General Chat

When you first moved in. Did the previous owners/ tenants leave it decent or was it a filthy hovel that rerquired tons of work to make it habitable??

It was very very clean. I knew the woman who sold to us, we bought it off her before it went on the market. It wasn't to our taste though. So completely changed it. catherine xx

well i thought i had brought a great old house, which needed some work done on it, you know the usual type of work where you make it YOUR home. instead, once i moved in, i discovered that i had actually brought a TOILET!!! yes the house was filthy in every aspect of the word. and the tenants before me for got to tell me about the lodgers!! MICE!!!! and that was just the start.

hello my darling, nice to see you posting. you usually get a clue when visiting the house for viewing, if it's really nice, and the people are nice ( they offer you a cup of tea ) then there's a good chance they will leave the house in a nice state. bryan.

When we moved i double extra extra cleaned my old house - which left me exhausted (isnt moving house stressful!) when i got to this one it was 'minging' to use my kids word of the week!- it very nearly tipped me over the edge - i was heartbroken as to how anyone could be so thoughtless. I'm staying put now! Jenx

Hi Bendy - was just thinking last night hadn't seen you for a while :O)) Mine had been rented out - and totally not cared for - gardens neither - and they left all sorts of rubbish - heck of a lot of work involved but fortunately I had just commenced 6 months garden leaving pending redundancy :O)))

Ours was brand new .had had a builders clean but needed more cos there was still dusty debris between the floorboards upstairs that needed to be got rid of before carpets could be laid. had to damp it down cos one you started sweeping the dust was choking. dowstairs is built on a concrete base and had been Marley Floor tiled. these need several washes before i could add a sealer. Felt I had spent all my time cleaning because i did a thoro spring clean of the maisonette we moved out of. Shirley

Mine too was utterly spotless - the neighbours told me later that she was a CleanFreak! Lucky me! But I redecorated throughout, much to my neighbour's disgust - 'she only just did that, you know'. That's as maybe, but my taste doesnt run to potato print borders and multi-stripe wallpapers. OC

It was brand new, so pretty much spotless. We've spent the last 3 years getting it to the filthy hovel stage... lol

I discovered that the coloured frosted glass of the front porch was really colourless once it met a Flash-soaked cloth, likewise the white paint emerged from a darker hue too. We couldn't understand all the tiny holes on one wall, but a chat with adjoining neighbours revealed that they were made in clusters of 3 each evening as the previous owners played darts. .... should have guessed really by the non-nicotine square shape on the browned wall. 'We'll leave you the fiited carpet and the dishwasher' Lovely. The carpet backing,- foam, fell off in crumbs when I tried to clean under it and the dish washer was so congealed with grease that it made a quick exit too. I'm one of the world's worst when it comes to housework but I cannot be faulted on the condition I leave a place ready for the next occupant. Too many years of Army March-Outs trained me well. Gwyn

We had no illusions when we bought this as we knew there was a lot to do. The people we bought from were lovely, but untidy and not particularly houseproud! I had to do some fairly severe cleaning in bathroom and round the cooker but it wasn't too bad.

Sheila... sounds like you bought our last house then ? lol

Oh dear, our house is on the market and I never offer a cup of tea to the people who view. We moved into our house 20yrs ago after it was occupied by my FIL. It hadn't been modernised or redecorated since before WW11! We had great fun modernising it and are only selling because six bedrooms and three bathrooms are too much of a pain to maintain with last daughter leaving home this summer. Of course, it is in pristine condition now, never was when the kids were small!

Hello Wendy, nice to see you on the board again. the house was clean we moved into in april, but it needed decorating to our taste, the garden is having a complete overhaul, it looks like a ploughed feild and a builders yard at the moment, but that is down to my hubby,and i haven't a clue to what he is doing. How was your new home Wendy?

My first home was an absolute disgrace the day we moved in...it was horrendous.....now we were pretty skint to start with but what does a bit of soap and water cost.....?? It was also painted a delightful battleship grey with emerald green glossed skirting boards....that was the living room!!......The loo was also battleship grey with cerise gloss skirting boards and window frame...to match the grey loo I suppose!! The bathroom was meant to be a peachy colour but was more minging nicotine yellow actually.....why in the bathroom??? Bedroom was presentable but I did eventually decorate it....and same with kitchen :-) The parting shot from the tennants who had had their home sold from under them was 'If you find a brown lump like and oxo cube gona bring it round to us...we lost it in the move'.......WHAT?????? It was promptly hoovered up and binned!!! Our present house we moved into 4 yrs ago and even though it had belonged to an old lady it was perfectly ok to start with and only as we got settled have we done bits & pieces.......like changed the bathroom suite this year from a dusky pink to a nice white one and fitted new kitchen 2yrs ago...but have now got an extension planned so the kitchen is being moved there and few more units being added....but that's all we've really needed to do because we wanted to do it. RDA.x.

Our new house was owned by a builder and his 'lady.' He appears to have gone to the Bodgitt & Scarper school of building and his wife appears to have had a chemical imbalance, ie a total lack of any cleaning chemicals in the house whatsoever. Thanks to their slovenly ways and his England Footballer approach (great build up but complete inability to finish) we got the house for £30,000 less than it is actually worth. It's costing £10,000 to put it all straight which means a nice saving of £20,000. It's a fabulous house in a wondeful location so I am thrilled to bits that every other viewer took one look and walked away.

The house we live in now was filthy when we viewed, there was even mud on the ceiling. Carpets were more like worn out blankets and there was an awful lot of decorating to be done (like the whole house - inside and out). Garden was a messy jungle. Because of this it was going really cheap - only reason we could afford a house in this neighbourhood. Have now finished all repair work and decorating - and guess what? We're thinking of moving again - we must be nuts!!!!!

Our bungalow was filthy - and I mean FILTHY. The grease on the kitchen walls had to be scraped off, and the toilet - well, say no more !! There were 3 layers of wallpaper everywhere and you needed a safari-suit to walk in the garden. We had to re-wire, replace windows, central-heating system, also no worktops in kitchen. The couple who owned it previously were not elderley either !! Stella

Ours was particularly bad. BUT the old man had died, and he had been his wifes carer for years prior to that. Then he got too old to be able to look after himself properly. I was not well enough to help my OH to clean it bfore we moved. Our son was moving at the same time and working through the day, so OH had only help from our friend. As our strength goes, I understand the poor old man wose house we took over. Deanna X

Just thought - perhaps the folk who previously had our bungalow had a computer !! Stella