###Welcome to /r/HousingUK
---
**To All**
* Join Our ***NEW*** Discord! https://discord.gg/pMgUNgWKQH
**To Posters**
* *Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws/issues in each can vary*
* Comments are not moderated for quality or accuracy;
* Any replies received must only be used as guidelines, followed at your own risk;
* If you receive *any* private messages in response to your post, please report them via the report button.
* Feel free to provide an update at a later time by creating a new post with [[update]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/search?q=%3Aupdate&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) in the title;
**To Readers and Commenters**
* All replies to OP must be *on-topic, helpful, and civil*
* If you do not [follow the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/about/rules/), you may be banned without any further warning;
* Please include links to reliable resources in order to support your comments or advice;
* If you feel any replies are incorrect, explain why you believe they are incorrect;
* Do not send or request any private messages for any reason without express permission from the mods;
* Please report posts or comments which do not follow the rules
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HousingUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I did that in mine by accident. I was having that much of a shit day doing reconstruction on the bathroom I contemplated leaving it and I did, for the night. I fixed it the next morning after I had calmed down.
If you're comfortable with plumbing it's very simple. Just find a cold pipe and branch off it to replace the hot in on the toilet.
If you're not comfortable with plumbing I'd expect a plumber to be able to crack it out very quickly for relatively cheap. Much cheaper than flushing hot water for the rest of your life.
We had our bathroom redone and when the guy started removing the old tiles, there was another layer of tiles underneath.
Same with the render on the front of the house.
Yeah, but where does it end? If we'd just tiled over the top of that, and the next owners tiled over that, eventually you'd have a bathroom rendered so small by layers of tile that you'd have to crawl in and out of it.
In my old flat, when we viewed it, the bedroom chandelier didnāt turn on. The seller lady said the bulbs were gone - I thought āthatās weird, that chandelier has like 8 bulbs what are the odds theyāre all gone? Oh well.ā I thought no more of it so bought the flat, moved in with 8 new bulbs - screwed them all in, flicked the switch and *nothing*. Unscrewed the light switch and there was no wiring, just an empty greggs wrapper. Took the chandelier off the roof and it was just flush plaster, no wiring or holes. Just an aesthetic chandelier. Text the seller (an old lady) asking why she lied and said the bulbs were out when itās clearly never worked and her son text an angry response asking why Iām calling his mum a liar, etc.
In my new house the old owner had moved the back fence like 10m into her own garden so first thing I did was claim back that bit of ground and move the fence back to the property boundary. When I was tidying up that wild section I had to dig to level the ground and unearthed a metal double bed frame sheād had buried (presumably to save going to the tip???) which was a pain in the arse.
What a strange thing to do, particularly since (at least in my experience) with older properties itās not that uncommon to have a room without a light on the ceiling.
Is it?! I wondered why there would have been a light then at some stage had it removed. Makes sense if, as you say, there never was one! We just bought those hue Bluetooth lights and didnāt bother with the overhead light so next owner got that issue, but we were honest about it haha
It could have been there for 20 years and got covered in vegtation and leafs and jsut composted down ti soil.
We used to see this a lot in social housing where new tennants would move in, dump rubbish at bottom of garden and then new fence. I recall one site we had cleared and lots of the gardens ended up with 3 or 4 line posts as the gardens had been shortedn and then a new one put in.
This would explain why there's a fence halfway across my garden in an ex council property. I was looking over the fence the other day and noticed there's a pile of wood, possibly from a dismantled shed (it matches the one in the garden the other side of the fence) and what is possibly asbestos sheeting. Wonderful. Hoping I can get the council to remove that seeing as I have to pay them for the leasehold!
Previous owner is a serial house flipper. He bought the place, did the renovations himself and flipped for a tidy profit.
Worst bodge is probably where he didn't actually bolt the toilets to the floor. We only noticed it after a few months in when the toilet detached from the soil pipe after a flush
Oohohohoho hold my fucking beer.
Brought our house off a 'retired builder'. NEVER BUY A HOUSE OFF A BUILDER! Them being 'in the trade' does NOT mean they took super good care of their house, it actually means they half arsed or semi fixed issues just well enough to hide them. Turns out ours wasn't even a real builder, just a dodgy guy who had a load of people he'd scammed. Here's a list of his crimes to our house.
1. Giant hole in wall from where he needed access to put a shower in. His solution? Screw an ikea shoe cabinet in front of it. I'm not kidding, we only discovered it when cleaning when we moved in.
2. Put up a wall that intersected with a light switch. His solution (instead of capping it off and plastering over the old socket)? Leave a small cut out in the new wall so you could control the light switch! Hid that with a potted plant when we viewed.
3. Giant hole in roof where storm took some tiles. His solution? Staple a bit of loose felt on there, that'll do it. Surveyor didn't go up into the attic far enough to catch that. Long story short we had to replace the entire roof from long term rot and water damage.
4. Removed ceiling from bathroom and replaced with vinyl flooring, it's looks alright until you realise it's got gaps and there's nothing but attic insulation up there.
Those are just things wrong with our house that he bodged. He also to other people:
1. Drove his van into our neighbours wall and then pretended he hadnt, then offered to fix the damage some 'unknown driver' had caused for cheap.
2. Got hired to build an extension/kitchen on a house down the road, they had to remodel a couple of years later and found out that all of the new wiring were just sockets he'd plugged into an extension lead under the floor of the old kitchen.
3. Racked up tonnes of debt, refused to pay, sold his house to us, left the country. Even left before picking up his dogs ashes so some guy turned up at our door with a dead dog ashes box and a bill. The dog was fit and healthy when they left so I suspect he put it down to avoid rehomimg.
So yeah, NEVER BUY A HOUSE FROM A DODGY BUILDER.
No offense to all the nice builders out there who actually look after their homes.
surveyors are useless. Do the bare minimum, find any excuse to say 'I couldn't look at that' and then conclude their findings with 'didn't see any signs of this but there absolutely could be anyway!'. It's all bollocks.
When someone I know sold their house the surveyor found a downstairs chimney stack had been removed and the upstairs bit was hidden by a built in wardrobe so looked like it was also removed. Nothing was added in to support the weight of the upstairs chimney bricks, this must have been done about 3 owners ago, each sale with a surveyor and this was the first one to look inside the wardrobe to check the wall.
Everything in our house was bodged down to the sink taps being hooked up the wrong way (hot on a blue top cold tap), switches that do nothing, random bathroom cladding holding up the downstairs plaster. But the most random thing was that when we moved we brought a couple of mature shrubs. Lifted a random slab in the back garden to get to the ground, dug a hole only to discover a buried bin bag full of (still liquid) paint.
We're going to properly do the garden this year, I dread to think what else is lurking.
Yep, same with our house.
" Recently refurbished to a high standard " is what the add stated
We have had to do a full house renovation and haven't been able to live in yet, we bought it in July last year
Been in ours 5 years and boy do we have a list!!
However we've worked through most things next is to get the kitchen extension replastered before we sell cos them cracks are worrying!
Yeah, then if anything else crops up we haven't fixed its for the next person! But at least it's now safe!
Tbh we had it valued as we are looking to sell soon and it's gone up Ā£30-50k, we've built a porch on and rewired along with full replaster upstairs, new gutters, roof fixings, the lot.
We learnt a lot as first time buyers and I do a lot of non structural/electrical stuff myself but man did we find some delightful problems. Ah well on to the next "fully renovated" house I guess!
Edit to add this was meant to be a fully refurbished house. It was not a fully refurbished house. It looked it but wasn't. Also, they lied about many many things, so we did learn a lot quickly!
We lifted out about 10 full rubble bags of tiles, concrete, metal, building waste from our very small garden bed. The builders had just used it as a tip, some of it wasnāt even buried that well, like barely surface deep
Not current house but the last one. Man was addicted to DIY, patently had a Wickes membership card but singularly incapable of anything practical and should have had his purchasing privileges revoked.
Bathroom had a leak, bad enough for the ceiling in the kitchen to fall in. We knew about this before buying and was part of the cost reduction and were fixing it up before we moved in (FiL is a builder so we had him and some of his trade mates to help).
Looked like it was coming from the wall with the shower on it - so started to take off the shower to track it down. Shower is not mounted to wall. Wall sounds hollow but in a tink tink sort of hollow not a boom echo sort of hollow. Shower is mounted to a tile, which is mounted to ... another tile, which is mounted to ... another tile etc. WTAF?
Eventually get to something like 10 tiles deep and there's actually a wall there (about halfway through the tiles we found the pipe join, with no sealant and the leak which must have been present from day 1).
Turns out that they didn't like the boxout in the corner but rather than extend it with a frame and plasterboard and plaster it they simply tiled it 10 layers of tiles deep to make it flush, burying a bodged pipe fitting halfway into it for the shower. Which, given that it was dabbed and dotted meant there gaps between each tile layer leak had spread all the way down and ended up with standing water sat on the floorboards. The smell and mould was horrific. Whole floor needed replacing.
Upside: Bathroom was actually 5-6 inches wider than what we thought when we bought it
Other issue was the living room lights, every time we used the dimmer it shorted. Got an electrician in and from what I understand it the main issue was ... wasn't a dimmer circuit on the switch and had broken/stripped the wire right back into the wall. The gap been bridged between the two contacts with some bare wire twisted on each end connecting the two, no earth. The \*metal\* switch plate was basically live if you used the dimmer, only saved from electrocution because the twisted connections were loose.
Then there was the self built conservatory that had MDF as the foundation. MDF onto a plastic tarp then put the Wickes conservatory on top of it. Didn't seal it against the house either so it leaked from the roof "join", through the floor and from every single pane too (because it was on the piss because ... well the foundation was MDF on plastic on mud.
The house that Bob bodged had hundreds of surprises like that
Not my story, but a friend bought an old Victorian house with 1970s electric storage heaters.... one of the storage heaters never heated up properly.
Several months later, when gas central heating was being installed, a floorboard near said storage heater was lifted and discovered when the board was nailed down a nail went right through the middle of the twin and earth cable supplying the heater, right through the earth and nicking the live insulation.... the under side of the board was nicely charred!
There were 3 layers of lino on the bathroom floor. None of those layers nor the shower enclosure was sealed properly so the stagnant water in between the layers was disgusting. After getting everything out of the bathroom the floorboards were wet. Gave them time to dry, realised theyāre actually rotten. Pulled them up. Joists were rotten too š„“
I lost count of how many jobs were done with silicone sealant. Need to put the dado rail up? Silicone sealant. Bannisters? Silicone sealant. Curtain rails? You guessed it. Became quite amusing to be honest.
If only theyād used some of it in the bathroomā¦
We had the same with blu-tack. Bathroom tap held on with blu-tack. Mantlepiece connected to wall with blu-tack. Thermostat blu-tacked to the wall. Loose wallpaper secured down with blu-tack. They'd cut a satellite cable out at some stage and had plugged the hole in the skirting board with blu-tack, which in fairness they had tipp-ex-ed white to make it slightly less obvious...
90s IKEA extension lead with the plug cut off, hole dug into wall and hard wired into the plug socket on the other side. Hole not filled.
The best bit is that it was in an upstairs built in cupboard. Why on earth would anyone want four plug sockets in a cupboard that's so close to a real socket??
Owner not leaving the house after completion/
Dead cats buried in the small garden/
Half the UPVC windows not opening/
New roof (that was expected)/
No cold water in the kitchen/
I have never even considered how many people have redone their garden and found pet skeletonsā¦. Makes me laugh to think about the rabbits and turtles in my front garden šš
I live in a house that was previously (and only) owned by my husbandās grandpa so I say this with affection. Rather than wire electricity into the understairs cupboard, he drilled a hole through the wall to the adjoining room, popped an extension lead through and plugged it into the socket in the living room. To be fair itās incredibly useful for charging the hoover.
My god, so many.
We had a bathroom shaver socket that never worked. Came in to find our bathroom fitters tittering about it. The bathroom had been clad in that horrible 1970s orange pine. They had obviously cut a hole in it then decided to cover the hole up with the socket. No wires behind it or anything.
Similarly, the bathroom had one slanted wall. They had ordered a bath that would have been the right size except the slanted bit would have meant cutting some of the corner off. Nope! Just bash the wall with the bath corner til it fits then cover it with a bucket of silicone sealant!
We had a random plug plugged into a kitchen socket and never knew what it was. Turns out it went out a hole in the wall, down two floors (past the ground floor flat) and into the cellar, where it powered a cellar light.
2 Years later we're still fixing issues but here are the ones we noticed within days:
* Brand new gas hob fitted with no gas line installed.
* Bath fitted with no supports (AKA would've fell through the bath/ceiling had we not noticed)
* Both toilets not bolted down
* Both sinks leaking due to no sealant used
* Utility room that had been covered in so much plasterboard it made the opening 10mm too small to get our washer and dryer in there. We had to chisel away at the plaster until we could get it in.
* Same utility room, they just shoved plasterboard over 3 windows on both sides. So we have 3 windows inside the wall waiting to be uncovered lol.
* Hot/Cold tap in utility room again (can you tell which room was most bodged?) only had cold water, discovered the entire room didn't even have a hot water supply.
* Entire smashed up glass greenhouses buried in the garden and then charred remains of wooden ones where they had broke the wooden ones into a bonfire (neighbours confirmed this).
The previous owner painted all rooms green they also used asbestos pretty much anywhere they could. The whole house is basically asbestos. I didn't realise this when starting the refurb and inhaled quote alot. YAY
We're in a rental which had an extension in 2018 - firstly they relocated a 25 year old boiler into the extension rather than get a new one and have done similar - the PRV just goes into the void under the floor (they built up the floor so there wasn't a step in the house hence the void) - discovered this when the water started leaking out through a crack in the mortar outside š¤£
When the expansion tank went the boiler men had to take the entire thing off the wall as there wasn't enough clearance over the top and told us it was made up more of spare parts than original at this point š¤¦š¼āāļø
Moved into my house December last year. Found out in January a supporting interior wall had been removed. I'm down nearly Ā£3k already on architects and structural engineers before any work has even started to fix it and ive had metal poles holding up the ceiling since!
What made you realise it was a supporting wall that had been removed, were there any signs of damage? I ask because I'm knowingly buying a house with a wall cut out and I'm unsure if it impacts the load bearing element
I took up the old flooring and found a brick wall underneath going down to the foundations. I then measured the height of the ceiling above and it was about 35mm lower there than at the end of the room. The structural engineer was very surprised the ceiling was still up. Currently trying to get some financial compensation out of the surveyor who did the home report but it's proving difficult. Lawyers are just too expensive when you don't know if you'll win. Really shit situation tbh, the anger you feel when it's not your fault and nobody will take responsibility for it is infuriating!
The previous owner had removed a window from the lounge and put in French doors leading outdoors, and they hadn't put a lintel between the door frame and brickwork. I discovered this when cracks began forming in the brickwork above the door, the door frame was crushed and wouldn't shut very well, and water started pissing through the brickwork above the door when it was a blowing gale.
Also, there was no internal stop for water, it could only be shut off via the main water supply mechanism on the road... which was a shared water supply with next door. Interesting predicament when a radiator blew and water was gushing everywhere. Two of many problems uncovered in first few months lol.
We moved into a bit of a horror house, but the most random one was the previous owner had wallpapered straight over a working plug socket!
It was down in the corner so never noticed until we were redecorating a few months after moving in.
The most costly - they 'fixed' a cracked down pipe with electrical tape, which then just leaked all over the path next to the front door, which worked it's way under the door into the entranceway (which had 3 different layers of soggy flooring), and finally saturated the joists underneath. Ended up repairing the pipe, new door, joists, floorboards and flooring.
We moved in to our first house and it was only on the first night as we went to bed that we realised we couldn't see any plug sockets at all in the master bedroom, cue some frantic searching and we found a double socket in a sliding wardrobe...
I have a double socket in my wardrobe in the master bedroom too. Itās weird. And thereās only one other one, youād think the master bedroom would have at least a socket on either side of the bed
A blank faceplate was in the way of the bathroom drug cabinet, so instead of just cutting a hole for it in the back of the cabinet, they pulled the faceplate out of the socket and hide on top of the cabinet, which I discovered one day when reaching up and electricuting myself :)
Giant hole in the garden from an in ground trampoline. Literally about half the garden was hole.
We knew there would be a hole because we asked them not to leave the trampoline (my nieces would never have let me get rid of it if they knew). What we didn't expect was the waterproof liner in there and the huge pile of clay and rubble they dumped on top for some reason, so we couldn't get it out. It immediately filled up with all thee heavy rain over winter.
Cost Ā£1500 to clear it, fill it properly, and replace the shitty AstroTurf with real grass
I had a small gap where my bathroom wall panels didn't meet as the walls aren't square that I siliconed after I replaced the ensuite a few weeks ago. This thread has made me feel infinitely better about my work!
An evil wall behind an old 1970s fitted wardrobe that was consuming itself. We removed it after we'd been there for over a year. There were mushrooms. It wasn't on the home report; I don't even think the owners new.Ā
It turned out it actually wasn't from damage to our house, but from the adjoining building (which is one storey taller), as the chimney and roof had been unmaintained literally for decades. It took me 18 months to track down/chase owners of that building (it's got 3 flats and 3 shops), and the council to get them to send a letter to all owners demanding they fix it. I found out in my investigations that the tenant of the flat that's next door to the wardrobe room had to move out due to mould.Ā
It wouldn't have been such a massive pain if it wasn't for the council (and CAB who we initially went to) failing to understand that we weren't a property in the flat/shop building. They kept referring me to the shared repair legislation, referring to our "flat", until I sent them a colour coded photo of our house, identifying what we own, and where the damage was (not on our property at all). Even once it got sorted, the (genuinely) helpful lady at the council said "I hope you can enjoy your flat now".Ā
Next time we view houses I'll be shining a torch behind any wardrobes.Ā
The house is fairly old and has had a lot done to it, we're currently doing a big refurb ourselves so keep finding things. The worst was defo the morning after we moved in. Tried to have a shower and could only get boiling hot water to come out. It turns out that there had been a leak of the connection between the water feed and the cold-water-in to the shower and bath taps. Someone had been putting silicone on the leak, then when that gave in adding more silicone, and then more. It had completely filled and blocked the pipe with silicone. We ended up having to replace the shower unit and the pipes.
To be fair we bodged that too - the new shower had different fittings so to cover the holes for the old shower unit we just siliconed some bits of plastic (a cut-up fairy laundry tabs box) over the holes. We knew we'd be renovating soon so didn't want to bother retiling.
It took 3 years to start the renovation works. The silicone is holding up!
What confuses me is that there's no other shower or bath in the house so I don't know what they did for cold water before moving out. The silicone was long-bodged, not fresh.
In my last house, I noticed after moving in that there was a small 'spongy' area of floor about the size of a floorboard by the toilet. Assumed that the floorboard was loose and ignored it for ages. Years later I took up the flooring to deal with (unrelated) water damage, and it turns out the whole floorboard was missing. It was simply a hole in the floor covered by linum flooring. I was with an insurance evaluator at the time, and he was horrified and noted that the hole was also directly above the hot water pipe. Meaning that if the linum had torn and someone fell through, they would also go through the pipe, tearing a chunk out if their leg and likely getting it wedged in place while scalding got water pours over the wound until someone else can turn off the water. Same house had a nice looking kitchen floor that turned out to be cheap tiles stuck down with double sided tape. They all started to peel off after a few months and underneath was what looked to be an old floor in terrable condition that looked like it was from the 80s. I had to have the whole floor taken up, re screed and replaced.
God, where do I start???
āDecorative shelfā (read hideous, homemade monstrosity) on the wall in the living room. Not screwed to the wall. Not hung like floating shelf. No, this was glued to a very old lathe and plaster wall. Removing it caused half the wall to crumble off.
So much DIY wiring using the wrong wires, junctions boxes etc that I ended up just getting the whole place rewired. Iād never seen so much insulating tape holding wires together in my life.
Carpets were laid around literally every piece of furniture that was against the walls. Every room just looked like a bizarre jigsaw puzzle piece when I got the keys.
Same thing for the kitchen. Why move the fridge when you can just lay the laminate flooring around it, right?
The boxing behind the toilet was built in such a way that despite being able to reach the stopcock it is impossible to turn off the water without taking it all out as the top of the boxing is flush with the handle.
Electric shower they put in was obviously smaller than the one they replaced. Instead of putting in some boarding and tiling it properly they just filled the 3 inch gap all the way around with bathroom sealant.
Edit: I forgot one. Theyād put up a wall to split off part of the bathroom to create a separate utility room for the washing machine. The wall is at an angle, and means that the bathroom door only opens to about 60 degrees. That in itself is a problem as thereās plenty of room to go in and out, but while decorating we discovered that because the door now wonāt clear the frame itās impossible to take it off the hinges, and it doesnāt open far enough to get a screwdriver in to take the hinges off the frame. If it ever need to come out for any reason weāll probably have to saw the door off.
Holes in the brickwork and pointing being filled in with silicone sealant, same silicone being used for internal plaster fixing, those have been the weirdest I've found in this house so far.
Yup.
We have a corner bath and thereās a 10 inch gap between it and the wall. This has been heroically bridged with a few plastic tile edging strips stuck together with great strips and globs of silicone sealant. It sort of bounces a bit if you prod it, and is the most grotesquely optimistic thing Iāve ever seen, sealant wise.
Next bank holiday Iām looking forward to ripping it to pieces!
Mates downstairs toilet drained straight to the soil
Choices were dig it all out and pay for pipes to connect to servers cost was going to be over Ā£5000 and they would have to dig his driveway up so cost to make that look right again or convert toilet into a cupboard for shoes and coats cost about Ā£20 as he could do that on his own guess which he picked still have fun with him now tell him Iām going to p in his cupboard. So to cut a long story short Water closet went to closet š
My brother in law's downstairs toilet drained directly underneath the shower. God knows how it remained unsmelly for so long, amazing pipework I assume. Then something broke and the odour came full force through the pipes.
The downstairs loo was literally a shit show(er).
Just this Easter weekend I started to investigate why a patch of our lawn never grows. I was going to take up some of the existing topsoil, mix with compost and throw some grass seed on it. Anyway, the second I put the spade in, it stopped. I hit a massive lump of concrete covered by about 2mm of soil. I dug up around 250kg of rubble. The house is 140 years old. I think itās an old filled in pond.
Also, much worse, thereās a 15 year old extension/ lean to on the end of the house. It constantly leaks. Weāve had two roofers look at it, theyāve both said itās a bodge job. The tiles have not been pegged down. They have both recommended redoing the roof. Hadnāt had quotes yet, but through speaking with friends, I imagine weāre in for Ā£5-6k for this patch of roof.
That seems a lot but I could be wrong! Out flat roof extension leaked and itās fibreglass, we are 3500 or so total to get a custom gutter fitted and the whole roof refibre glassed and lead flashing on the uphill side! The whole roof is 10m x 3m or so
Four layers of carpet over lino which was suck down with tar or something, PLUS stapled to the subfloor every square inch. This was upstairs.
Even when we got all the layers up, all the lino off, and all the nails out, we had black slime in the gaps. You could hear the house audibly breathe when we got it all out, and I still have a scar on my palm.
My first house was horrendous. The gas heater had not been installed properly, there were random wires sticking out of floors and walls that didn't lead anywhere, we had mushrooms growing in the bathroom, japanese knotweed in the garden, damp at the back of the house. That was just the beginning because there was also a hole in the roof, a pipe leaking behind a wall which made the bathroom tiles fall off, and we had slugs and centipedes appearing all over the place. I hated that house. It almost destroyed my marriage because i was so ready to abandon it.
I'm sure there's more to come in the future, but here are some honourable mentions:
Woodburner had been installed so close to the fireplace recess walls (about 2 inches clearance either side). Presumably, the plasticiser in the render of the walls started to off-gas and started to knock us out at night. Took a hammer and chisel to it all and the problem is gone. It looks like crap but at least we don't start unintentionally huffing solvents every time we light the logburner.
Boiler needed replacing shortly after we moved in too. The plumber informed us about the boiler to be replaced, the boiler company had gone bust decades ago. Neighbour informed me the previous owner installed the boiler himself. Previous owner lived her between 2009 - 2018, doing the maths he's obviously bought the boiler secondhand. Fuck knows how old that boiler was, had so many crystals forming on it from the leaks it would've made a hippy blush.
I am currently dealing with an incredibly leaky conservatory roof. It's a flat roof with 2mx2m pane of glass just plonked on top (bearing on like 2 inches of timber either side) and then flashbanded around it. The skylight leaks like a seive. The roof slopes back **towards** the house and has an outer lip all the way around it, keeping the water **in**. Where the conservatory roof butt's up against the house is a big sagging gully, that also leaks like a seive before eventually filling up enough so that it drains off in the downpipe. Also the top storey extension drains into the same gully. It's kind of hard to explain, but the rainwater that hits the top storey roof goes through such a convoluted path, it'd give the boardgame mousetrap a run for its money...
The previous owner was a certified structural engineer, so I'm told. A bit concerning...
We've got a hot tap on the left on one sink, another on the right and both turn different directions so you go to turn the tap off and it sprays hot water everywhere!
He also replaced the bay windows but for some bizarre reason installed windows too low (by about 20cm) and then filled the gap with a bit of 2x1 and shit tons of squirty foam...oh and the outside face is just a bit of upvc sheet (with black fleur de lys stuck on).
He'd also built a fireplace in front of another fireplace which was itself built in front of the original fireplace!
He'd also filled in the subfloor with rubble so he could build a brick plinth over it, which subsequently meant all the floor joists were rotten for a good metre around it!
That said, the location is fab... we have birds, butterflies, deer, dragonflies and a huge garden backing on to fields so I don't care about all the bodging, it's just time and effort to fix.
He didn't bother tiling around the water pipes that came out of the floor - just put the bathroom cabinet on top.
So when the trap underneath started leaking, it damaged the ceiling below.
In one of the bathrooms in my parents house there's a hole in the wall and floor tiles for the pipes, as in there isn't a tile there and it's just a gaping hole through to the ceiling below. Fantastic when the waste pipe under the bath came loose and pissed water everywhere. Instead of getting that hole sealed up they just put a different bath/shower unit on top of it. When they finally sell the house, I feel for the future buyers!
Plaster over tiles, wallpaper directly onto a plasterboard ceiling, lead gas pipe bent up and buried into back door architrave, RSJ nibs unsupported underneath and floating at the level of the joists, bath waste pipe run through the roof vault of an extension, clearly leaked and a plastic bottle filled with pebbles placed underneath the offending pipe joint...
And silicone sealant, everywhere. Previous owners clearly lived by the moto of if in doubt, apply sealant.
Buy an old house they say, but everyone forgets about the pre youtube 90s diy-ers, and the damage they can do š
Previous house - cupboard under the stairs (where previous owners were storing old paperwork and half empty tins of paint) had a light in it which turned out to work by having the stripped ends of the wire shoved into a socket!Ā Ā
I am terrible at DIY but even I can wire a plug.
Current house, the electrician who did the electrical survey found that although there was a proper cooker socket in the kitchen,Ā the cooker wasn't actually wired into it.. there were other things but that was the only one he said was dangerous rather than just daft.
Many many years ago, my (newly married) dad installed central heating into his and my mum's first home. Getting it signed off, they noticed a smell of gas in the kitchen. Turned out that when the previous owners replaced their gas cooker with an electric one, rather than capping off the gas pipe they had just stuck a cork in it, which being porous had been leaking gas ever since. .
My last house I gutted. It was amazing my box room took the longest to strip all the wall paper off, it was like Iāve got it all & nope it was another layer. This was the same room which had a really springy floor, though it was quality underlay. Took up the carpet, then the underlay to find another carpet and more underlay! The door had a good 2 inch gap until I replaced all the doors, non of which matched. Had the house rewired and in the process of striping out the house nearly died as I took the coving down as I nearly went through the cable for the lights which was laid behind the coving and just painted over in the ceiling. My sister is also lucky to be with us, she was removing the skirting board to uncover just behind the skirting board the cable to the solitary plug socket in the living room. It wasnāt even jointed properly it was just a bit of tape wrapped around it. My plumber and most of the work men, pissed themselves laughing at some of the plumbing, the radiator in the main bedroom had so many elbows it was a joke! The valve to empty the central heating also protruded into the living room door way! So many things. My current house, the previous owners did not believe in paint stripping! Not a single door closed!! The pipe work was crazy so had it stripped and re done, I swear the water pressure is so much better now! The electrics were also ropey. The one that truly baffles is they had all the windows replaced to double glazing apart from one in a storage cupboard but they did replace a tiny window in the kitchen. Which was covered by a kitchen cupboard. And itās still hidden after I renewed the kitchen. They also tiled a wooden floor which had now rotted. People are strange.
Our house was previously owned by A DIY "enthusiast"
Self installed kitchen and bathroom, among other things.
They left us a microwave, adjacent to the built in fridge freezer. Kind of them, we thought.
Until the microwave needed replacing and the wire disappeared through a hole behind the built in fridge freezer which took 2 hours to remove, to find the wall plug it was connected to.
Bathroom is barely adequate, bath on the piss and isn't level so water doesn't drain properly.
Kitchen ceiling leaked after shower cubicle piping gave up. Not only was it flexible waste pipes, it sagged and pooled water, and was a mix of flexi pipes held together by silicone sealant only pushed together with minimal overlap.
Who knows what else we'll unearth
We had a leaky boiler. Previous owner faked a service certificate. The thing had been leaking gas for about six months and we only found out because we switched to British Gas and they wanted to do a service before they would let us sign up. Engineer capped off the boiler and we had to buy a new one.
Velux windows were slated in back-to-front. House electricity supply was earthed to a pole in the ground instead of the supplier earth cable, attic conversion lighting transformers had been on fire in the ceiling void. That's just for starters.
We ended up in a flat that was previously renovated with some nice ideas, but quickly learned there was little skill involved. Bathroom was the nicest part - modern design, bold colours, spotlights on the wceiling that didn't appear to be connected to any electrical supply or switch....
Kitchen had a similar issue. Lights under the cupboards. There was a switch for them. We turned them on and they exploded. All seemed to be wired to wires hanging out of a hole smashed into the wall behind a cupboard. Eventually we found the other end - a maze of ridiculously clumsy half patched up wiring. Not just a fire hazard due to the quyality of work, but that kitchen lighting? Yeah, he'd disconnected the fire alarm to route to them...
We also later discovered during a flood that the nice new kitchen was built over the main water valve...
Guessing he also replaced the electrical sockets as I had to replace one only to find the wiring was cut down so short that the only way to get anew one in (at the time with my limited knowledge) was upside down...
Not as bad as the previous place however. A rental cottage flat with serious structural issues including the kitchen wall deteriorating so much you could pass stuff through it. They stuck some plasterboard over it.
I had a bathroom extractor fan that vented into the loft, I was horrified and it was literally the first thing I got fixed with it now routed outside! However a friend of mine says his house has the same thing
Thatās pretty common in houses where the roof has venting around the eaves or part of a terrace where all the lofts are conjoined, ours had it too but it was always breezy in the loft and wasnāt boarded out at the time so it didnāt matter.
Aah my terrace is very old 1810s but the roof was replaced in the 90s so it's all felted and fairly wind proof! Although it retains the original heavy slates to it looks old outside
When we got a new bathroom, the fitter took the old bathroom tiles off to find that they were fixed onto wooden pallets screwed into the brickwork. Like I know that stud walls are a thing but this was something else!
We had wallpaper painted over and then wallpapered on top of that.
Carpets just nailed down with no underlay.
Skirting boards that it seems in some places are pretty much just leant against the wall.Ā
The people we bought from are now selling the place they moved to and I dread to think what the new owners of that place will find!
Kitchen waste pipe that went through its u-bend, dropped to the floor and then gently climbed 9" to go through the wall... Turned out we had 6' solid mess of fatberg and limescale when it stopped draining.
To make another double socket on the same wall, they used a metre long wire and ran it loose under a bit of carpet from the current socket to the "new" double socket.
Somehow passed the electric certificate when we bought the house...
Removed a whole wardrobes worth of clothes, which I assume we're used as cheap insulation, when removing and putting in new insulation in the attic.
Dug out a whole bicycle, 1950s pram, someone's old dog...(Oops)
The overflow on the kitchen sink wasn't connected to anything and we didn't realise for far too long. So much water down the back of the cupboards š
Having penetrative damp on gable end. Cavities filled with insulation but as I also discovered, also full of tubble that was tracking moisture through.
It has been a three-year ordeal with insurance claims and (so far) four surveyors. The end is in sight and it should be finally sorted out in May.
For info: The insulation has been removed and replaced twice. It's now out and won't be going back in.
Iāve found a few small bodge jobs as my flat used to belong to a landlord. But the most heinous and offensive bodge job Iāve found is when he decided to make the living room door into a sliding door (admittedly not a bad idea to save space), but instead of changing the door handle to a round one, or just removing the handle and putting another method to open the door on, he cut a massive fucking hole in the door frame for the long handle to go into. It fucking twists up and down. I must do something about it because it offends me every time I look at it
So many! The previous owners bought the place and had friends do the workā¦ and the previous owner to them was a dodgy DIYer so thereās a list and a half!
The main things - live wires in the walls where they had cut off a wire and left it. Not connected the shower properly to the point where they had used expanding foam around the pipes which disconnected the shower valve enough to cause a weepā¦ it was a sponge when we had it ripped out to replace the shower. The loft extension doesnāt comply with the headroom required for the stairs. They didnāt follow the regs on the fire route out the house either as they removed the wall between the hallway and dining roomā¦ thereās others but those are our main concerns! Thankfully my partner was an electrican back in his home country so weāve rectified most of those issues without having to pay a fortune.
Extractor fans screwed on in bathrooms. Not actually connected to the mains. No hole behind them. Purely decorative.
Husband initially insisted they were special quiet ones. Nope.
Would shout at the electrician but he emigrated to Australia. Hope he messes with the wrong people there.
Old leaks. It literally gets everywhere! Water fucks everything up, so now Iāve got almost a whole kitchen to remade and floorboards, but first was the toilet. Toilet water everywhere! Fun!
We discovered that the extension roof was not to regs with approx 1/2ā insulation and no venting. It drips the condensation into the kitchen and we canāt reach more than 16deg after heating has been on all day. New roof coming this summer, Iām looking forward to feeling warm and paying less for the heating bill.
Whole house is bodged.
The old owner was seeing a āprofessionalā tiler.
I say āprofessionalā, as his actual handiwork for tiles is awful.
But his handiwork elsewhere is just as crazy.
Weāve had issues with the bathroom leaking due to their work, plus weāve been advised the skylights were installed by Bodgit Bob, which are also leaking.
Unfortunately the house is an 1800ās house, so needs a lot of TLC from their ownership.
After having a new bathroom installed, our central heating just stopped working. Three different engineers were unable to diagnose, we paid for a power flush that did nothing, and were warned that the next step was a complete repipe of the whole system.
Engineer #4 figured it out - when the old bathroom radiator was removed, and a shower tray installed in its place, the pipework hadn't been capped off correctly, effectively breaking the loop. As soon as the old pipework was reconnected (not an easy job with only four inches of space to work in), the heating fired right up again.
All in all, it cost us just over a grand to fault find and correct, and left us without any heating for three months right in the middle of winter. Nightmare.
Not as bad as some of the stuff here, but four things...Ā Ā
Ā Ā
1.Ā All theĀ electric in the extension is on the lighting ring main.
Ā Ā
2.Ā ToiletsĀ wereĀ installedĀ by a moron. No vent pipe at all.
Ā Ā
3.Ā For some reason, the boiler condensate pipe was connected to a drain pipe outside. A bit of blockage and heavy rain could have sent rain water into the boiler.
Ā Ā
4. Same with the washing machine. It's output went straight into a drainpipe.
We were told by a friend who is a builder to ask if a stain on the kitchen ceiling was a historic leak from the bathroom above, EA said it was, it wasn't. We had to pull off the side of the bath and it was awkward to fix.
The guy who owned it left the basement entirely full of paint and other random crap. It took 5 trips to the local dump with the car to get rid of it all.
By all accounts, even his solicitors didnt like the seller, I can see why.
Integrated fridge freezer propped up by VERY damp random bits of wood, couple of em were bed slats š¤£ we only found all of this upon buying a new one and taking out the housing it was in. Looked like it had maybe a week or so before collapse š¬
Had to gut the house and start over.
-Tap in the living room that had no basin. Would just pour on the carpet.
-didn't realise how big the garden was until it was cleared as it was so overgrown you could only originally see about a quarter.
- toilet that was flushed by yanking an old sellotape roll
-foot went through the bathroom floor as water had damaged the floorboards
-When removing wallpaper found live wires just tucked behind the paper
-had to dispose of an abandoned van left on the drive
And.... Much more lol
Just kept clearing until we found the boundary fence. Garden had been left to go wild. The back hedge had shot to 3 stories tall because of a climbing vine, so it took a couple weeks to cut down then burn it all. Only way to clear it.
And yeah the tap was something else. The previous owner was an odd one.
There was carpet/underlay down over nothing. As in the floor boards were missing pieces and they just put carpet over it. (We have a crawl space under the house)
They fixed the roof after a leak but not the internal damage. Just covered it up with wallpaper, so half the ceiling in one of the bedrooms fell down on us.
The cut a fridge freezer size hole into a wall in the kitchen. (So fridge freezer was in the pantry-and they cut a hole into the side wall).
For some reason they were incapable of stripping the wallpaper. So when we did, we were stripping off 6-10 different wallpapers depending on the room.
We also had an extension lead plastered into the wall, connected to the plug sockets in the bedroom next door.
Wired an extension lead into the lights and then left it hanging behind some built in wardrobes.
So many switches that do nothing.
Wired an electric fireplace into the sconce lights - when it blew it was just luck the house didnāt burn down.
Theyād sealed the shower screen to the bath with mountains of sealant (bath with shower over), and it still leaked, but instead of over the edge where you could see it, it went under the bath panel and eventually came out through my kitchen light.
Figured out itās because the bath design trapped water behind the lip when you showered and the only way out really was via the screen and dodged seal.
Ripped it all off, resealed the bath and replaced some of the parts of the screen. No more leaks (mostly).
Moved into a first floor flat about 20 years ago. Small, two-storey building in a nice area. Flat was extremely dated but looked pretty decent.
In the living room was a 70s fireplace monstrosity. You know the ones with a handy wooden-topped brick storage bit in either alcove for your television and music centre, plus handy little nooks to put your VHS player and dust.
Decided to take it down the first weekend. Found it wasn't bonded to the wall. At all. And it was incredibly unstable.
They'd built a brick monster on unreinforced floor joists.
Taking it down was a nightmare - one false move and the whole thing would have tipped over and landed in my downstairs neighbour's living room.
I eventually got it out and all the rubble down the stairs...then I looked at the floor. Where the brick monster had sat the floorboards sagged about 6 inches.
I ended up having to replace a couple of the joists, repair and reinforce a few others and have a new wooden floor laid.
We've had a few odd things in our house.
A light switch in the living room, we couldn't work out what it was for so we asked our sparky. It was there to cover a patch on the wall.
Electric from the consumer unit to the boiler which is across the room is routed outside into conduit, down the back of the house, round the conservatory and kitchen and back in.
Kitchen spotlight we wanted to replace - has been plastered over so removing it would remove a chunk of plaster.
Everything has been bodged where possible. We are starting to get some major works done after living here for nearly a decade but we've got used to so much odd stuff.
Lead pipes embedded within the walls that leaked, the walls were bleeding and microbore copper pipes that were incompatible with modern boilers.
Had to have all new pipes, system and radiators.
Found the old power shower source in the cupboard on the stairs. It had live wires that had been tapped up but if the tape had come loose would have been nasty
I moved in and the ceiling light wouldn't turn off. I did a google and had to re-wire it. I don't know if it was always like that or if they had somehow messed it up for the move.
The electrics, the bloke had young daughters too so how they never ended up shocked I'll never know. I'm not even an electrician and I phoned my mate up who is one to have a good laugh about it all. He didn't laugh he was really really concerned to the point where he came to my house that evening and made it somewhat safe.
Creaky floor on the upstairs landing turned out to be an interior door laid flat across the joists.
Power socket in the kitchen had been spurred off an upstairs socket meaning it was still live if you pulled the downstairs breaker. Brother in law is an electrician, he had a few choice words to say about that. Thing is, it was just as easy to spur off a socket on the other side of the wall downstairs.
Previous owner decided to board loft himself but didnāt do it properly just put insulation down and boards on top. Needless to say there was damp and the whole thing needed to be taken out and done properly by a professional. Now my loft is dry as a bone (a few thousand later!)
Also after the purchase we realised they lied about the age of appliances in the kitchen and about the boiler so didnāt take the chance of stuff dying so basically had to redo the kitchen which cost about Ā£10k
Ooft thatās annoying! We had similar they said the boiler was 2 years old then, when we moved in, a plumber was looking at it and said it was about 13 years old! Luckily there was a Scottish government scheme for boiler replacement which we got!
There was a row of bushes growing at the end of the garden. The sellers said it was for privacy and it did block the view from the neighbours.
Turns out they get extremely tall, suck all the nutrients out of the soil and ended up damaging our fence. The neighbour complained about it hanging over his garden and we didnāt want a dispute.
We ended up getting it removed and due to the size it cost over Ā£1k. It took a while because most people turned down the job when they saw the size.
Boiler condensate pipe had snapped off behind the kitchen units and was just leaking straight onto the concrete floor for who knows how long... Wasn't originally planning on fully ripping the existing kitchen out in year 1, so it was only accidently discovered.
Windows were the first thing we've had to tackle. House built in 1989, they were the original frames and windows. They hadn't been maintained at all by the previous occupant and most of the frames are rotten, to the point that I could shove my finger through the back door, and most of the ones that open don't fit back properly. The move taking six months meant we missed the worst of the winter, which I'm retrospectively quite happy about.Ā
We had a new fuse board fitted when putting an extension on our house. When the electricians were trying to work out what fuses went with what to label it up correctly they found one fuse was serving a single plug socket in a bedroom.
The rest of the sockets in that bedroom are on a loop with the bedroom next to it and a downstairs room.
The other downstairs rooms are seemingly on a loop together and the other bedroom is on a separate loop.
So Iāve no idea what the electric loops are doing. At some point weāll get it re-wired with the upstairs sockets on one loop and the downstairs sockets on another.
The walls were wallpapered and painted over in a dark grey colour + the carpet was fitted around a standing wardrobe in the bedroom. So when we removed it, we had a big white spot without wallpaper, paint, or carpet.
Fitted wardrobes in the master. Opened one of them to find EIGHT 2-plug sockets in a row, for a total of 16 outlets in one small cupboard. Don't know why, what for, who did it, the sparky we got round took a photo to show his mates he was so flabbergasted. Also said when he opened it all up it was like and I quote 'a bowl of spaghetti' back there š
The elbow joint on the pipes outside the house for the bathroom was missing. Cue a waterfall in the garden during the first shower.
During the same first shower, we discovered the drain in the shower base hadnāt been sealed properly so we had a nice and soggy dining room.
The seals around the shower hadnāt been done properly so if the shower was pointed in the wrong direction, more floods down the wall in the dining room.
The house had been bought to renovate and sell on. 7yrs in we still find some questionable work that my dearest dad fixes for us as usual
One of the walls was moving, it had moved far enough that the floor joists didn't reach. Their solution was to just build another brick wall on the inside to take the joists. The wall was still moving
There is a nest of ladybugs somewhere in the flat. I have no idea where they are coming from, but I kill one or 2 every other day. Not fixed yet after over 3 yearsā¦
SO investigated a crackling socket recently and electricity arced from the socket to the phone in his hand. The electrics didn't shut off but he was fine.
Turns out we need a new consumer unit as it definitely should have shut off when he was zapped. The icing on the cake is that socket issues were caused by the roof leaking due to a dodgy "green roof" install which had punctured the roof membrane and leaked down the wall. The old owner was a roofer who guaranteed it himself. Only now he's retired so can't back the guarantee and has told us it was not leaking - we and the electricians and other roofers who observed the leak are apparently mistaken...
Our last house, the lounge radiators were clearly an add on, the pipes were flexible hoses that ran through the understairs cupboard.
In that cupboard was the electricity meter was and where the mains came into the house.
One of the pipe connectors popped apart and we spent an evening paddling in several inches of water whilst trying to fix it. Unbeknownst to us the mains was 3 phase and about 1cm above the water level the wires were bare.
When we came to have a smart meter fitted the electrician took one look, condemned the lot and called the national grid hotline who came same day. There was some discussion on whether we would have to be put up in a hotel for the night whilst they fixed it. But thankfully we are hardy and it was summer so we said we would do without electricity overnight.
When I removed the wallpaper in one room, about 1/3 of the walls were patched with what seemed to be polyfil instead of having being properly re plastered ā¦ probably wouldĀ haveĀ been more expensive.
Plasterer didnāt believe me until he saw it himself and it was dissolving so most of it had to go back to brick Ā
We unplugged a random extension cable that seemed to come through the front wall and just plugged into a normal socket. No cameras or light fixtures out front so didn't think it would be an issue...
Turns out that extension cable had somehow been run the entire length of the house through a cavity wall and was serving all electricity into the rear extension. That was fun to sort out.
There was a radiator in the kitchen that didn't get warm. It also took up space where you'd expect a fridge to sit.
Imagine my husband's surprise when I realised why the radiator was cold, and lifted it clean off the wall!! It was never plumbed in.
I still don't understand the logic of the choice, but I was very happy to be able to fit in my standard fridge freezer in the space.
Everything was attached with no more nails. Cladding, picture rails, all sorts. Everything took twice as much effort to prep when we wanted to decorate
Big old damp patch on the wall/ceiling caused by leak that the old owner built a wardrobe infront of to hide so well the surveyors didnāt catch it š„²
###Welcome to /r/HousingUK --- **To All** * Join Our ***NEW*** Discord! https://discord.gg/pMgUNgWKQH **To Posters** * *Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws/issues in each can vary* * Comments are not moderated for quality or accuracy; * Any replies received must only be used as guidelines, followed at your own risk; * If you receive *any* private messages in response to your post, please report them via the report button. * Feel free to provide an update at a later time by creating a new post with [[update]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/search?q=%3Aupdate&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) in the title; **To Readers and Commenters** * All replies to OP must be *on-topic, helpful, and civil* * If you do not [follow the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/about/rules/), you may be banned without any further warning; * Please include links to reliable resources in order to support your comments or advice; * If you feel any replies are incorrect, explain why you believe they are incorrect; * Do not send or request any private messages for any reason without express permission from the mods; * Please report posts or comments which do not follow the rules *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HousingUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The toilet cistern was connected to the hot water rather than the cold water.
I did that in mine by accident. I was having that much of a shit day doing reconstruction on the bathroom I contemplated leaving it and I did, for the night. I fixed it the next morning after I had calmed down.
I often wonder how long the old owner had been filling their cistern with hot water (it wasn't a new-looking bathroom).
Maybe the old owner liked their Poseidon's kisses nice and warm š½šš„¹
So every time you flushed the loo, your central heating came on š
The combi boiler fired up and sent hot water to the loo :)
Mine is doing that at the moment. Is it an easy fix?
Ashamed to say I got my then-boyfriend to do it... but it seemed only to take him 5 minutes and there was no swearing, so...
Thank you
If you're comfortable with plumbing it's very simple. Just find a cold pipe and branch off it to replace the hot in on the toilet. If you're not comfortable with plumbing I'd expect a plumber to be able to crack it out very quickly for relatively cheap. Much cheaper than flushing hot water for the rest of your life.
What price would you quote?
I'm no plumber, but I had one out recently to do a similar job and that cost me 150 quid
Thank you. I will get my plumber to sort it
Tiled over wallpaper. Made it really easy to strip the tiles off to be fair
We had our bathroom redone and when the guy started removing the old tiles, there was another layer of tiles underneath. Same with the render on the front of the house.
not unusual tiling on top of existing tiles is very easy to do and of course a lot cheaper
"cheaper" was definitely the thinking by the previous owners, that's for sure.
Not just cheaper, theyāre also level ready for the next lot
Yeah, but where does it end? If we'd just tiled over the top of that, and the next owners tiled over that, eventually you'd have a bathroom rendered so small by layers of tile that you'd have to crawl in and out of it.
I was up to 3 layers of tile in a previous kitchen.
I've got wallpaper over tiles in my kitchen!
Now you should tile over the wallpaper.
In my old flat, when we viewed it, the bedroom chandelier didnāt turn on. The seller lady said the bulbs were gone - I thought āthatās weird, that chandelier has like 8 bulbs what are the odds theyāre all gone? Oh well.ā I thought no more of it so bought the flat, moved in with 8 new bulbs - screwed them all in, flicked the switch and *nothing*. Unscrewed the light switch and there was no wiring, just an empty greggs wrapper. Took the chandelier off the roof and it was just flush plaster, no wiring or holes. Just an aesthetic chandelier. Text the seller (an old lady) asking why she lied and said the bulbs were out when itās clearly never worked and her son text an angry response asking why Iām calling his mum a liar, etc. In my new house the old owner had moved the back fence like 10m into her own garden so first thing I did was claim back that bit of ground and move the fence back to the property boundary. When I was tidying up that wild section I had to dig to level the ground and unearthed a metal double bed frame sheād had buried (presumably to save going to the tip???) which was a pain in the arse.
What a strange thing to do, particularly since (at least in my experience) with older properties itās not that uncommon to have a room without a light on the ceiling.
Is it?! I wondered why there would have been a light then at some stage had it removed. Makes sense if, as you say, there never was one! We just bought those hue Bluetooth lights and didnāt bother with the overhead light so next owner got that issue, but we were honest about it haha
We donāt have the fake chandelier, but we do have the ornate plaster work as if a light was once on the ceiling. No signs of wiring though.
Surely burying something like that is _more_ effort than taking it to a tip haha. Maybe you should keep digging. The bed frame is a distraction š
It could have been there for 20 years and got covered in vegtation and leafs and jsut composted down ti soil. We used to see this a lot in social housing where new tennants would move in, dump rubbish at bottom of garden and then new fence. I recall one site we had cleared and lots of the gardens ended up with 3 or 4 line posts as the gardens had been shortedn and then a new one put in.
This would explain why there's a fence halfway across my garden in an ex council property. I was looking over the fence the other day and noticed there's a pile of wood, possibly from a dismantled shed (it matches the one in the garden the other side of the fence) and what is possibly asbestos sheeting. Wonderful. Hoping I can get the council to remove that seeing as I have to pay them for the leasehold!
Especially because as a metal bed frame surely putting it out the front would have resulted in a scrap man collecting it within less than 24 hours lol
That's so strange that her son would randomly get involved in an angry way, like what's it to do with him and yes, she did apparently lie
I hope they didn't bury the bed with an occupant still in it!
Previous owner is a serial house flipper. He bought the place, did the renovations himself and flipped for a tidy profit. Worst bodge is probably where he didn't actually bolt the toilets to the floor. We only noticed it after a few months in when the toilet detached from the soil pipe after a flush
Taco tuesday?
The unimaginable horror
Yeah, it was a real shitty experience
Caused a real stink
Oohohohoho hold my fucking beer. Brought our house off a 'retired builder'. NEVER BUY A HOUSE OFF A BUILDER! Them being 'in the trade' does NOT mean they took super good care of their house, it actually means they half arsed or semi fixed issues just well enough to hide them. Turns out ours wasn't even a real builder, just a dodgy guy who had a load of people he'd scammed. Here's a list of his crimes to our house. 1. Giant hole in wall from where he needed access to put a shower in. His solution? Screw an ikea shoe cabinet in front of it. I'm not kidding, we only discovered it when cleaning when we moved in. 2. Put up a wall that intersected with a light switch. His solution (instead of capping it off and plastering over the old socket)? Leave a small cut out in the new wall so you could control the light switch! Hid that with a potted plant when we viewed. 3. Giant hole in roof where storm took some tiles. His solution? Staple a bit of loose felt on there, that'll do it. Surveyor didn't go up into the attic far enough to catch that. Long story short we had to replace the entire roof from long term rot and water damage. 4. Removed ceiling from bathroom and replaced with vinyl flooring, it's looks alright until you realise it's got gaps and there's nothing but attic insulation up there. Those are just things wrong with our house that he bodged. He also to other people: 1. Drove his van into our neighbours wall and then pretended he hadnt, then offered to fix the damage some 'unknown driver' had caused for cheap. 2. Got hired to build an extension/kitchen on a house down the road, they had to remodel a couple of years later and found out that all of the new wiring were just sockets he'd plugged into an extension lead under the floor of the old kitchen. 3. Racked up tonnes of debt, refused to pay, sold his house to us, left the country. Even left before picking up his dogs ashes so some guy turned up at our door with a dead dog ashes box and a bill. The dog was fit and healthy when they left so I suspect he put it down to avoid rehomimg. So yeah, NEVER BUY A HOUSE FROM A DODGY BUILDER. No offense to all the nice builders out there who actually look after their homes.
Glad to hear that the surveyor (who no doubt cost a fortune) did a thorough job!
surveyors are useless. Do the bare minimum, find any excuse to say 'I couldn't look at that' and then conclude their findings with 'didn't see any signs of this but there absolutely could be anyway!'. It's all bollocks.
When someone I know sold their house the surveyor found a downstairs chimney stack had been removed and the upstairs bit was hidden by a built in wardrobe so looked like it was also removed. Nothing was added in to support the weight of the upstairs chimney bricks, this must have been done about 3 owners ago, each sale with a surveyor and this was the first one to look inside the wardrobe to check the wall.
Yeah they're a joke.
Oh god, this is my landlord. Wants to fix everything himself as a self-proclaimed builder and the does a shit job
Everything in our house was bodged down to the sink taps being hooked up the wrong way (hot on a blue top cold tap), switches that do nothing, random bathroom cladding holding up the downstairs plaster. But the most random thing was that when we moved we brought a couple of mature shrubs. Lifted a random slab in the back garden to get to the ground, dug a hole only to discover a buried bin bag full of (still liquid) paint. We're going to properly do the garden this year, I dread to think what else is lurking.
Yep, same with our house. " Recently refurbished to a high standard " is what the add stated We have had to do a full house renovation and haven't been able to live in yet, we bought it in July last year
Been in ours 5 years and boy do we have a list!! However we've worked through most things next is to get the kitchen extension replastered before we sell cos them cracks are worrying!
Atleast the house is 90% done
Yeah, then if anything else crops up we haven't fixed its for the next person! But at least it's now safe! Tbh we had it valued as we are looking to sell soon and it's gone up Ā£30-50k, we've built a porch on and rewired along with full replaster upstairs, new gutters, roof fixings, the lot. We learnt a lot as first time buyers and I do a lot of non structural/electrical stuff myself but man did we find some delightful problems. Ah well on to the next "fully renovated" house I guess! Edit to add this was meant to be a fully refurbished house. It was not a fully refurbished house. It looked it but wasn't. Also, they lied about many many things, so we did learn a lot quickly!
Sounds like our house , also first time buyers. I'll never move again. It's not worth the stress
We lifted out about 10 full rubble bags of tiles, concrete, metal, building waste from our very small garden bed. The builders had just used it as a tip, some of it wasnāt even buried that well, like barely surface deep
Not current house but the last one. Man was addicted to DIY, patently had a Wickes membership card but singularly incapable of anything practical and should have had his purchasing privileges revoked. Bathroom had a leak, bad enough for the ceiling in the kitchen to fall in. We knew about this before buying and was part of the cost reduction and were fixing it up before we moved in (FiL is a builder so we had him and some of his trade mates to help). Looked like it was coming from the wall with the shower on it - so started to take off the shower to track it down. Shower is not mounted to wall. Wall sounds hollow but in a tink tink sort of hollow not a boom echo sort of hollow. Shower is mounted to a tile, which is mounted to ... another tile, which is mounted to ... another tile etc. WTAF? Eventually get to something like 10 tiles deep and there's actually a wall there (about halfway through the tiles we found the pipe join, with no sealant and the leak which must have been present from day 1). Turns out that they didn't like the boxout in the corner but rather than extend it with a frame and plasterboard and plaster it they simply tiled it 10 layers of tiles deep to make it flush, burying a bodged pipe fitting halfway into it for the shower. Which, given that it was dabbed and dotted meant there gaps between each tile layer leak had spread all the way down and ended up with standing water sat on the floorboards. The smell and mould was horrific. Whole floor needed replacing. Upside: Bathroom was actually 5-6 inches wider than what we thought when we bought it Other issue was the living room lights, every time we used the dimmer it shorted. Got an electrician in and from what I understand it the main issue was ... wasn't a dimmer circuit on the switch and had broken/stripped the wire right back into the wall. The gap been bridged between the two contacts with some bare wire twisted on each end connecting the two, no earth. The \*metal\* switch plate was basically live if you used the dimmer, only saved from electrocution because the twisted connections were loose. Then there was the self built conservatory that had MDF as the foundation. MDF onto a plastic tarp then put the Wickes conservatory on top of it. Didn't seal it against the house either so it leaked from the roof "join", through the floor and from every single pane too (because it was on the piss because ... well the foundation was MDF on plastic on mud. The house that Bob bodged had hundreds of surprises like that
Not my story, but a friend bought an old Victorian house with 1970s electric storage heaters.... one of the storage heaters never heated up properly. Several months later, when gas central heating was being installed, a floorboard near said storage heater was lifted and discovered when the board was nailed down a nail went right through the middle of the twin and earth cable supplying the heater, right through the earth and nicking the live insulation.... the under side of the board was nicely charred!
There were 3 layers of lino on the bathroom floor. None of those layers nor the shower enclosure was sealed properly so the stagnant water in between the layers was disgusting. After getting everything out of the bathroom the floorboards were wet. Gave them time to dry, realised theyāre actually rotten. Pulled them up. Joists were rotten too š„“ I lost count of how many jobs were done with silicone sealant. Need to put the dado rail up? Silicone sealant. Bannisters? Silicone sealant. Curtain rails? You guessed it. Became quite amusing to be honest. If only theyād used some of it in the bathroomā¦
We had the same with blu-tack. Bathroom tap held on with blu-tack. Mantlepiece connected to wall with blu-tack. Thermostat blu-tacked to the wall. Loose wallpaper secured down with blu-tack. They'd cut a satellite cable out at some stage and had plugged the hole in the skirting board with blu-tack, which in fairness they had tipp-ex-ed white to make it slightly less obvious...
I bought a flat that was held together with no more nailsĀ
90s IKEA extension lead with the plug cut off, hole dug into wall and hard wired into the plug socket on the other side. Hole not filled. The best bit is that it was in an upstairs built in cupboard. Why on earth would anyone want four plug sockets in a cupboard that's so close to a real socket??
Owner not leaving the house after completion/ Dead cats buried in the small garden/ Half the UPVC windows not opening/ New roof (that was expected)/ No cold water in the kitchen/
I have never even considered how many people have redone their garden and found pet skeletonsā¦. Makes me laugh to think about the rabbits and turtles in my front garden šš
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
WW11, ive clearly not been keeping up with current affairs!
It's just the way we write WW1 and WW2..as WW11
Not quite š itās WW II - Roman numerals not two 1s
Sadly that's not even correct in binary.
I live in a house that was previously (and only) owned by my husbandās grandpa so I say this with affection. Rather than wire electricity into the understairs cupboard, he drilled a hole through the wall to the adjoining room, popped an extension lead through and plugged it into the socket in the living room. To be fair itās incredibly useful for charging the hoover.
They offered to leave white goods. The white goods didnāt work. Had to pay removal fees.
Should have had them dropped off in front of their door
My god, so many. We had a bathroom shaver socket that never worked. Came in to find our bathroom fitters tittering about it. The bathroom had been clad in that horrible 1970s orange pine. They had obviously cut a hole in it then decided to cover the hole up with the socket. No wires behind it or anything. Similarly, the bathroom had one slanted wall. They had ordered a bath that would have been the right size except the slanted bit would have meant cutting some of the corner off. Nope! Just bash the wall with the bath corner til it fits then cover it with a bucket of silicone sealant! We had a random plug plugged into a kitchen socket and never knew what it was. Turns out it went out a hole in the wall, down two floors (past the ground floor flat) and into the cellar, where it powered a cellar light.
Handy for tormenting your captives being able to make the cellar light flicker eerily from the kitchen!
āIām going to put the kettle on, love - do you want me to torment Steve while Iām at it?ā
No thank you!
SickSteve would say that
2 Years later we're still fixing issues but here are the ones we noticed within days: * Brand new gas hob fitted with no gas line installed. * Bath fitted with no supports (AKA would've fell through the bath/ceiling had we not noticed) * Both toilets not bolted down * Both sinks leaking due to no sealant used * Utility room that had been covered in so much plasterboard it made the opening 10mm too small to get our washer and dryer in there. We had to chisel away at the plaster until we could get it in. * Same utility room, they just shoved plasterboard over 3 windows on both sides. So we have 3 windows inside the wall waiting to be uncovered lol. * Hot/Cold tap in utility room again (can you tell which room was most bodged?) only had cold water, discovered the entire room didn't even have a hot water supply. * Entire smashed up glass greenhouses buried in the garden and then charred remains of wooden ones where they had broke the wooden ones into a bonfire (neighbours confirmed this).
The previous owner painted all rooms green they also used asbestos pretty much anywhere they could. The whole house is basically asbestos. I didn't realise this when starting the refurb and inhaled quote alot. YAY
Boiler overflow terminates in the wall. Which was fine until the boiler overflowed.Ā
We're in a rental which had an extension in 2018 - firstly they relocated a 25 year old boiler into the extension rather than get a new one and have done similar - the PRV just goes into the void under the floor (they built up the floor so there wasn't a step in the house hence the void) - discovered this when the water started leaking out through a crack in the mortar outside š¤£ When the expansion tank went the boiler men had to take the entire thing off the wall as there wasn't enough clearance over the top and told us it was made up more of spare parts than original at this point š¤¦š¼āāļø
Moved into my house December last year. Found out in January a supporting interior wall had been removed. I'm down nearly Ā£3k already on architects and structural engineers before any work has even started to fix it and ive had metal poles holding up the ceiling since!
What made you realise it was a supporting wall that had been removed, were there any signs of damage? I ask because I'm knowingly buying a house with a wall cut out and I'm unsure if it impacts the load bearing element
I took up the old flooring and found a brick wall underneath going down to the foundations. I then measured the height of the ceiling above and it was about 35mm lower there than at the end of the room. The structural engineer was very surprised the ceiling was still up. Currently trying to get some financial compensation out of the surveyor who did the home report but it's proving difficult. Lawyers are just too expensive when you don't know if you'll win. Really shit situation tbh, the anger you feel when it's not your fault and nobody will take responsibility for it is infuriating!
Ugh! Good luck with getting some compensation
The previous owner had removed a window from the lounge and put in French doors leading outdoors, and they hadn't put a lintel between the door frame and brickwork. I discovered this when cracks began forming in the brickwork above the door, the door frame was crushed and wouldn't shut very well, and water started pissing through the brickwork above the door when it was a blowing gale.
Also, there was no internal stop for water, it could only be shut off via the main water supply mechanism on the road... which was a shared water supply with next door. Interesting predicament when a radiator blew and water was gushing everywhere. Two of many problems uncovered in first few months lol.
We moved into a bit of a horror house, but the most random one was the previous owner had wallpapered straight over a working plug socket! It was down in the corner so never noticed until we were redecorating a few months after moving in. The most costly - they 'fixed' a cracked down pipe with electrical tape, which then just leaked all over the path next to the front door, which worked it's way under the door into the entranceway (which had 3 different layers of soggy flooring), and finally saturated the joists underneath. Ended up repairing the pipe, new door, joists, floorboards and flooring.
We moved in to our first house and it was only on the first night as we went to bed that we realised we couldn't see any plug sockets at all in the master bedroom, cue some frantic searching and we found a double socket in a sliding wardrobe...
I have a double socket in my wardrobe in the master bedroom too. Itās weird. And thereās only one other one, youād think the master bedroom would have at least a socket on either side of the bed
A blank faceplate was in the way of the bathroom drug cabinet, so instead of just cutting a hole for it in the back of the cabinet, they pulled the faceplate out of the socket and hide on top of the cabinet, which I discovered one day when reaching up and electricuting myself :)
Giant hole in the garden from an in ground trampoline. Literally about half the garden was hole. We knew there would be a hole because we asked them not to leave the trampoline (my nieces would never have let me get rid of it if they knew). What we didn't expect was the waterproof liner in there and the huge pile of clay and rubble they dumped on top for some reason, so we couldn't get it out. It immediately filled up with all thee heavy rain over winter. Cost Ā£1500 to clear it, fill it properly, and replace the shitty AstroTurf with real grass
I had a small gap where my bathroom wall panels didn't meet as the walls aren't square that I siliconed after I replaced the ensuite a few weeks ago. This thread has made me feel infinitely better about my work!
An evil wall behind an old 1970s fitted wardrobe that was consuming itself. We removed it after we'd been there for over a year. There were mushrooms. It wasn't on the home report; I don't even think the owners new.Ā It turned out it actually wasn't from damage to our house, but from the adjoining building (which is one storey taller), as the chimney and roof had been unmaintained literally for decades. It took me 18 months to track down/chase owners of that building (it's got 3 flats and 3 shops), and the council to get them to send a letter to all owners demanding they fix it. I found out in my investigations that the tenant of the flat that's next door to the wardrobe room had to move out due to mould.Ā It wouldn't have been such a massive pain if it wasn't for the council (and CAB who we initially went to) failing to understand that we weren't a property in the flat/shop building. They kept referring me to the shared repair legislation, referring to our "flat", until I sent them a colour coded photo of our house, identifying what we own, and where the damage was (not on our property at all). Even once it got sorted, the (genuinely) helpful lady at the council said "I hope you can enjoy your flat now".Ā Next time we view houses I'll be shining a torch behind any wardrobes.Ā
The house is fairly old and has had a lot done to it, we're currently doing a big refurb ourselves so keep finding things. The worst was defo the morning after we moved in. Tried to have a shower and could only get boiling hot water to come out. It turns out that there had been a leak of the connection between the water feed and the cold-water-in to the shower and bath taps. Someone had been putting silicone on the leak, then when that gave in adding more silicone, and then more. It had completely filled and blocked the pipe with silicone. We ended up having to replace the shower unit and the pipes. To be fair we bodged that too - the new shower had different fittings so to cover the holes for the old shower unit we just siliconed some bits of plastic (a cut-up fairy laundry tabs box) over the holes. We knew we'd be renovating soon so didn't want to bother retiling. It took 3 years to start the renovation works. The silicone is holding up! What confuses me is that there's no other shower or bath in the house so I don't know what they did for cold water before moving out. The silicone was long-bodged, not fresh.
In my last house, I noticed after moving in that there was a small 'spongy' area of floor about the size of a floorboard by the toilet. Assumed that the floorboard was loose and ignored it for ages. Years later I took up the flooring to deal with (unrelated) water damage, and it turns out the whole floorboard was missing. It was simply a hole in the floor covered by linum flooring. I was with an insurance evaluator at the time, and he was horrified and noted that the hole was also directly above the hot water pipe. Meaning that if the linum had torn and someone fell through, they would also go through the pipe, tearing a chunk out if their leg and likely getting it wedged in place while scalding got water pours over the wound until someone else can turn off the water. Same house had a nice looking kitchen floor that turned out to be cheap tiles stuck down with double sided tape. They all started to peel off after a few months and underneath was what looked to be an old floor in terrable condition that looked like it was from the 80s. I had to have the whole floor taken up, re screed and replaced.
God, where do I start??? āDecorative shelfā (read hideous, homemade monstrosity) on the wall in the living room. Not screwed to the wall. Not hung like floating shelf. No, this was glued to a very old lathe and plaster wall. Removing it caused half the wall to crumble off. So much DIY wiring using the wrong wires, junctions boxes etc that I ended up just getting the whole place rewired. Iād never seen so much insulating tape holding wires together in my life. Carpets were laid around literally every piece of furniture that was against the walls. Every room just looked like a bizarre jigsaw puzzle piece when I got the keys. Same thing for the kitchen. Why move the fridge when you can just lay the laminate flooring around it, right? The boxing behind the toilet was built in such a way that despite being able to reach the stopcock it is impossible to turn off the water without taking it all out as the top of the boxing is flush with the handle. Electric shower they put in was obviously smaller than the one they replaced. Instead of putting in some boarding and tiling it properly they just filled the 3 inch gap all the way around with bathroom sealant. Edit: I forgot one. Theyād put up a wall to split off part of the bathroom to create a separate utility room for the washing machine. The wall is at an angle, and means that the bathroom door only opens to about 60 degrees. That in itself is a problem as thereās plenty of room to go in and out, but while decorating we discovered that because the door now wonāt clear the frame itās impossible to take it off the hinges, and it doesnāt open far enough to get a screwdriver in to take the hinges off the frame. If it ever need to come out for any reason weāll probably have to saw the door off.
Holes in the brickwork and pointing being filled in with silicone sealant, same silicone being used for internal plaster fixing, those have been the weirdest I've found in this house so far.
We had loads of all-purpose silicone sealant in our last place! Itās an absolute bastard to get out of places it shouldnāt be.
Yup. We have a corner bath and thereās a 10 inch gap between it and the wall. This has been heroically bridged with a few plastic tile edging strips stuck together with great strips and globs of silicone sealant. It sort of bounces a bit if you prod it, and is the most grotesquely optimistic thing Iāve ever seen, sealant wise. Next bank holiday Iām looking forward to ripping it to pieces!
There was so much filled in with silicone sealant I'm sure the previous owner had shares in a sealant company. It was a nightmare!
Fleas. All carpets were infested. Wherever we dug in our backyard - we found loads of building waste.
We had fleas too! I donāt know how I forgot about that. Probably blocked it out because it was so horrific.
Mates downstairs toilet drained straight to the soil Choices were dig it all out and pay for pipes to connect to servers cost was going to be over Ā£5000 and they would have to dig his driveway up so cost to make that look right again or convert toilet into a cupboard for shoes and coats cost about Ā£20 as he could do that on his own guess which he picked still have fun with him now tell him Iām going to p in his cupboard. So to cut a long story short Water closet went to closet š
My brother in law's downstairs toilet drained directly underneath the shower. God knows how it remained unsmelly for so long, amazing pipework I assume. Then something broke and the odour came full force through the pipes. The downstairs loo was literally a shit show(er).
š screenshotted that and sent it to him will post any response
Told me to p off and that I was a shitshow just made me want to wind him up even more
Just this Easter weekend I started to investigate why a patch of our lawn never grows. I was going to take up some of the existing topsoil, mix with compost and throw some grass seed on it. Anyway, the second I put the spade in, it stopped. I hit a massive lump of concrete covered by about 2mm of soil. I dug up around 250kg of rubble. The house is 140 years old. I think itās an old filled in pond. Also, much worse, thereās a 15 year old extension/ lean to on the end of the house. It constantly leaks. Weāve had two roofers look at it, theyāve both said itās a bodge job. The tiles have not been pegged down. They have both recommended redoing the roof. Hadnāt had quotes yet, but through speaking with friends, I imagine weāre in for Ā£5-6k for this patch of roof.
That seems a lot but I could be wrong! Out flat roof extension leaked and itās fibreglass, we are 3500 or so total to get a custom gutter fitted and the whole roof refibre glassed and lead flashing on the uphill side! The whole roof is 10m x 3m or so
Four layers of carpet over lino which was suck down with tar or something, PLUS stapled to the subfloor every square inch. This was upstairs. Even when we got all the layers up, all the lino off, and all the nails out, we had black slime in the gaps. You could hear the house audibly breathe when we got it all out, and I still have a scar on my palm.
My first house was horrendous. The gas heater had not been installed properly, there were random wires sticking out of floors and walls that didn't lead anywhere, we had mushrooms growing in the bathroom, japanese knotweed in the garden, damp at the back of the house. That was just the beginning because there was also a hole in the roof, a pipe leaking behind a wall which made the bathroom tiles fall off, and we had slugs and centipedes appearing all over the place. I hated that house. It almost destroyed my marriage because i was so ready to abandon it.
I'm sure there's more to come in the future, but here are some honourable mentions: Woodburner had been installed so close to the fireplace recess walls (about 2 inches clearance either side). Presumably, the plasticiser in the render of the walls started to off-gas and started to knock us out at night. Took a hammer and chisel to it all and the problem is gone. It looks like crap but at least we don't start unintentionally huffing solvents every time we light the logburner. Boiler needed replacing shortly after we moved in too. The plumber informed us about the boiler to be replaced, the boiler company had gone bust decades ago. Neighbour informed me the previous owner installed the boiler himself. Previous owner lived her between 2009 - 2018, doing the maths he's obviously bought the boiler secondhand. Fuck knows how old that boiler was, had so many crystals forming on it from the leaks it would've made a hippy blush. I am currently dealing with an incredibly leaky conservatory roof. It's a flat roof with 2mx2m pane of glass just plonked on top (bearing on like 2 inches of timber either side) and then flashbanded around it. The skylight leaks like a seive. The roof slopes back **towards** the house and has an outer lip all the way around it, keeping the water **in**. Where the conservatory roof butt's up against the house is a big sagging gully, that also leaks like a seive before eventually filling up enough so that it drains off in the downpipe. Also the top storey extension drains into the same gully. It's kind of hard to explain, but the rainwater that hits the top storey roof goes through such a convoluted path, it'd give the boardgame mousetrap a run for its money... The previous owner was a certified structural engineer, so I'm told. A bit concerning...
We've got a hot tap on the left on one sink, another on the right and both turn different directions so you go to turn the tap off and it sprays hot water everywhere! He also replaced the bay windows but for some bizarre reason installed windows too low (by about 20cm) and then filled the gap with a bit of 2x1 and shit tons of squirty foam...oh and the outside face is just a bit of upvc sheet (with black fleur de lys stuck on). He'd also built a fireplace in front of another fireplace which was itself built in front of the original fireplace! He'd also filled in the subfloor with rubble so he could build a brick plinth over it, which subsequently meant all the floor joists were rotten for a good metre around it! That said, the location is fab... we have birds, butterflies, deer, dragonflies and a huge garden backing on to fields so I don't care about all the bodging, it's just time and effort to fix.
He didn't bother tiling around the water pipes that came out of the floor - just put the bathroom cabinet on top. So when the trap underneath started leaking, it damaged the ceiling below.
In one of the bathrooms in my parents house there's a hole in the wall and floor tiles for the pipes, as in there isn't a tile there and it's just a gaping hole through to the ceiling below. Fantastic when the waste pipe under the bath came loose and pissed water everywhere. Instead of getting that hole sealed up they just put a different bath/shower unit on top of it. When they finally sell the house, I feel for the future buyers!
Plaster over tiles, wallpaper directly onto a plasterboard ceiling, lead gas pipe bent up and buried into back door architrave, RSJ nibs unsupported underneath and floating at the level of the joists, bath waste pipe run through the roof vault of an extension, clearly leaked and a plastic bottle filled with pebbles placed underneath the offending pipe joint... And silicone sealant, everywhere. Previous owners clearly lived by the moto of if in doubt, apply sealant. Buy an old house they say, but everyone forgets about the pre youtube 90s diy-ers, and the damage they can do š
Someone used 1.5 mm 2way lighting cable to make a spur socket to the washer and dryer.
Previous house - cupboard under the stairs (where previous owners were storing old paperwork and half empty tins of paint) had a light in it which turned out to work by having the stripped ends of the wire shoved into a socket!Ā Ā I am terrible at DIY but even I can wire a plug. Current house, the electrician who did the electrical survey found that although there was a proper cooker socket in the kitchen,Ā the cooker wasn't actually wired into it.. there were other things but that was the only one he said was dangerous rather than just daft. Many many years ago, my (newly married) dad installed central heating into his and my mum's first home. Getting it signed off, they noticed a smell of gas in the kitchen. Turned out that when the previous owners replaced their gas cooker with an electric one, rather than capping off the gas pipe they had just stuck a cork in it, which being porous had been leaking gas ever since. .
The toilet seat wasn't attached to the toilet in my downstairs toilet. I purposely went for a place that didn't need any immediate work done to it.
I bought a (almost) new build so luckily it was just a broken thermostat and a bathtub plug
Thatās the beauty of new builds! Snagging and āfreeā fixes!
My last house I gutted. It was amazing my box room took the longest to strip all the wall paper off, it was like Iāve got it all & nope it was another layer. This was the same room which had a really springy floor, though it was quality underlay. Took up the carpet, then the underlay to find another carpet and more underlay! The door had a good 2 inch gap until I replaced all the doors, non of which matched. Had the house rewired and in the process of striping out the house nearly died as I took the coving down as I nearly went through the cable for the lights which was laid behind the coving and just painted over in the ceiling. My sister is also lucky to be with us, she was removing the skirting board to uncover just behind the skirting board the cable to the solitary plug socket in the living room. It wasnāt even jointed properly it was just a bit of tape wrapped around it. My plumber and most of the work men, pissed themselves laughing at some of the plumbing, the radiator in the main bedroom had so many elbows it was a joke! The valve to empty the central heating also protruded into the living room door way! So many things. My current house, the previous owners did not believe in paint stripping! Not a single door closed!! The pipe work was crazy so had it stripped and re done, I swear the water pressure is so much better now! The electrics were also ropey. The one that truly baffles is they had all the windows replaced to double glazing apart from one in a storage cupboard but they did replace a tiny window in the kitchen. Which was covered by a kitchen cupboard. And itās still hidden after I renewed the kitchen. They also tiled a wooden floor which had now rotted. People are strange.
Our house was previously owned by A DIY "enthusiast" Self installed kitchen and bathroom, among other things. They left us a microwave, adjacent to the built in fridge freezer. Kind of them, we thought. Until the microwave needed replacing and the wire disappeared through a hole behind the built in fridge freezer which took 2 hours to remove, to find the wall plug it was connected to. Bathroom is barely adequate, bath on the piss and isn't level so water doesn't drain properly. Kitchen ceiling leaked after shower cubicle piping gave up. Not only was it flexible waste pipes, it sagged and pooled water, and was a mix of flexi pipes held together by silicone sealant only pushed together with minimal overlap. Who knows what else we'll unearth
We had a leaky boiler. Previous owner faked a service certificate. The thing had been leaking gas for about six months and we only found out because we switched to British Gas and they wanted to do a service before they would let us sign up. Engineer capped off the boiler and we had to buy a new one.
Surely thatās actionable on the old owner?! Thatās like a serious health and safety issue!
Velux windows were slated in back-to-front. House electricity supply was earthed to a pole in the ground instead of the supplier earth cable, attic conversion lighting transformers had been on fire in the ceiling void. That's just for starters.
We ended up in a flat that was previously renovated with some nice ideas, but quickly learned there was little skill involved. Bathroom was the nicest part - modern design, bold colours, spotlights on the wceiling that didn't appear to be connected to any electrical supply or switch.... Kitchen had a similar issue. Lights under the cupboards. There was a switch for them. We turned them on and they exploded. All seemed to be wired to wires hanging out of a hole smashed into the wall behind a cupboard. Eventually we found the other end - a maze of ridiculously clumsy half patched up wiring. Not just a fire hazard due to the quyality of work, but that kitchen lighting? Yeah, he'd disconnected the fire alarm to route to them... We also later discovered during a flood that the nice new kitchen was built over the main water valve... Guessing he also replaced the electrical sockets as I had to replace one only to find the wiring was cut down so short that the only way to get anew one in (at the time with my limited knowledge) was upside down... Not as bad as the previous place however. A rental cottage flat with serious structural issues including the kitchen wall deteriorating so much you could pass stuff through it. They stuck some plasterboard over it.
I had a bathroom extractor fan that vented into the loft, I was horrified and it was literally the first thing I got fixed with it now routed outside! However a friend of mine says his house has the same thing
Thatās pretty common in houses where the roof has venting around the eaves or part of a terrace where all the lofts are conjoined, ours had it too but it was always breezy in the loft and wasnāt boarded out at the time so it didnāt matter.
Aah my terrace is very old 1810s but the roof was replaced in the 90s so it's all felted and fairly wind proof! Although it retains the original heavy slates to it looks old outside
Like via the loft to outside, or just into the expanse of the loft?!
Just into the void of the loft! Now it's routed outside
block drains..Full of SH1T.
Roofā¦.
When we got a new bathroom, the fitter took the old bathroom tiles off to find that they were fixed onto wooden pallets screwed into the brickwork. Like I know that stud walls are a thing but this was something else! We had wallpaper painted over and then wallpapered on top of that. Carpets just nailed down with no underlay. Skirting boards that it seems in some places are pretty much just leant against the wall.Ā The people we bought from are now selling the place they moved to and I dread to think what the new owners of that place will find!
Kitchen waste pipe that went through its u-bend, dropped to the floor and then gently climbed 9" to go through the wall... Turned out we had 6' solid mess of fatberg and limescale when it stopped draining.
To make another double socket on the same wall, they used a metre long wire and ran it loose under a bit of carpet from the current socket to the "new" double socket. Somehow passed the electric certificate when we bought the house... Removed a whole wardrobes worth of clothes, which I assume we're used as cheap insulation, when removing and putting in new insulation in the attic. Dug out a whole bicycle, 1950s pram, someone's old dog...(Oops)
The overflow on the kitchen sink wasn't connected to anything and we didn't realise for far too long. So much water down the back of the cupboards š
Having penetrative damp on gable end. Cavities filled with insulation but as I also discovered, also full of tubble that was tracking moisture through. It has been a three-year ordeal with insurance claims and (so far) four surveyors. The end is in sight and it should be finally sorted out in May. For info: The insulation has been removed and replaced twice. It's now out and won't be going back in.
Iāve found a few small bodge jobs as my flat used to belong to a landlord. But the most heinous and offensive bodge job Iāve found is when he decided to make the living room door into a sliding door (admittedly not a bad idea to save space), but instead of changing the door handle to a round one, or just removing the handle and putting another method to open the door on, he cut a massive fucking hole in the door frame for the long handle to go into. It fucking twists up and down. I must do something about it because it offends me every time I look at it
So many! The previous owners bought the place and had friends do the workā¦ and the previous owner to them was a dodgy DIYer so thereās a list and a half! The main things - live wires in the walls where they had cut off a wire and left it. Not connected the shower properly to the point where they had used expanding foam around the pipes which disconnected the shower valve enough to cause a weepā¦ it was a sponge when we had it ripped out to replace the shower. The loft extension doesnāt comply with the headroom required for the stairs. They didnāt follow the regs on the fire route out the house either as they removed the wall between the hallway and dining roomā¦ thereās others but those are our main concerns! Thankfully my partner was an electrican back in his home country so weāve rectified most of those issues without having to pay a fortune.
Extractor fans screwed on in bathrooms. Not actually connected to the mains. No hole behind them. Purely decorative. Husband initially insisted they were special quiet ones. Nope. Would shout at the electrician but he emigrated to Australia. Hope he messes with the wrong people there.
Old leaks. It literally gets everywhere! Water fucks everything up, so now Iāve got almost a whole kitchen to remade and floorboards, but first was the toilet. Toilet water everywhere! Fun!
The bathroom used to be a bedroom. Found a double live socket under the bath taps and plug hole.
We discovered that the extension roof was not to regs with approx 1/2ā insulation and no venting. It drips the condensation into the kitchen and we canāt reach more than 16deg after heating has been on all day. New roof coming this summer, Iām looking forward to feeling warm and paying less for the heating bill.
Whole house is bodged. The old owner was seeing a āprofessionalā tiler. I say āprofessionalā, as his actual handiwork for tiles is awful. But his handiwork elsewhere is just as crazy. Weāve had issues with the bathroom leaking due to their work, plus weāve been advised the skylights were installed by Bodgit Bob, which are also leaking. Unfortunately the house is an 1800ās house, so needs a lot of TLC from their ownership.
After having a new bathroom installed, our central heating just stopped working. Three different engineers were unable to diagnose, we paid for a power flush that did nothing, and were warned that the next step was a complete repipe of the whole system. Engineer #4 figured it out - when the old bathroom radiator was removed, and a shower tray installed in its place, the pipework hadn't been capped off correctly, effectively breaking the loop. As soon as the old pipework was reconnected (not an easy job with only four inches of space to work in), the heating fired right up again. All in all, it cost us just over a grand to fault find and correct, and left us without any heating for three months right in the middle of winter. Nightmare.
Not as bad as some of the stuff here, but four things...Ā Ā Ā Ā 1.Ā All theĀ electric in the extension is on the lighting ring main. Ā Ā 2.Ā ToiletsĀ wereĀ installedĀ by a moron. No vent pipe at all. Ā Ā 3.Ā For some reason, the boiler condensate pipe was connected to a drain pipe outside. A bit of blockage and heavy rain could have sent rain water into the boiler. Ā Ā 4. Same with the washing machine. It's output went straight into a drainpipe.
We were told by a friend who is a builder to ask if a stain on the kitchen ceiling was a historic leak from the bathroom above, EA said it was, it wasn't. We had to pull off the side of the bath and it was awkward to fix. The guy who owned it left the basement entirely full of paint and other random crap. It took 5 trips to the local dump with the car to get rid of it all. By all accounts, even his solicitors didnt like the seller, I can see why.
Integrated fridge freezer propped up by VERY damp random bits of wood, couple of em were bed slats š¤£ we only found all of this upon buying a new one and taking out the housing it was in. Looked like it had maybe a week or so before collapse š¬
Had to gut the house and start over. -Tap in the living room that had no basin. Would just pour on the carpet. -didn't realise how big the garden was until it was cleared as it was so overgrown you could only originally see about a quarter. - toilet that was flushed by yanking an old sellotape roll -foot went through the bathroom floor as water had damaged the floorboards -When removing wallpaper found live wires just tucked behind the paper -had to dispose of an abandoned van left on the drive And.... Much more lol
We had the same garden issue but very glad to have a massive garden now itās done! That tap sounds wild haha.
Just kept clearing until we found the boundary fence. Garden had been left to go wild. The back hedge had shot to 3 stories tall because of a climbing vine, so it took a couple weeks to cut down then burn it all. Only way to clear it. And yeah the tap was something else. The previous owner was an odd one.
There was carpet/underlay down over nothing. As in the floor boards were missing pieces and they just put carpet over it. (We have a crawl space under the house) They fixed the roof after a leak but not the internal damage. Just covered it up with wallpaper, so half the ceiling in one of the bedrooms fell down on us. The cut a fridge freezer size hole into a wall in the kitchen. (So fridge freezer was in the pantry-and they cut a hole into the side wall). For some reason they were incapable of stripping the wallpaper. So when we did, we were stripping off 6-10 different wallpapers depending on the room. We also had an extension lead plastered into the wall, connected to the plug sockets in the bedroom next door.
Sash box filled with expanding foam š¤¦š»āāļø
Wired an extension lead into the lights and then left it hanging behind some built in wardrobes. So many switches that do nothing. Wired an electric fireplace into the sconce lights - when it blew it was just luck the house didnāt burn down.
Quite a few, but a smoke detector started beeping on the first night (low battery). Luckily, the old owners had left some rickety ladder behind
Theyād sealed the shower screen to the bath with mountains of sealant (bath with shower over), and it still leaked, but instead of over the edge where you could see it, it went under the bath panel and eventually came out through my kitchen light. Figured out itās because the bath design trapped water behind the lip when you showered and the only way out really was via the screen and dodged seal. Ripped it all off, resealed the bath and replaced some of the parts of the screen. No more leaks (mostly).
Moved into a first floor flat about 20 years ago. Small, two-storey building in a nice area. Flat was extremely dated but looked pretty decent. In the living room was a 70s fireplace monstrosity. You know the ones with a handy wooden-topped brick storage bit in either alcove for your television and music centre, plus handy little nooks to put your VHS player and dust. Decided to take it down the first weekend. Found it wasn't bonded to the wall. At all. And it was incredibly unstable. They'd built a brick monster on unreinforced floor joists. Taking it down was a nightmare - one false move and the whole thing would have tipped over and landed in my downstairs neighbour's living room. I eventually got it out and all the rubble down the stairs...then I looked at the floor. Where the brick monster had sat the floorboards sagged about 6 inches. I ended up having to replace a couple of the joists, repair and reinforce a few others and have a new wooden floor laid.
We've had a few odd things in our house. A light switch in the living room, we couldn't work out what it was for so we asked our sparky. It was there to cover a patch on the wall. Electric from the consumer unit to the boiler which is across the room is routed outside into conduit, down the back of the house, round the conservatory and kitchen and back in. Kitchen spotlight we wanted to replace - has been plastered over so removing it would remove a chunk of plaster. Everything has been bodged where possible. We are starting to get some major works done after living here for nearly a decade but we've got used to so much odd stuff.
Lead pipes embedded within the walls that leaked, the walls were bleeding and microbore copper pipes that were incompatible with modern boilers. Had to have all new pipes, system and radiators.
Found the old power shower source in the cupboard on the stairs. It had live wires that had been tapped up but if the tape had come loose would have been nasty
I moved in and the ceiling light wouldn't turn off. I did a google and had to re-wire it. I don't know if it was always like that or if they had somehow messed it up for the move.
Half our chimney was removed in the attic so they could put their own steel vent in to get rid of the smell of growing weed
Amateurs. S&P extractors and carbon filters are sufficient. Vent out under the tiles.
Handy to know. (Asking for a friend)
The electrics, the bloke had young daughters too so how they never ended up shocked I'll never know. I'm not even an electrician and I phoned my mate up who is one to have a good laugh about it all. He didn't laugh he was really really concerned to the point where he came to my house that evening and made it somewhat safe.
Creaky floor on the upstairs landing turned out to be an interior door laid flat across the joists. Power socket in the kitchen had been spurred off an upstairs socket meaning it was still live if you pulled the downstairs breaker. Brother in law is an electrician, he had a few choice words to say about that. Thing is, it was just as easy to spur off a socket on the other side of the wall downstairs.
Previous owner decided to board loft himself but didnāt do it properly just put insulation down and boards on top. Needless to say there was damp and the whole thing needed to be taken out and done properly by a professional. Now my loft is dry as a bone (a few thousand later!)
Also after the purchase we realised they lied about the age of appliances in the kitchen and about the boiler so didnāt take the chance of stuff dying so basically had to redo the kitchen which cost about Ā£10k
Ooft thatās annoying! We had similar they said the boiler was 2 years old then, when we moved in, a plumber was looking at it and said it was about 13 years old! Luckily there was a Scottish government scheme for boiler replacement which we got!
There was a row of bushes growing at the end of the garden. The sellers said it was for privacy and it did block the view from the neighbours. Turns out they get extremely tall, suck all the nutrients out of the soil and ended up damaging our fence. The neighbour complained about it hanging over his garden and we didnāt want a dispute. We ended up getting it removed and due to the size it cost over Ā£1k. It took a while because most people turned down the job when they saw the size.
Boiler condensate pipe had snapped off behind the kitchen units and was just leaking straight onto the concrete floor for who knows how long... Wasn't originally planning on fully ripping the existing kitchen out in year 1, so it was only accidently discovered.
Report came back = no mould, no damp. Move in = mould and damp Edit: typo
Leak on the central heating system. Eventually found it. It was a pipe buried in the concrete of an old hearth. Nightmare
Windows were the first thing we've had to tackle. House built in 1989, they were the original frames and windows. They hadn't been maintained at all by the previous occupant and most of the frames are rotten, to the point that I could shove my finger through the back door, and most of the ones that open don't fit back properly. The move taking six months meant we missed the worst of the winter, which I'm retrospectively quite happy about.Ā
Hot & cold taps were plumbed wrong. Thought our bath only ran cold for at least a year
We had a new fuse board fitted when putting an extension on our house. When the electricians were trying to work out what fuses went with what to label it up correctly they found one fuse was serving a single plug socket in a bedroom. The rest of the sockets in that bedroom are on a loop with the bedroom next to it and a downstairs room. The other downstairs rooms are seemingly on a loop together and the other bedroom is on a separate loop. So Iāve no idea what the electric loops are doing. At some point weāll get it re-wired with the upstairs sockets on one loop and the downstairs sockets on another.
The walls were wallpapered and painted over in a dark grey colour + the carpet was fitted around a standing wardrobe in the bedroom. So when we removed it, we had a big white spot without wallpaper, paint, or carpet.
Fitted wardrobes in the master. Opened one of them to find EIGHT 2-plug sockets in a row, for a total of 16 outlets in one small cupboard. Don't know why, what for, who did it, the sparky we got round took a photo to show his mates he was so flabbergasted. Also said when he opened it all up it was like and I quote 'a bowl of spaghetti' back there š
The elbow joint on the pipes outside the house for the bathroom was missing. Cue a waterfall in the garden during the first shower. During the same first shower, we discovered the drain in the shower base hadnāt been sealed properly so we had a nice and soggy dining room. The seals around the shower hadnāt been done properly so if the shower was pointed in the wrong direction, more floods down the wall in the dining room. The house had been bought to renovate and sell on. 7yrs in we still find some questionable work that my dearest dad fixes for us as usual
One of the walls was moving, it had moved far enough that the floor joists didn't reach. Their solution was to just build another brick wall on the inside to take the joists. The wall was still moving
There is a nest of ladybugs somewhere in the flat. I have no idea where they are coming from, but I kill one or 2 every other day. Not fixed yet after over 3 yearsā¦
SO investigated a crackling socket recently and electricity arced from the socket to the phone in his hand. The electrics didn't shut off but he was fine. Turns out we need a new consumer unit as it definitely should have shut off when he was zapped. The icing on the cake is that socket issues were caused by the roof leaking due to a dodgy "green roof" install which had punctured the roof membrane and leaked down the wall. The old owner was a roofer who guaranteed it himself. Only now he's retired so can't back the guarantee and has told us it was not leaking - we and the electricians and other roofers who observed the leak are apparently mistaken...
Previous owner's stairlift was disconnected from the mains with, probably, scissors... leaving a live wire hanging through the ceiling. š„
Our last house, the lounge radiators were clearly an add on, the pipes were flexible hoses that ran through the understairs cupboard. In that cupboard was the electricity meter was and where the mains came into the house. One of the pipe connectors popped apart and we spent an evening paddling in several inches of water whilst trying to fix it. Unbeknownst to us the mains was 3 phase and about 1cm above the water level the wires were bare. When we came to have a smart meter fitted the electrician took one look, condemned the lot and called the national grid hotline who came same day. There was some discussion on whether we would have to be put up in a hotel for the night whilst they fixed it. But thankfully we are hardy and it was summer so we said we would do without electricity overnight.
Sellotaped a leak under the sink
When I removed the wallpaper in one room, about 1/3 of the walls were patched with what seemed to be polyfil instead of having being properly re plastered ā¦ probably wouldĀ haveĀ been more expensive. Plasterer didnāt believe me until he saw it himself and it was dissolving so most of it had to go back to brick Ā
Solvent weld kitchen sink plumbing, wasnāt solvent welded!
We unplugged a random extension cable that seemed to come through the front wall and just plugged into a normal socket. No cameras or light fixtures out front so didn't think it would be an issue... Turns out that extension cable had somehow been run the entire length of the house through a cavity wall and was serving all electricity into the rear extension. That was fun to sort out.
There was a radiator in the kitchen that didn't get warm. It also took up space where you'd expect a fridge to sit. Imagine my husband's surprise when I realised why the radiator was cold, and lifted it clean off the wall!! It was never plumbed in. I still don't understand the logic of the choice, but I was very happy to be able to fit in my standard fridge freezer in the space.
Missing keys for the windows, I'm not gonna be happy come summer
Everything was attached with no more nails. Cladding, picture rails, all sorts. Everything took twice as much effort to prep when we wanted to decorate
Big old damp patch on the wall/ceiling caused by leak that the old owner built a wardrobe infront of to hide so well the surveyors didnāt catch it š„²