What would you like to say to the previous owner of your house? - Page 2

[Purple*Lotus]

Originally Posted by LCB

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

Sorry, but that made me laugh so hard.

[beanma]

purple toilet seat!! Love it! I toured a house for sale once that had a bathroom that looked like the fixtures were made out of Irish Spring soap — all marbly green.

I would like to know why the previous owners of our house thought it would be fun to cover the asbestos vinyl kitchen floor with another asbestos vinyl kitchen floor and then plywood and then white glazed warm brown ceramic tile with brown grout, so that every time the house settled (which it has done a lot) or a pot got dropped, the white glaze on the tile broke and you could see the brown underneath. All gone now!

Popcorn ceilings, too, which incidentally also often have asbestos. You should test before you scrape. We just had several rooms of ours drywalled over.

We had pink shag carpet in one room with the carpet underlayment upside down so that it crinkled plastically every time you walked on it. That got gone early on.

We had lovely painted over wallpaper, too. I found out, after we had removed most of it, that drywall guys are really good at taking that down and mudding it smooth, too. Think I'll hire that job out next time for sure.

[MamaFern]

wow.. i wouldn't even know where to begin.. "your home reno skills are horrible.. you should audition for canada's worst handyman" we have pretty much re-done everything ever done in this house since we moved in 2 months ago.. the drywall is almost as bad as the PP mentioned.. my dp's drywall skills aren't great, but they are waaay better than whoever did the previous work..
i have had to just decide to love the oddness and accept that it adds character to the house

[Turquesa]

Is it OK to address the builders instead of the previous owners?

Dear Builders....

Did you enjoy all of the fast food and cigarettes, whose remains you left strewn all over the crawl space? And what on earth possessed you to go down there for lunch?

Exactly how many corners did you decide to cut? You're quite the bargain hunters, finding the cheapest possible models of AC, furnace, toilets, cabinets, carpeting...what other surprises await?

[MamaFern]

Originally Posted by Red Sonja

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.

oh, so funny.. and horrible..

we have popcorn ceilings as well which i hate. even worse when the previous owners took out the utility room to make the living room larger (which is great by the way) well.. the patch job you did on the popcorn ceiling looks..very bad and like you were trying to ice a cake while half asleep or very drunk or both.. i was considering completely covering over the ceiling, or scraping the stuff off, but in the end we didn't have the time or money to do either. now that the living room looks good, nice rich wall colours ect..and my nice things in it it doesn't POP so much

[Turquesa]

Originally Posted by Red Sonja

I read somewhere that glitter is the herpes of craft supplies. Well, my ceilings have craft herpes.

[BCFD]

Originally Posted by Sharlla

thanks for getting paint all over the beautiful hardwood floor throughout the house and installing cheap carpet. it was super fun pulling up
Posted via Mobile Device

Ditto. The previous owner totally flipped this house when his father passed away. He was a painter and sprayed primer all over the hardwood floors in the office. Ripping up the now disgusting dirty carpet is something we HAVE to do, but I want to rid myself of carpet in this room. Otherwise, he did a great job.....even including crown molding!

[BCFD]

Originally Posted by Red Sonja

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.

I had to laugh at this, too. My mom's house had blue glitter in the popcorn ceiling of her bathroom. I'll never forget the expression on my wife's face when she saw that. She was like, "What the?"

[treeoflife3]

Originally Posted by beanma

Popcorn ceilings, too, which incidentally also often have asbestos. You should test before you scrape. We just had several rooms of ours drywalled over.

WHAT?!?!

holy shit... we can't afford to fix our ENTIRE HOUSE OF CEILINGS if we have asbestos... holy buckets I'm freaking out now... we've been here a year... lawsie

[nmb]

To the previous owners -- check the attic! Found a big bag of stuff animals and a box of memory stuff --including lots of photos. Kept them for a couple years, never figured out how to get ahold of you...

To the builders -- ok, I understand that everyone makes mistakes. But when you go to nail two boards together, and realize you've mismeasured something, and the boards are 2 - 3 inches from touching...what in the world made you think it was OK to get a bigger nail and nail those two boards together anyway? Would it really have been that much harder to just re-cut those couple boards??

[34me]

We scraped all our popcorn ceiling off because they had asbestos in them. As a homeowner in our state you can do it yourself but need to do a lot of research on disposal. If the house was built pre-1980s there is probably asbestos in the drywall mud too.

Thank you previous owners for leaving all 20 mummified snakes in the crawlspace. These have been very happily carried off at various times by three happy children to show and tell. Teachers hate 'em kids love 'em

[VroomieMama]

Originally Posted by Turquesa

Is it OK to address the builders instead of the previous owners?

Dear Builders....

Exactly how many corners did you decide to cut? You're quite the bargain hunters, finding the cheapest possible models of AC, furnace, toilets, cabinets, carpeting...what other surprises await?

EXACTLY OUR PROBLEM TOO! Our cheap appliances are falling apart too! Past July 3rd was our 3rd year living here and we are happy that we're moving out soon!

[iris777888]

I know all white tile for the bathroom looks good, but did you give any thought to how hard that would be to keep clean? It's no wonder you made everyone take their shoes off to step foot in the place. A single step on that tile and it's filthy.

How did you choose the paint colors? Was it just whatever happened to be on clearance that day? And would it have been too much trouble to put something like Kilz on underneath since you knew the guy that lived here was a heavy, heavy smoker? Did you know that the first time it got humid it would look like the walls were dripping blood?

Why didn't you anchor the retaining wall in some fashion instead of just making it look nice and sturdy?

[cristeen]

You need to be banned from the nail aisle of every hardware store in existence. The dozens of 3 inch nails we pulled from the walls - what on earth did you think they were holding up?

Oh, and sandblasting the wood (paneling, doors, hutch) in the dining room and then painting over it - you need to be shot. The beautiful original Victorian wood paneling, solid wood doors, trim and built in hutch destroyed.

And when you replaced the floor furnace - why didn't you have the floor repaired instead of just sticking a random piece of wood in the old hole and then cutting a new one to the new size? What is that all about?

I don't even want to discuss what you were thinking with that rickety old porch. Not a screw in sight, nails that have to be pounded down yearly, a staircase that had to be rebuilt because no 2 stringers were the same height, and railings that are so unsafe that my crawler has never been in the backyard. I won't even carry him out there.

Oh, and the bathroom... why oh why would you install a window in the shower below the level of the shower head? Have you never heard of this thing called mold?

And insulation... ever heard of it? How about permits? Cause according to the permit office, the addition didn't have permits. And according to the winter temps in the master bedroom, it doesn't have insulation. 2 more lovely things we have to repair.

Seriously, I could go on. But ultimately, thank you for being such a horrible DIYer - without you we never could have gotten such a great deal on an old Victorian. We just have to accept that it needs a ton of work.

[LaughingHyena]

It's hard to know where to start. When the agent was showing us round he said the place would be a lot better after a bottle or two of bleach.

There were evidently a lot of bits of wiring which did not meet building regulations so they just chopped the plugs off and left them laying on the floor!

Why did you not tell us about the fish in the pond?

Why did you not tile the floor all the way up to the bath, there is about an inch of floor boards right next to the bath. Looks like they just couldn't be bothered to cut the last few tiles.

Why did you not use drop cloths when painting the celings.

[litanyagainstfear]

I'm a renter, but...

Why, previous renters, did you put what I assume were cigarettes down ALL OVER the kitchen floor and the bathroom sink? Also, why did you set fire to the linoleum in the very center of the kitchen floor? Or were you forced to set a really hot pan down there because you had your cigarettes all over the counters?

[rhiOrion]

Am I the only one who things a glittery ceiling sounds fun?

Not the asbestos, though.

I remember when I was little jumping on the bed to scrape my hand across the ceiling to try to knock off the popcorn. A bit scary to think about.

[JamieCatheryn]

I'd like to say

Why the heck did you over-glue and over-tighten everything?! The instructions on these plumbing fixtures say hand tighten. Also, prime before you put up wallpaper! Better yet, DON'T PUT UP WALLPAPER.

You forgot your Christmas ornaments with your kids' pictures on them. How about a forwarding address?

Also, why are we getting your new phone bills here and why are you dodging any attempt to get in touch about that?

[lynsage]

Originally Posted by cristeen

You need to be banned from the nail aisle of every hardware store in existence.

[journeymom]

Dear previous owner,

The dual phone line phone attached to the wall next to the toilet are goofy. Were you expecting to have an emergency while sitting on the pot?

Thanks for making the house look beautiful before we moved in, I appreciate it. But while putting decorative gravel EVERYWHERE in the yard made the yard look neat and tidy for a while, it turned out to be a huge pain in the tookus to remove. It doesn't belong absolutely everywhere, and it makes it difficult to feed and mulch the rose bushes you obviously put a lot of care into. Shovel by shovel I'm removing that stuff but it's taken me years.

Originally Posted by LCB

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

Originally Posted by rhiOrion

Am I the only one who things a glittery ceiling sounds fun?

Not the asbestos, though.

I remember when I was little jumping on the bed to scrape my hand across the ceiling to try to knock off the popcorn. A bit scary to think about.

Me too! Bits of popcorn on the bed. We had sparkles in the popcorn in the living room where I grew up. I thought it was tres cool.

In this part of California if your house was built before 1978 the popcorn has asbestos in it. Our house was built in 1977. One room has a high vaulted ceiling, and probably hundreds of yards of popcorn. We've been told to just leave it there, the act of removing the popcorn would be riskier than leaving it.