which weren’t there in March!), run over (because of course we didn’t know they were there)… and the pipe had been ‘fixed’ with ELECTRICAL TAPE!!!
- When the bathtub was installed… they wanted the drain where a floor joist is (‘joists’ are tree’s levelled off the house is so old)… so they drilled through it!! RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF A JOIST!! No wonder the house sags!
- We are now getting quotes to get all the plumbing fixed.

Electrical
- The electrical for the stove runs down the wall from upstairs and the outlet isn’t even mounted. Just lays on the floor!
- The kitchen was ‘done’ some time in the 50’s? They added 3 inches of styrofoam insulation and then put up a wood panel (painted eventually). Instead of pulling the electrical out… they left the outlets recessed in the wall (all 2 in the kitchen that is! ) and they are only 2 inches off the floor (I understand there wasn’t the 14” regulation or whatever we have now….)
- Wires are all on top of panelling etc. In a closet/store room they were wallpapered over. Thankfully DH found them before he took the reciprocating saw to the wall (which we were trying to take down)
- Drilled through second floor joist to run a few wires

[LynzeyAHL]

Thanks Southerner!

Where should I start? We bought my DH's grandparents farm.

HOLY CRAP I can get the cursing - I hope you didn't pay too much b/c old homes can be SO expensive to fix up.

Good luck!

[lil_geek]

LynzeyAHL - We got 215 acres with the house.... so in a sense, we paid $0 for the house and bought the land. I wish we could have just tore it down and built new!!! But that DEFINATLY wasn't in the cards!

[msnicolea]

OY. A few of my peeves--they are pretty piddly, but annoying:

~The knobs on the stove don't match the actual temperature of the stove--it says 10 when it's actually on 1, and vice versa.
~mirrored closet doors on both newly redone upstairs bedrooms-ugh
~only one vent in the entire upstairs
~no bars in the upstairs closets which have slanted ceilings--I am having the hardest time mounting something in there to hold all of our clothes!
~the dishwasher and the kitchen sink are on opposite sides of the newly made kitchen island--it drives my DH crazy! ;->

[ivory]

They apparently used whatever screws, etc. they had lying around when mounting stuff. So one side of a towel bar had a tiny screw barely hanging on, while the other had a super long screw and monstrous metal anchor.

We ended up with a huge hole to repair after removing one of the brackets for a simple curtian rod. They used such an inappropriate screw/anchor combo that we eventaully had to buy a Dremmel and cut the damn screw. The upside is that DH is now in love with the Dremmel.

[maplekitty]

lil_geek - OMG call Mike Holmes from HOLMES ON HOMES!!!!!! He would have a field day with your place!!! :D :D

[keska]

Wow. Some of these scare me. Some of them remind me of houses my parents built in the '70s. I remember we had one with a downstairs rec room that had a built in bar, wood paneling, and one full wall wallpapered with a huge picture of a waterfall. That was also the house with the shiny gold wallpaper with brown velvet designs. Ah, those were the days.

[nicole]

All right, I've lived in my house for about two weeks and I already have a few.

There's one drain in the basement and it's about 8 feet from where the hot & cold water for the washer is. If that isn't supid enough, somebody put a wall up between the two, so we have to either go through the wall or around it to drain the washer. Oh joy.

The other thing is the one wall in the kitchen seemd to be made of some weird material. We figured we'd take the weird material off and just put drywall up. See the strange seams?
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c256/goddessnike13/House%20Stuff/IMG_0328small.jpg

After we removed the moulding, we found the material was something like peg board but minus the holes. We also found it wasn't attached to the studs like we'd originally thought, it was over drywall!
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c256/goddessnike13/House%20Stuff/IMG_0791small.jpg

We figured the drywall had to be in bad shape for them to go to all the trouble and expense of puting up this weird material, but it was prefectly fine! Painted and textured and everything! Unfortunately it was covered in glue, so it had to be ripped out anyway. Geez.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c256/goddessnike13/House%20Stuff/IMG_0793small.jpg

Another one we just discovered today - they put in a furnace that's about twice the BTUs that are needed for the house, so it kicks itself off when it reaches its high limit. It'll work fine, but why pay more money for more furnace than you need?

[ivansbabe]

We had a string of lights and really horrible fake floral vines above our kitchen cabinets. In the same area, our eating area was wallpapered under a chair rail and under the wallpaper was horribly cheap beadboard.

http://images1.snapfish.com/34788%3A359%7Ffp63%3Dot%3E2329%3D5%3A6%3D733%3DXRO QDF%3E2323962366646ot1lsi

Isn't it pretty? We're still working on this room however so there are no after pictures. We took down the rail/wallpaper/beadboard and painted it a light mocha color and put in a new light fixture.

[Kari331]

In contrast to Nicole, the homeowners we bought from installed an air conditioner that was underpowered for the home. When they said it was only 3 years old, we assumed it worked. We spent two summers with jumpers on it to keep it going and it finally blew for good last summer. We decided to get a new furnace at the same time. When the furnace came out, there was a big crack on the backside.

Same story with the dishwasher. It was only 2 years old. But, it didn't clean the dishes at all. My dog could lick them cleaner. Decided to replace that during the kitchen renovation.

The owners also decided they didn't like the linoleum in the eat in section of the kitchen. So, they tore it out. They replaced it with nice indoor/outdoor carpet secured with duct tape.

The dryer is another story. We live in a two story, with the laundry in the basement. When you turned it on, it sounded like a cat was being killed inside it. We could hear it all the way upstairs and could only run it when we left the home.

It was For Sale By Owner and they were so nice.

[nicole]

The owners also decided they didn't like the linoleum in the eat in section of the kitchen. So, they tore it out. They replaced it with nice indoor/outdoor carpet secured with duct tape.

Yikes! :eek:

[ejs]

I realize ours in minor, but it really is a PITA. They installed white carpet throughout the whole house. It really isn't conducive to the lifestyle that DH, our two dogs, and I have.

[greenbunny]

DH is sanding our foyer. We were nervous about what he would find in the half-wall that overlooks the downstairs--it's patched really poorly, all lumpy and uneven. Rumor is that the original owner ran a business out of the home and had a salt water aquarium embedded in that wall.

So last night while sanding, he hit metal. It looks like they somehow jammed metal plates into the hole in the drywall and then filled it up with putty, then put drywall tape over top and painted with about 8 coats. It's starting to crumble as he sands the paint off. I just hope the entire wall doesn't come down.

[maplekitty]

In DH's first house, he discovered that there was lovely hardwood under all the carpet and lino. Unfortunately the lino was put down with tar over the hardwood. Apparantly it took him many weeks sitting on the floor with a scrapper, scrapping all the tar off the hardwood. I dont know if that was a standard way of laying lino back then??

[suzubeane]

I dont know if that was a standard way of laying lino back then??It may have been asbestos. Was it tile or sheet?

[Hawaii2SJ]

The previous owner of our home had brand new carpet and linoleum:rolleyes: put in prior to selling. When we looked at the place the carpet was pink and the linoleum had huge pink roses on it. Isn't that cute:confused: :p

We ripped that out really quick and put in typical beige carpet, pergo flooring and tiles in the baths. But now we're selling our place. I wonder what the buyers will hate about the stuff we did:p

[jesvet]

The previous owners of our house had wall to wall beige carpeting, two small boys, and never once had the carpets cleaned. The guy who came in to clean them said they were the dirtiest carpets he'd ever seen. Even when he was done they were a gross gray color in most places, so we of course had to rip them all out.

They had the place very 80's-ed out, it was their idea of "modern". Lots of frosted glass fixtures and the like. We still have to order replacement glass for the cabients- it has some weird New Year's confetti pattern on it.

[{b}]

14by14" black, glittery-ish tile on the entryway L shaped hall floor. it was hideously ugly, and had this strange, 'didn't quite fit the feel,' no matter what that feel might have been, mosaic tile piece off centered. On top of the hardwoods. When we saw the condo, we said that was the first thing we would pull up. Little did we know they glued, and Quickset the tiles to the plywood protecting hte hardwoods. And the plywood did little to protect the hardwoods, since they had nailed, stapled and nailed in screws to hold it all inplace. No idea why - you wouldn't have needed all that to adhere it to the ceiling.

The previous owner lived there 11 years. I don't think she ONCE changed the air filter on the central air/heat return.

Ahhhh, that was cathartic!

[maplekitty]

It may have been asbestos. Was it tile or sheet?

nope it was normal sheet lino like you still get these days. And it was definitely tar, he said it was sticky as hell, and smelled like tar!

[suzubeane]

nope it was normal sheet lino like you still get these days. And it was definitely tar, he said it was sticky as hell, and smelled like tar!Yeah, that black sticky stuff is called "mastic" and some of it had asbestos. (Today's mastic wouldn't, obviously!) I had the same stuff under some lino tile in my home, but the floor underneath wasn't worth exposing, so I put a plywood sub-floor over it.

I know you don't have that house anymore, but if anyone else finds this stuff, there's a lot of info available online; here's one (http://www.bobvila.com/BBS/Help_Possible_asbestos_mastic-Safety_Environmental_and_Hazardous_Materials-1-F288.html) example.

[eli1126]

Rather than sanding the original hardwoods upstairs the previous owners had a fake lamenent wood floor put over them :eek: They also must have froze for the three years they lived in the house because typical of older homes it had no insulation! After getting $600.00 electric/heating bills (They claimed they never had a bill over $200.00...Yeah Right!) we had insulation piped in to all our walls, floors, and attic. Keeping fingers crossed that it makes a difference. They also painted over the rotting front porch rather than replacing the boards and painted over the ceiling upstairs where it looks like something oily leaked in the attic and came right through the back hallway so that when we came through and had the inspection we didn't notice it.

Beth

[maplekitty]

Yeah, that black sticky stuff is called "mastic" and some of it had asbestos. (Today's mastic wouldn't, obviously!) I had the same stuff under some lino tile in my home, but the floor underneath wasn't worth exposing, so I put a plywood sub-floor over it.

I know you don't have that house anymore, but if anyone else finds this stuff, there's a lot of info available online; here's one (http://www.bobvila.com/BBS/Help_Possible_asbestos_mastic-Safety_Environmental_and_Hazardous_Materials-1-F288.html) example.

hhmm...interesting...I hope the stuff Curt was scrapping up didn't have asbestos! He'd have symptoms by now (4 years later) wouldn't he, if he was exposed to it?

[mindy75]

We've only been in our house for 3 weeks, but I could go on for days.

We bought your classic 70's ranch from an older lady who claimed to be tired of cleaning it and schlepping up the basement stairs. We bought it knowing we were going to do a little updating at first and then a full remodel down the road. So, the cosmetic stuff wasn't a big deal to us. It had and still has good bones, the structure was well-maintained and the location is perfect. We expected to find some things that were going to be more involved that what we hoped, but we never expected some of the things we found.

1. The entry way and dining room were covered in not 1, not even 2, but 3 layers of icky floral wallpaper. I hate wallpaper period, but I'm talking here about some pyschedelic(sp?) florals.
2. In addition to the 3 layers of wallpaper, we found a "patched" hole in the wall in the entry way. It's right where the doorknob hits the wall, you know where the doorstop is supposed to be? Ours is absent. Anyway, so under the newest layer of wallpaper was a hole. It was patched with duct tape. Inside the hole they stuffed sandwich bags and newspapers. I don't know why they did that. Insulation? It freaked me out pulling sandwich bags out of there. I just knew I found somebody's whacky weed!
3. We also have carpet in our tiny master bath. That seems to be a 70's favorite. I don't know why they thought that was such a good idea. It's so gross to me. I don't even want to think about the years and years of man-pee around the base of that toilet. Ick!!! We are planning a full remodel in a few years where we knock out walls and create a master suite, so for right now we ripped up the carpet in the bathroom and put down new vinyl. We had to take the toilet out anyway. It was old, wobbly, and had a squishy seat. You know the cushioned seat. Ick! I hate those almost as much as I hate carpet in the bathroom.
4. On to the guest bath...It's freaking huge! Originally, it was 2 rooms separated by swinging half doors. Think "Gunsmoke," the doors leading into Miss Kitty's saloon and you'll have a good visual. At some point they were taken down. Our owner was kind enough to dig them out for us and leave them behind. Thanks:rolleyes: The toilet in this bathroom had to be replaced too. Stains, 31 years of stains, that a sandblaster couldn't get out.
5. Someone urinated regularly in the floor in one of the bedrooms. They managed to cover the smell by replacing the carpets. Once we got in here, the smell in that room was horrible. We pulled up the carpet and in one spot it was wet with pee all the way into the subfloor. We tried to clean it with everything, but couldn't get the smell out. So, this weekend we have the super fun task of ripping that section of plywood out, replacing it and the baseboard, then putting in the new carpet we bought. That's just nasty! How are you going to let someone pee in your floor?!
6. The owner was also a smoker. I don't care if people smoke. I just don't want to live in their houses. I think they hid that by having the air ducts cleaned before they put the house on the market. Unfortunately, the lady smoked until she moved out so the smell came back to haunt us. We cleaned the air ducts and the guy found 20-30 cigarette butts in the return in the master bedroom. :mad: No wonder I couldn't breathe at night! We just about completely eliminated that odor. We painted everything and cleaned and scrubbed everything else. I didn't think the brown ick would ever stop rolling off the windows.
7. Someone started finishing the basement. They framed up some walls, put a little drywall here and a little cheap panelling there. They also started to create a laundry room. There's an HVAC vent right over the washer/dryer. It's old and rusted so we have to replace the return before we can close it. The water heater is right next to it to. Hmmm...wonder what a blast of cold ac is doing to the efficiency of the water heater?
8. There is no insulation in the ceiling in the basement. Meaning there is also no insulation in the main level floor. Oh, wait there is a little insulation in the celing in the garage. Unfortunately, it's upside down.
9. Oh, she replaced all the carpets in the house except for one bedroom. It still has the original blue shag. It was a little used room, she said, the carpet didn't need to be replaced. Old-lady logic. :p

[eli1126]

Mindy, I am right there with you on the carpet inthe bathroom! I had to laugh about the man pee because that would be my first thought :)

Beth

[Julss05]

I shouldn't complain too much since our house was a forclosure, but we have had to do major remodeling on the inside and out. Here are some issues we've come across...


Wallpaper Everywhere! (bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, dining room)
MAJOR caked on grease and mold in the kitchen (on cabinets, blinds, walls, appliances) ended up replacing everything
Funky electrical wiring (when you turned on the light for upstairs, one of the outdoor lights would come on!)
TONS of holes all over the walls
They patched concrete floor with sand mixture that recently sunk into floor, we filled and replaced with proper concrete
Nothing updated in the house since it was built in the early 80's including paint and flooring
No grass even though there was a lawn, shrubbery and trees dead and overgrown
Leaking pipe that caused stain on ceiling downstairs among other water leaks from bad insulation
Mold and bug issues inside and out


We still have windows to replace and some flooring but it looks a hell of a lot better than when we first moved in! This is our first house and although we'll make a good amount of money when we sell it I think our next home will be move-in ready with no major repairs needed!

[Sweetie04]

I was thinking about this thread today, as I'm stripping the pink wallpaper from the office closet, including the ceiling. Why would anyone do this?

We have a 1939 house that was largely redone by the previous owners. I like most of what they did, but we often come across something odd, at which point we say "Crazy Paul" (the last owner). I think the closet wallpaper is from a 1950s model, though, based on the color.

[snoopy30]

Our house was built in 1927 so there have been many owners. Not sure who did this lovely decorating trick but in our guest bath instead of tile around the shower they put this brick-veneer stuff. It had been painted white to "look" like tile. Then someone put way too much plaster on the walls (where there wasn't brick) so basically it felt like the walls were closing in on you! It's not a big bathroom at all.

So...we gutted the whole thing! Such a pain to do but we're SO happy we did it!

[jenahdawn]

We've lived here a month now. The previous owners, 5 years. Before that, there was probably 2 other owners.

So..."fun" things we have discovered in the past few weeks: (Mind you, the previous owners are a doctor and PT....makes me wonder...)

1. The basement ceiling fan (basement is finished) was installed....but never hooked up to anything.

2. None of the upstairs phone jacks worked. (I say worked because my husband and his father did a simple 83 cent fix in five minutes and MAGICALLY they work!)

3. The living room and MOST of the basement are on the same breaker.

4. Someone installed an outlet in the upstairs front closet. (There is one on the other side of the wall)

5. They slapped up white paint quick and dirty to cover their paint jobs...without investing in painters tape, so most of the fixtures in our bathroom have to be replaced. (We would have don that anyway)

6. In the main bathroom (we have three), you turn on the shower, expecting hot water, you get cold. It's backwards. Again, 10 minutes and 1.89 later, it was fixed.

7. They used tape to repair things....scotch tape.

8. They "trimmed" the blind cords...so the blinds stopped at 2 feet before the bottom of the windows.

9. They never cleaned the dryer vent.

10. The hose bib was cracked, so, instead of fixing it (2.00, 15 minutes), they left it broken....shoved the hose that "leaked" (needed a new washer) and the hose holder in the garage and gave up on it.

I'm sure we'll find more, as my FIL will be coming back for the third weekend in a row so they can decide if we are keeping the powerless fan or putting a much needed light in a lightless room!

[nicole]

This isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but whoever owned this house before us screwed everything in way too tightly! From cabinet pulls to lightbulbs! It's just annoying! :)

[Fenway]

7. They used tape to repair things....scotch tape.

The pervious owners of our house used those free return address labels you get in the mail as tape to repair things.

[lil_geek]

I have my HUGE post above... and we have thankfully 'undone' a lot of stuff!

But one thing we noticed recently. Whenever they needed to run cabling (cable, phone etc)... they would drill the holes (through the hardwood and the subfloor into the basement) like 6-8 inches away from the wall. Instead of nice and in the corner/edge of the wall.... we have one that comes up 2 inches left of our front door... but 8 inches from the wall!!! ?!?!?

[greenbunny]

When DH was replacing door hinges throughout the house, we found that some holes were stripped out. I've always thought you put toothpicks or small strips of balsa wood in the holes to create grip as a temporary fix. But the previous owners instead decided to use chunks of cardboard torn from a case of beer. Pabst, to be exact.

[Aimee]

We were replacing the flooring in our master bathroom back in July, from vinyl to ceramic tile. We knew there was an area of the subfloor right next to the shower that was soft (okay, it was rotten), so we were expecting to see some damage when the floor came up. What we weren't expecting was newspaper shoved in the area with the rotten wood. Because paper is great for an area that's moist and rotten from the moisture, right?

[betsyboop]

We have found a ton of weird stuff in our house. Here are a few:

- Almost the entire house (kitchen, bathroom, living room, outside lights) was on one fuse. But the doorbell had its own fuse.
- We have a hall light that has 2 switches- one at the top of the stairs and one at the bottom. We noticed that you could only turn the light on when the switches were in certain configurations and figured it was something to do with the old wiring (cloth covered) shorting out or something. DH went to fix it and realized that the wires had just never been hooked up properly, so it had never worked.
- The previous owners had a cat that peed all over the dining room floor. When we ripped up the carpet, the smell was overpowering. We had to replace most of the hardwood in that room.
- They never used 2 of the same screw or nail anywhere in the house. Even things that normally come with nails or screws, like curtain rods, somehow had mismatching nails. We think they were big dump pickers.
- Carpet in the bathroom- eew!
- 3-4 layers of wallpaper in every room.
- They left sheets of linoleum in the attic, almost as if they were using them like small area rugs up there or something. Really odd.
- The closet in our bedroom was painted hot pink and the one in the other bedroom was a yellow-gold.

[MeTheGirlie]

Wallpapered the original 1856 staircases (I'm all for paint, but wallpaper??)

They never used 2 of the same screw or nail anywhere in the house. Even things that normally come with nails or screws, like curtain rods, somehow had mismatching nails.

Mine too! LOL. How funny!

[mgrace]

Ohmy, I'm not even sure where to start. Some of these weren't courtesy of the people we bought the house from, but they didn't fix the things either, so they are to blame!

-Similar to bestyboop, our hall light would work if you flipped it on at the bottom of the stairs, but not at the top.
-Completely covered up access to the attic
-Doorbell hooked up wrong
-Only half the garage is drywalled and insulated
-Garbage disposal hooked up wrong
-Bathroom floor is peeling off
-Main floor not insulated
-Every room except one has paneling. There is pretty 70's Kleenex box looking wallpaper under the paneling in the kitchen
-No door leading to the basement
-Slanted/unlevel floors in kitchen, which means the counters are uneven, too
-*Half* of the kitchen cabinets were replaced
-Furnace filter in upside down
-Showerhead and sink aerator missing at closing

And on and on and on. :rolleyes:

[LexyLou]

These are funny!

Our house was built in 1950 and there have been quite a few owners since the original with lots of updating...some good, some bad.

1) Our hall light is like what some of you mentioned only ours only works from the upstairs switch so it's tricky get up in the middle of the night since you can't turn it on from downstairs.

2) The owners in the 80's destroyed the beautiful hardwood floors in the foyer, hallway, kitchen and dining room and put down BRIGHT PINK tile. We call it the Duran Duran tile. We already ripped it out and replaced with tan tile in the kitchen and hardwood everywhere else.

3) The downstairs "1/2 bath" was a toilet in the old pantry. With a pantry door...no real door, no sink, no fan, etc.

We had to build out in to the dining room to turn it in to a real 1/2 bath.

4) Wallpaper!! Luckily the previous owners removed some of it but 8 months later we are still removing the wallpaper from the hallway, stairwell and upstairs hallway. It looked lovely with the pink tile and the best part is so many things were done half ass but the wallpaper...it's on tight tight tight!

5) The kitchen light was a 60 watt bulb in a small fan. It was so dark in there. We replaced it was 140 watts...I can see what I'm cooking!

6) The owners a couple back put in this beautiful detailing around the front door when they redid the siding but they never put back a doorbell. So now we don't have a doorbell and we have no where to put a knocker because we have a window on the top part of the door. I would get a wireless doorbell but we have a wireless internet connection, wireless phones and a wireless baby cam so there would be too much interferance.

That's all I can think of right now.

[katiems118]

Our previous owners put expensive gorgeous granite on top of old water damaged kitchen cabinets....

After a water leak instead of replacing the drywall, they just drilled holes in the floor and covered them up with baseboards, when we removed the baseboards we were surprised to find hundreds of 1 inch diameter holes across the floors....

Pouring the concrete in the backyard sloping towards the house, so when it rains the water comes into the house....

Putting up a ceiling fan without bolting it to anything, it fell through the floor once we bought the house

[kindermom]

LexyLou - We have a wireless phone, wireless monitor, and wireless internet and we have no interference with our wireless doorbell. Well, unless you count the fact that the POs did not hook it up right so it rang into the neighbors house and vice versa! :eek: That took about a week to figure out.

mgrace - I totally forgot about our furnace filter being in upside down. And to think that they had it "serviced" as part of the contract. Man were the POs shady.

[lil_geek]

Op! Another one we found just before Christmas...

I was raking the leaves (okay, I'm a little behind!) in the yard and was right against the concrete step. There were these weird fibers comming up. Then I realized.

Carpet.... interior, rubber backed burber carpet was lay under the concrete. DH said they likely did it thinking the weeds woulnd't grow through the concrete (which MAY have worked if they had enough concrete... but they were cheap so it's mostly stones and sand and is totally deteriorating!)

[Niobe]

Our house (rented, so we can't do much to change things) is a 1920's cottage with some additions built to the back. The second bathroom was added probably in the 70s and was done REALLY cheaply. First, there are NO vents at all, no heat, no ac, nothing. The flooring unsealed, thin plywood (house is raised, no basement, just a crawlspace underneath) with no insulation, just tiles on the plywood. The floor is SO cold in the winter. Also, there are HUGE windows on the two exterior walls. Who puts huge picture windows in a bathroom? :confused: One of the two wall light fixtures is directly behind the door, so when you open the door, it hits the light. The glass shade on the fixture broke because of this. Again, what kind of logic is that? :rolleyes:

Other weird things in the house include: two doorbells, one chimes downstairs, one doesn't appear to chime at all (we can't locate the second doorbell anywhere in the house). The doorbell that actually works is painted over outside, so everyone tries to ring the non-existent though unpainted doorbell.

Kitchen has tons of counter space, but the sink is WAY off to one side, totally seperate from the rest of the kitchen.

Upstairs has a large balcony over the front porch. Very pretty. Only access to the porch was to climb out a window. Weird to begin with, but at some point, the owners put in a window ac unit, blocking all access to the upstairs porch.

[LexyLou]

LexyLou - We have a wireless phone, wireless monitor, and wireless internet and we have no interference with our wireless doorbell. Well, unless you count the fact that the POs did not hook it up right so it rang into the neighbors house and vice versa! :eek: That took about a week to figure out.


Really? You wouldn't happen to know what the frequency is on the wireless doorbell? That's funny that it rang at your neighbors house. Fun way to meet the neighbors.

[kindermom]

LexyLou - Not a clue. I know we have a 27 channel wireless baby monitor and a few of the channels bring in interference. My DH switched the setting after it did not work (or worked at the neighbors). It took a few tries to get the right frequency setting.

Did I mention in my PP (pages back) that the neighbors had a fountain/pond in the backyard? They used an INDOOR extension cord, buried under the dirt, to power the pump. Hmmm.

[AmandaLeigh]

I no longer live in my condo anymore, but the stupidest thing the previous owners did was to paint the tub blue. That right, blue, just like the clouds they painted on the wall. What would possess someone to paint their tub, especially blue.

[Jenyfer9]

Just discovered that one of the previous owners of our house put a built in cabinet in the kitchen over a vent. But the dumbest part is that they tried "closing off" the vent by taping (yes, TAPING) a piece of notebook paper over it. Yeah, that'll do the trick.

[Katyanne]

The PA's of our house did ALOT of remodeling and fix ups in the 3 yrs they lived in the home before they put it up for sale. So there is very little that we found wrong when they left.

We did find during inspection in the living room there is no dry wall behind the paneling on 2 of the 3 walls of the room. In the owners defense they were really suprised when we told them.

There's a beautiful mirror that's hung on a nail in our half bath and shortly after we moved in I decided the mirror was a little low and went to raise it and found a hole in the wall that the mirror was covering. So at this point the mirror stays where it is.

Oh yeah and we also have the same thing that a few other posters mentioned with the light switches.

But for a house that's over 30 yrs old those problems are pretty minimal I think. :)

Katie

[lady1297]

I was just browsing through and read this...

I dont know if that was a standard way of laying lino back then??

It may have been asbestos. Was it tile or sheet?


We have this on our back porch. We pulled up a bunch of tile after our dog ate part of it. The tar stuff is just nasty. We put a very large carpet down on it for now. Is it still dangerous if it is in the tarry for? I thought asbestos was only dangerous if you get it into the air by breaking tile and such? We have hardwood underneath this stuff and were going to look into getting it fixed, is it not worth that?

[SweetRed]

Well, the biggest one that we're finding out the hard way now is that when the previous owner added on to the back of the house, they didn't add any heat!!! While the rest of the house is a toasty 68-degrees, it will be 52 in the kitchen and dining room. When we bought, we didn't think twice that the vents he installed might not be heating vents but were actually intake vents. :mad: Right now, we make due with a space heater, but will need to do something long-term before we have kids.

The dining room is also the source of two other "Huh?" items. The dining room (which is supposed to be the den, but we decided otherwise when we moved in) is connected to the (truly) unheated mudroom which connects to the garage. The previous owner installed a sliding glass door between the dining room and the mudroom. I've only seen sliders used to the exterior, never to connect two rooms.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/kbon73/4Nimitz/Dining.jpg

Fortunately, some curtains and placing a large china cabinet in front of it minimizes the look of slider.

And the second thing, which I understand but is still weird, is that the bulkhead door to the basement is in the dining room floor:

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/kbon73/4Nimitz/DiningBulkhead.jpg

I know that legally he had to keep the door, and we did use it to move our couches into the finished basement, but it's still weird. Fortunately, the big, beautiful dining room set covers the door and people only see it when we point it out as the place where we hide our prisoners :p

[karabear0117]

Okay I can't help it. We bought our house in September and I am finally at the point where I can share without becoming livid again...

First off we bought a forclosure, we were well aware that there would be plenty of problems.

The Previous owners left their dog locked in the bathroom at some point and the poor thing chewed a hole clear though the door. Well once we started talking to the neighbors we found out they were leaving him in here all the time and only stopping by to give him water/food. So the carpets downstairs were totally ruined. I'm not so angry about having to replace a door and carpeting I'm just livid that someone would neglect an animal like that.

The kitchen floor was a good 3-4 in. step down from the dining and living rooms and it was painted two different shades of yellow and blue, and of course the ugly drop celing in there wasn't safe from the paint roller. :rolleyes:

The dining room was a dark maroon color with this horrible navy/purple fruit border. I thought we'd have a hell of a time getting the paint off the walls but lo-and-behold they had painted over wall paper that must not have gone all the way to the floor b/c about a foot up the paint was in a single layer and nearly impossible to scrape off.l

The living room was a pretty lilac color, at least about a third of the way up the walls. apparently they didn't believe in using a ladder.

Our smallest bedroom had horrible disney-baby wallpaper that was attached with thumb tacks. I went up there expecting to have to scrape and when i pulled at an obvious seam a whole sheet fell on my head. When we found a bad mud job in the shape of a door I sent DH up to check it out. The POs had sealed off the closet in our smallest guest room and left the rod in. Well we think there was something suspicious going on because the attic access upon closer inspections was just a hole cut in the drywall screwed into the top of the 2nd bedrooms closet. I'm thinking probably drugs. :confused:

We actually found two baskets of children's clothes in the basement that had been left behind. Not so horrible but at least it explained the stickers coving every surface in the house. I'm serious... we had princesses on the bathroom door. Sesame street in the 2nd bedroom which had those lovely glow-in-the-dark stars covering the ENTIRE ceiling. Oh and did I forget the football helmets with the name Dylan all over the outside of the door? Why would someone let their children do that to the house? I know I would have gotten it good if I had put stickers on anything except for paper.