What would you like to say to the previous owner of your house? - Page 4

[accountclosed3]

no, i believe you, zinemama, and it would be a horrible, horrible job to have to do. in fact, i would pay someone else.

but seriously, you do wonder what that person was thinking.

[HeatherAtHome]

Thanks for this! I get not having money to do proper home repairs, but covering it all up with fake wood paneling doesn't actually FIX anything... or stabilize 2x4's full of dry rot! On the other hand, by not fixing anything we got an awesome price on the house. With a little (LOT!) DIY we'll have a great home.

But seriously, thanks so much for replacing the windows and putting in a new electrical panel to replace the old knob one on the front porch. We probably wouldn't have been able to buy the house without it. You know, insurance wise.

[lucyem]

When you landscape make sure the ground slopes away from the house so water does not rot the siding.

When you have fire pits and burn old lead painted wood, at the very least make sure to pick up all the old nails and other misc sharp metal objects.

When you spend money to renovate the kitchen it might be worth putting a little more money into insulation to keep the kitchen warm. Yes it looks good but this is northern New England. What you spend on insulation you will save in oil.

[blizzard_babe]

Originally Posted by HeatherAtHome

Thanks for this!

I'm TOTALLY following your blog now. You guys have ambition that I envy .

[Turquesa]

Originally Posted by HeatherAtHome

Thanks for this!

OK. I can't top that. I don't think anybody here can.

[HeatherAtHome]

If you liked that, try this. It was super neat because most of the newspaper articles had my birth date on them! Day, not year. They were from 1920. It's like the house was meant to be ours.

Anyways, we um... found out some more bad things with the addition. We're going to have to tear out the whole back wall. No patio door is big enough to fill in the rotten spot.

[Catherine12]

What's with all the mdf board? Especially as a shower surround?

What were you thinking using magenta paint all over the house?

A wire hanging from the ceiling with a lightbulb attached does not count as a light fixture.

More seriously, the biggest bone I have with the previous owners is that they claimed there was no lead paint in the house - and actually there was lead paint all over (5 windows, several doors, half the trim in the house, and even one of the ceilings). My son got lead poisoning and we spent thousands of dollars fixing the problem. Partly our fault for taking their word for it of course... but we'd never have bought this particular house if we had known (PSA: over 75% of houses built before 1970 have lead paint).

[BarefootScientist]

OMG some of these posts made me laugh so hard. I am really sorry you have to deal with this stuff, but some of it's pretty funny, sorry.

I am glad we are no longer homeowners at the present time (sold our house in June), but I would like to say to the previous owners...

"Maybe if you weren't smoking pot while trying to work the house would have made more SENSE!"

*We had a light switch that did, as far as we could tell, nothing. And it was installed upside down so it said NO instead of ON.

*They cut a hole in the foundation in the basement (half basement, bilevel) and dug out a secret room into the backyard. Then put the wood paneling back on. It was a pot growing room - they had like 12 outlets in there for growlights and a plywood ceiling. We did NOT know about this when we bought the house. Hey, maybe that's what that switch was for!

*I'm thinking they must have split a large bedroom into two smaller ones. Which was fine except they did not have the skills to do this. The wall was buckling and crooked.

*When my husband repaired drywall downstairs, he found fast food wrappers and a plastic cup BEHIND the drywall from a previous repair job. OMG this just boggles my mind...does that LOOK like the garbage?

*The kitchen was painted a nice off-white (although they did a crappy job), but behind the fridge it was BLUE and behind the oven it was PINK. Like bright pink. I could not figure this out. Also, they didn't paint the backs of the cabinets.

*There were random rocks all over the backyard. I think this one, though, is because at some point there was nice landscaping, and then the previous owners didn't take care of it at all so it kind of...went back to the land I guess you could say.

There were several other just crazy things we scratched our heads over. I can't think of them all right now. But the current owner will probably blame us for all of this! LOL

[ChristyMarie]

Originally Posted by BarefootScientist

*They cut a hole in the foundation in the basement (half basement, bilevel) and dug out a secret room into the backyard. Then put the wood paneling back on. It was a pot growing room - they had like 12 outlets in there for growlights and a plywood ceiling. We did NOT know about this when we bought the house. Hey, maybe that's what that switch was for!

LMAO!!!!!!

What was in front of the entrance to the secret room?

So...just plywood then...dirt?

[Pepper44]

Oh a secret room! Excellent!

Our house was flipped before we bought it but the realtor who flipped it did the crappiest job possible.

In the bathroom he stuck extremely cheap stick on tiles over top of old scary nasty linoleum. He didn't clean the linoleum first and the subfloor under is warped from age, so now all of those tiles are peeling up and it's horrific. We can't mop the floor because water goes between the peeling tiles, and at the warped spot the stick on tiles are cracked from being bent over the hump. Fun. We can't afford to get new subfloor, but we're saving up for new linoleum sheeting over it to at least get rid of those stick on tiles.

The yard...had to be bush hogged. Why would you let the yard go up so high it's taller than your head? Weeds, everywhere. Trees in odd places like a forest and we can't get rid of it. Looks horrible. I am very very close to using Round Up, but I'm not sure what it will do to my organic garden and chickens and ducks. *sigh* The weeds are THAT bad.

[BarefootScientist]

Originally Posted by ChristyMarie

LMAO!!!!!!

What was in front of the entrance to the secret room?

So...just plywood then...dirt?

Pretty much. There was plastic over the plywood and then a layer of rocks. This was right under our upper deck so it wouldn't get walked on that often.

In front of the entrance they just had some plywood with foam glued to it (I guess for insulation? Even though my husband found it because of a draft so I guess that didn't work either!) and then the wood paneling (our basement had wood paneling until about halfway up the wall and then drywall).

[Usually Curious]

*They cut a hole in the foundation in the basement (half basement, bilevel) and dug out a secret room into the backyard. Then put the wood paneling back on. It was a pot growing room - they had like 12 outlets in there for growlights and a plywood ceiling. We did NOT know about this when we bought the house. Hey, maybe that's what that switch was for!

that's awesome! i wish we had a secret room!

eta - not for pot growing. lol

[Usually Curious]

I would say, "What on earth were you thinking when you painted textured pain over the countertops in the kitchen and bath?"

That's not the least of it but all that I care to type right now.

Also, I'm pretty sure our realtor was in collusion w/our inspector because there is no way our house should have passed inspection. Sucks to be an out of state buyer; you're kind of at the mercy of your agent, yk?

[*jeanine*]

Great thread!

This house (our 4th) had no previous owners

But this thread is sure bringing back memories of houses #1 and 3. DH is an electrician, and after a trip up to the attic of #1, he could.not.sleep. The "electrical" was such a fire hazard. Open splices and other craziness. Needless to say, he fixed it as soon as he possibly could.
We bought that house in winter in snow country. We thought the lumps of snow in the backyard was shrubs or something. Nope. Tires. 13 of them. The rest of the "yard" was gravel.
The owner had a renter. When she sold, he was in jail ("but he's a really nice guy.") She left his stuff. We'd come home to find notes on our door from his friends/family asking when they can get it. Um....not my problem. I bought the house along with everything left in it. That includes 13 tires, and it includes his stuff. (None of it was good stuff - the owner probably took everything of value.)
When we finished the basement, we tore down the wood paneling, and there were beer cans shoved in behind it.
I'm sure there's more....

I did like the laundry chute, and the crown molding the previous owner put in the family room.

#3 was not too bad -- yellow painted walls, horrid wallpaper, old, dirty (even after being professionally cleaned) ugly carpeting, and one of those mystery light switches (pretty sad when an electrician can't even figure out what it's supposed to do.)

[treeoflife3]

this all makes me remember a friend from high school who's mom went on a painting spree. She painted EVERYTHING. Floors, walls, cabinets... everything. right over whatever was there.

The worst of it was that she painted over the linoleum in the kitchen.. and made it this gross muddy brown.

[Lil'M]

Thank you for leaving a broken, rusted out grill on the side of the house for us to remove. Thanks also for throwing trash all over the side yard. They'd been doing it so long that some of it was buried. I found light bulbs, hoses, rusted out paint brushes, and other random weird things buried shallowly under the ground.

[journeymom]

Yup, stuff partly buried in the yard. We had ivy torn out of the back yard because it was harboring rats. We found lots of broken glass, some beer cans and beer bottles, bottle caps, golf balls, a plastic spoon and a broken dish. I'm thinking years ago mommy and daddy went away for the weekend and the teenagers had a raucous party. Comments from older neighbors here confirm that this was the party house in the neighborhood.

[redvlagrl]

Wow. This is going to be long.

OK, a-hole. I know why you did all these things - because you are a cheap bastard and were flipping the (1925) house, but it's really inconvenient for us.

why did you:

paint over wallpaper but try to fill in some of the places where it lifted using indestructible something so it's not even so easy to remove?

Try and build in the original claw foot tub with some sort of half-arsed ledge using offcut scraps of timber and used tiles?

Paint (yes paint) the tub rather than have it professionally refinished - it started peeling the moment we moved in

While making the downstairs more open, why did you cut off a heating run to our upstairs bathroom and bedroom?

Not plumb in the dishwasher - just have it kind of placed in the hole as decoration! We had to pay to get plumbing installed!! #*&^$@(*

Only put one coat of varnish on the floors after doing a terrible DIY job that is uneven and has kind of cuts/marks everywhere. You also took off so much floor doing so that we would have to replace the floor if we wanted to refinish.

paint the entire house a horrible shade of beige and only do one coat with the cheapest paint that absorbs oily stains. When your baby has explosive BM poop it stains the walls permanently.

Cut down many, many trees and shrubs but not remove any stumps (we have removed about 20 of these, but there are about 30 to go).

Rig up some sort of half arsed heating duct using dryer pipe.

include a washer that didn't have a plug on the end of the cable.

Paint all the sink drains in metallic paint (so they looked newer? didn't fool us) so now no plugs fit in properly

so, so much more, but WHY, WHY, WHY did you have to buy the frigging house *next door* so we had to deal with you BURNING asphalt tiles and other building refuse in the backyard and inside the house and then come and threaten me (in a quiet kind of way) when I called the fire dept on you (I denied it, of couse).

Ugh. thanks for the opportunity to vent!

[Pepper44]

UGH we have that same cheap flat beige paint that absorbs stains and it looks horrid. Almost nothing wipes off of it no matter what you scrub it with. DD sneezed while eating spaghetti. Dogs had mud on their tails and wagged into the walls. A little lotion splattered in the bathroom. None of it will come off!!

[StephandOwen]

Thanks to all who are contributing to this thread! I've gotten many laughs. LOL!

However.....

Originally Posted by redvlagrl

When your baby has explosive BM poop it stains the walls permanently.

I have to ask... your baby seriously poops so hard it gets on the walls?? I have a 6 year old. I was a nanny for years. I worked in a daycare (mostly infant room) for years. I've seen many many many explosive baby poops. Not one has gotten on walls. Cribs, swings, changing tables, floors, me, etc all have fallen victim to the explosive baby poop. But never a wall. I am intrigued. LOL!