What would you like to say to the previous owner of your house?

[ChristyMarie]

Right now I'd like to shake mine and ask them how they can be such cheap, lazy UAVs.

I just started prepping the walls in my son's room so I can paint. They've always looked a little off but I assumed it was a combo of cheap paint and a really bad paint job.

Nope. They PAINTED OVER WALLPAPER. And did a really poor job of it. They removed all the wallpaper in other rooms, why not this one?

I am SO irritated right now.

I've decided (after standing there swearing for about 5 minutes) to just paint over it again. The wallpaper is on there really well. It isn't going anywhere. I figure that in 5 years or so when my son wants an older themed room I'll have it ripped down, drywall repaired (replaced?) and redone. There's no way I can face stripping painted wallpaper right now plus the unknown drywall condition underneath it all.

ETA: found the spot behind the door where they tried to remove the wallpaper. Yeah, that room might end up being a complete re-do on the drywall when the day comes to tackle that project.

[Sharlla]

thanks for getting paint all over the beautiful hardwood floor throughout the house and installing cheap carpet. it was super fun pulling up
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[gealach]

I HATE wallpaper! So, you have my sympathies! At our last house, the owners had used caulk to stick down peeling-up wallpaper in the bathroom. Yeah, that was fun to remove.

I'm mostly over it now, but when we bought our home 2 years ago, the previous homeowners left the place filthy. My socks were black on the bottom after walking across the floors. In my world, you leave the house clean. You don't have to use a toothbrush on the corners or anything, but a thorough cleaning is in order At least, that is what we did for the house we were selling.

And, the kicker? We got a cursory "sorry we didn't get a chance to clean your house when we moved out. I have 2 kids and I needed to work on the place we are moving in to." I really didn't know what to say. I mean, I had hoped they just were clueless. But, no, they knew it was filthy and needed cleaning. I'm typically the type to smooth all things over and avoid conflict and try to make people feel good. But, I was just silent. I certainly wasn't going to tell them it was all okay.

[laohaire]

"You may think you're a handyman and electrician but you're not."

Half of our light switches work the opposite way (up is off, down is on).

A third of our electrical outlets just plain don't work.

Clearly this was a DIY job.

Then there were the woodworking projects. Awful. I'm not picky, I would be PROUD to build something with my own hands. But these were AWFUL. Think like huge, splintery driftwood not prepped or sanded or anything. This guy built a workbench (UGLY and unstable), a picnic table (I wouldn't even sit on it), 2 doghouses (felt sorry for those poor dogs) and a shed (which was so holey and leaky it was useless as a shed). We had to haul it all away. I'm huge on recycling but it wasn't even useful as scrap lumber. I wouldn't even burn it because I think they all had chemicals on them.

On the plus side, I would say "thanks for knocking down the 2 walls downstairs, and the laundry closet in the kitchen rocks." (This is a 1905 house and it's obvious that the work was done quite recently). I am quite sure they hired out for these 2 jobs because those were done right.

[VillageMom6]

Our house is 174 years old. It was built in 1836, a year before Michigan became a state.

I would thank the original owners for building such a sturdy house, especially since every board and nail had to be fashioned by hand. I love seeing the axe marks on the hand-hewn beams.

I'd like to thank all of the subsequent owners for taking care of the house, particularly for leaving the original wood floors, with their 18 inch wide planks in place.

I'd like to question the immediate previous owners (from 1980-2005) about their choices in wallpaper and bedroom carpet colors.

But other than that, I can't really complain!

[broodymama]

Whoever did some of the wiring in the family room was a UAV - what a crappy job!

Oh, and whenever the sun came in through the sliding glass door down there and warmed up the lovely brownish-orange shag carpet, it smells like baking dog.

Right before closing they "offered" (via our realtor) to leave the fold out couch down in the family room for us, to help us out. Ummm, no thanks, you can pay to haul that stinky thing to the dump yourself, thanks anyway.

Oh, and to whoever built the house in 1974 - I realize popcorn ceilings were common, I can deal with that. But gold sparkles/glitter in the popcorn ceiling? Really? WTH were you thinking?! I read somewhere that glitter is the herpes of craft supplies. Well, my ceilings have craft herpes.

[earthmama369]

Thank you for being such a crazy, unreasonable meanie (according to reports). It made just about anything we do totally ok with our neighbors! They're just happy to have someone here who isn't calling the cops on them all the time.

[mrsjtc]

Well, the previous owners of the house we just sold were my in-laws .......

plenty I could say there. ;-)

But first would be "why on God's green earth would you paint a gray and white checker board pattern on 100+ year old beautiful hardwood floors?!"

It took me weeks to scrub the paint off those floors.

[Theoretica]

Burnt orange wall to wall carpet WITH MATCHING SOLID BURN ORANGE DRAPES is NOT decor. It's hell. And yeah, they did it on purpose, the year before they sold the house.

[lynsage]

That was really awesome how you guys punched holes in the walls when you got evicted. It's totally our fault that you couldn't pay your mortgage and we are so happy to pay to repair the damage you did to our home that the bank you got screwed by doesn't have to give us a penny to fix.

All of that fantastic half-assed wiring and plumbing and nailing random, unfinished boards of the wrong length all over the place that you did? Oh man, it is SO rad to live with on a daily basis. We especially love the empty holes with wiring and outlets with no plates on them, and the basement window that you knocked the glass out of and filled in with foam in order to run wiring from the outside of the house into the basement, and the weird foil air ducts hanging out of the basement walls.

What is that shit you glued to the floor under the bright yellow carpet in the room off the laundry room? When we had to tear the Big Bird carpet out because the basement flooded after years of you letting tree roots grow in the drain and never having it Roto-Rootered, we were, and continue to be, completely unable to identify or remove whatever the heck that stuff that's glued to the floor is. Tar paper? Demon skin? Please tell us. PLEASE. Also? Bright yellow carpet in one room plus teal carpet in the next room equals pure awesomeness- please tell us who your decorating inspiration is so we can put a hit out on them.

Did you PAY your dog to pee all over the place? It's been two years since you lived here and we swear, when we pulled the carpet up we could still smell the dog odor.

Who likes pink so much that they couldn't bear to paint over the pink inside of the closet when they painted the rest of the bedroom white? And painted the front door mauve, and put in the hideous mauve carpet and bought a door with pink stained glass in the window? Seriously?

How did you get the crazy 70's country/nature border around the top of the wall over the basement stairwell? We would love to hear this because for the life of us we can't find a ladder or anything else that enables us to reach it to GET IT OFF.

Half of the fixtures in the bathroom are brass, half of them are stainless, and then you sponge-painted the walls with gold metallic paint. Were you going for a "metals of the world" theme? Or were you on acid?

Why does the basement kitchen that nobody was using have a garbage disposal in the sink, but the upstairs one, where the dishwasher is, doesn't? What were you guys DOING down there that you needed a garbage disposal? Wait, don't answer that.

[LCB]

In the future, when you wallpaper, please remove all screws and anchors BEFORE wallpapering over them. Because when you scraping the wallpaper off the wall, the scraper catches on those screws and tears chunks out of the drywall.

Gluing random bits of cork board to a wall does NOT enhance the jungle theme of the room. Also, if you want to install bamboo window shades that's fine, just make sure they're bamboo and not a bunch of plastic tubes strung together.

Patching drywall does NOT consist of covering the hole with duct tape and then painting over it.

When installing your own new baseboards, just guesstimating measurements doesn't work. It is NOT ok to leave a few inches uncovered here and there.

When moving out of a home, please take all your things with you and refrain from hiding things behind all the doors in the house because you're too lazy to pack them.

[treeoflife3]

Can popcorn ceilings be made updated and flat? Because if they can, I'm annoyed the previous owners didn't. They just bought the house to flip and if it were ME, that would be the first thing on the list!

I'd say thanks for STAINING the bathtub. I know they did it because it was supposedly new that they bought to make the bathroom nicer (they gutted it I guess) I like the tub but geesh, you could have put it in after other stuff because it looks like I never clean it! I have no clue how to get the faint orangish hue on the bottom gone.

also in keeping with a good flip... you couldn't have replaced the door? I mean, it isn't awful.. but yeah, its not PRETTY. I know the front door is now blocked by a sunroom (kind of awkward but the only way and we really like that we have one so whatever) but we'd still like it to be NICE.

you could have also painted the shed. and fixed the fence. yeah, that would have been nice.... not the end of the world though I guess.

otherwise, I'm pretty happy with our house. It is our first house and WAY nicer than we would have expected getting based on it being our first and based on what our price range was. It WAS at the very top of our range but it works so well for us. They did a good job with most everything else although it is obvious that it was the most basic flip they could possibly do.

We DO have the original hardwood flooring from the 70s when the house was built though.. they are still very nice!

[lucky_mia]

Why did you have so many phone jacks in one room? Bookies? Escort service?

[earthmama369]

Man, I'd love to hear what the people who move in here after us will have to say.

DS has sensory issues and for some time now has irrepressibly expressed that by peeling the paint off his door and writing on every wall surface he can reach. The kid is fast! I can hide every writing implement in the house and in the time it takes me to hang up on a telemarketer, he'll have unearthed something and decorated the hallway. Then DD decided to copy him and peeled off a hand-sized patch of paint -- and drywall -- in her room.

Then there's the office. We wanted something that would help us concentrate while we work. For dh and I, that means BRIGHT. Like, Nickelodeon slime green on the walls. And because we have a twisted sense of humor, that just required a purple trim. It's gloriously, deliberately hideous. They'll probably think we were on crack when we painted that.

[rhiOrion]

Mostly I'd say thanks for working so hard to update the house and make it look nice and updated.

But then I'd ask about the myriad of random flags in the crawl space, and the HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE "OPEN!" sign in the upstairs of the garage.

Somebody mentioned there used to be a flag maker or salesman or something on our road... I'm pretty sure we moved into his house.

[frugalmum]

Why, why, why, did you carefully remove every beautiful door in your antique home, saw off exactly three inches from the bottom, so that you could fit your ultra-plush shag rug on the floor over the GORGEOUS pine floors?

And why did you tile exactly one third of one room with nasty vinyl tiles (over the gorgeous pine floor) underneath the shag carpet?

And why did you replace every single window in the house except for three in the downstairs dining room?

And why did you choose green carpet for the upstairs, with pink wallpaper on the walls?

But, in the end, thank you for moving out and selling us your beautiful home! We got rid of the shag rug and the pink wallpaper is next .

[daytripper75]

Our current house is pretty nice but it's been around since 1964 and our children are the first to ever live here. That's kind of weird to me...

[Irishmommy]

Originally Posted by treeoflife3

Can popcorn ceilings be made updated and flat?

I believe a spray of vinegar/water and scraping removes it.

[clutterwarrior]

What were you thinking picking out those horrid tiles for every bathroom, in shades of purple and mustard? OK you were living in the 70's...guess I will forgive you! But seriously a purple toilet seat to match too?

Why did you pick cupboard doors for the kitchen that are the colour of a murky swamp?

And why cover real wooden sliding doors with a fake wood pattern, in a dull smog grey?

[clutterwarrior]

Haha Lynsage your post made me laugh....although it sounds like it isn't really a laughing matter! Lots of annoying things left behind by previous owners...