Bizarre things previous homeowners did

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I closed on a house last Monday. My GF and I both got shutdown furloughed the next day, which turned out to be somewhat nicely timed, giving us a week to work on the house and move some things.

Anyway, this is an older house, and previously owned by an older woman and her late husband for the last 30-some-odd years. Working through the house, patching holes in the walls and getting things cleaned up and ready to move our things in, I’ve come across quite a few bizarre things they had done:

There’s a large mirror over the fireplace. Maybe they wanted to room to look bigger or were vain or whatever, either way that thing had to go. It was seemingly held in place with a J channel at the bottom and some mirror brackets. Nope. Glued to the wall.

They built their microwave into the wall. Looks nice from the kitchen side, unfortunately that space came from the living room coat closet, rendering it all but useless.

Preparing the walls for paint, we’ve discovered we’re dealing with paint over old wallpaper, over older wallpaper. I’m afraid to dig any further; it may well be wallpaper all the way through!

There’s hardwood floors throughout, and some carpet we pulled up in the two bedrooms and in the basement. The carpet in the basement was laid over laminate and, again, glued down.

So then I go to pull up the carpet on the basement stairs, and both the carpet and the tack strips are nailed to the stairs with 3" framing nails. Seriously, what kind of psycho nails carpet in with freakin’ framing nails?! :confused:

Who knows what else we’ll find in the coming days…
Do you have any stories of things the previous owner(s) of your home did, that you had to undo (or learn to live with)?

2

Many. Our last house in California was a 1960s ranch built by a high-quality builder in what I think was the last era of honest construction. (I lived in a ca. 1970 equivalent whose roof was so under-supported I was afraid to walk on it…)

The house had basically been in the same family since new. The oldest brother took it over and had two wings professionally added, which made it large enough for our family of 8. He did many other nice things, including facing the plain-brick fireplace with stone.

Then the younger brother took it over; “Home Depot genius” is the only description I can come up with. In about two years he:

[ul]
[li]Painted the stone fireplace with some kind of absolutely indestructible white paint - I suspect it was some kind of rubberized marine epoxy. I spent ten years chipping at various parts, trying to figure out how to get it off. Never did succeed; ended up doing a very nice faux stone paint job over the whole thing.[/li][li]Painting the entire interior very cheap apartment white. We eventually repainted everything, and every surface needed high-quality primer just to get paint to stick to whatever $8 a can crap he used.[/li][li]Covered some beautiful hardwood floors with the nastiest $3/yard crap HD ever sold. It cost more to have the tearout hauled away than to have a floor guy resurface each room.[/li][li]Rewired many things without the slightest idea of what these “wire” things were. I spent a year fixing absolutely bizarre switch/light combinations and peculiar behavior. The worst was the freestanding hot tub, which we cleaned and filled and were ready to use when I realized I got a weird tingle every time I touched the water. Hours and hours of checking later, I found he had reversed the hot and neutral connections within the unit’s control box.[/li][/ul]
I’ve forgotten half of the crap I had to fix, but it was fortunate that he had moved to Australia with his family or, after some sessions straightening out absolutely crazy “fixes” I would have hunted him down with a ball-peen hammer.

3

Beneath the wall to wall, 40yr old broadloom, were magnificent cherry inlaid hardwood floors. Imagine our surprise! We’d lifted corners to confirm there was hardwood but never expected what we saw! Our contractor was stunned.

We also found a transom window, entirely intact, above the front door, dry walled over when the porch was added I expect. We left it, as we enjoy the porch a lot, but if it ever needs to come down we’ll definitely expose the hidden window!

Old houses are awesome!

4

Took me almost ten years to rid my yard of junk. Just got lucky with a kid making a living ‘picking’.

No titles for 5 scrap vehicles, paid him $35.00.

Gave him a nice wood chipper though.

5

Our fireplace is no longer functional but very nicely tiled-over. At some point after it was tiled, though, the previous owners surrounded the entire thing, floor to ten-foot ceiling, with wood paneling that came out about two feet from the wall/fireplace. This was before the last time the floor and ceiling was re-done so it was actually plastered in at the top. Anyway, the only part of the actual fireplace that was exposed before we tore that down was the tiled over interior. They covered that with this brick-printed contact paper or what-have-you. I peeled that off but it left exactly what you described. I’ve unsuccessfully tried every solvent I can reasonably get my hands on and at this point I’m just putting off admitting defeat and painting the damn thing.

There were a lot of other questionable things they did to the house (it took me two days to take down the mirrored wall because of how they attached the panels), but the worst were in the bathroom. It’s small but had a Jacuzzi style tub. For no good reason, they lowered the ceiling in the bathroom above the tub so that I had an inch of clearance when standing in it for a shower. In this ceiling against which my hair would brush were four lights and a fan which were never used because I was trying not to electrocute myself.

Worse, though, was that after a bit of living there we noticed that there was a small amount of water in the kitchen ceiling right below the toilet. When we pulled the toilet up, we found that the 3" toilet drain was sitting on a 4" drain pipe with no adapter. Comically, though, there was a wax ring sitting inside the 4" pipe. So toilet water had been leaking out the whole time. At that point, we got the bathroom redone professionally, resolving all the issues there. But when we repaired the kitchen ceiling ourselves (waiting for it to dry out first), we discovered why the leaking water had only just started to show despite the old toilet being installed no more recently than two decades ago. At some point they’d lowered the kitchen ceiling about a foot and a half, leaving the old one in place. The original ceiling had already rotted away to the point that it crumbled when you touched it.

6

I forgot the best thing about the Jacuzzi tub. It worked once. It wasn’t until it was torn out that we learned why. It was plugged into the only GFCI outlet in the house. This outlet, tripped of course, was buried in the wall.

7

We had a couple. They previous owner had a fast food banquet outside as some sort of patio table. It was the kind where the seats were attached to the table, and looked like it came from McDonalds.

The bathroom mirror was supported on one side by a jar. He never bothered to use a drywall anchor. The ceiling fan was improperly installed. We ran it and it tore out the wiring. The bedroom was painted a high gloss pigs blood red. It took several coats of primer to cover it up.

When we had the bathroom retiled, we found out that the backer board was attached to the wall with a piece of one by four. The one by four was held up with construction adhesive.

The transom window over the front door was a piece of plexi glass. The one over the back door had a small gap so cold air could get in.

8

In addition to the multiple layers of wallpaper in every room that I had to remove, I encountered the most perplexing head-scratcher in the bathroom. After getting through most of the wallpaper, I was dreading having to get behind the toilet. I sucked it up, turned off the water line, drained the toilet, and removed it so I’d have full access.

Because *something *was going on behind that toilet, and I was going to find out. The wallpaper had a very pronounced bulge, like water damage or something had bubbled the paper away from the wall. Which, it turned out, was sort of true. I started peeling paper away, and encountered some pretty thick cardboard. I pried underneath, and a 1’x2’ section of cardboard started coming off of the wall. What the hell?!? As I finally get it off of the wall,I inspect it.

It’s the cover of a large, coffee table book about the US Capitol building. It’s been attached to the wall with pushpins. Pushpins! And the reason it was up there is because it was covering up a large hole in the plastered wall.

No, no, people. Don’t go out and buy $2 worth of plaster and patch it up - you should go through the trouble of ripping out all the pages of this giant book, and then attaching it with glue and pushpins. THAT will solve this problem! (Then cover it up with 4 layers of wallpaper.)

9

Oh Mah Gah. I could fill pages with this.

The previous owner of the 150y/o house “rehabbed” it enough to pawn it off on us then split the country. The person who inspected it must have been in cahoots with her since he signed off on things that we found to be blatant mistakes.

The plumbing vent pipes in the attic were not glued, just loosely placed together so that they leaked into the attic and the ceilings below.

Front porch ceiling turned out to be completely rotten underneath the clever paint job.

One of the showers was redone with the cheapest fixtures ever and they squeak and squeal when the water is turned on. When we consulted with our own plumber to have the whole thing redone he told us there is no access to the plumbing in the shower, so that the entire wall in the hallway will have to be cut into to make access for it, entailing drywalling, carpentry, painting, etc etc, in addition to the plumbing.

In the same bathroom, the sink plumbing pipes run on the OUTER wall that is not insulated, so that when temps reach below freezing the pipes freeze up and no water comes out.

I truly think that when the “contractor” who rehabbed the house fell off the roof and was no longer able to supervise the job, azzhat drunk monkeys as subcontractors took over the jobs. My neighbor tells me stories about how it looked from his vantage point.

10

Two houses with reported leaks in the basement. In both cases the ground was pointlessly sloped toward the house and simple grading fixed the problem. Water runs downhill, doesn’t seem that hard to figure out.

11

Not an old-house story, my house was built in 1996. When I was looking at it in 2001, the realtor pointed out that it had cable outlets in every room (multiple in some rooms) and surround sound wiring in several rooms. At closing, I found out why, as the original owner told me that he had installed all of that himself. Actually, his exact words were: “When the house was framed I invited a bunch of friends over, we got a keg, and wired the whole house.”

It took years to undo all the ridiculous stuff he did.

12

Other than being someone who needs zero cable outlets in his house and boggles at the perceived “need” for cable in every common and bed room, I don’t follow. Are you also un-needing of whole-house media wiring, or is it all faulty?

If I ever [go completely insane and] build a house, you can be assured I will spend many weekends doing such custom wiring and prep for special features.

13

The last house I lived in with my parents had been built by the previous owner. Not really anything wrong with it except for the first time it rained we discovered that the breakfast nook’s skylight wasn’t sealed properly. Dad had to go up there and basically redo the whole thing.

Mom & Dad gave me final say in which house to by, I chose the one closer to school in case I had to walk home. Maybe it should have been the one with the pool instead.

14

Ah, yes. My friend came up with a term for this, after the name of the family that owned the house before her: “Muldoons”. Somehow, the name seems appropriate. :smiley:

My house, when I bought it, had many Muldoons.

My favorite: the house had hot-water heating with a large rad in the living room, right in front of the bay window. The owners had built a pretty wooden cabinet over the rad. The problem? There was absolutely no way to access the rad - they had not bothered to install a panel or door into the pretty cabinet - and so, when the rad needed to be bled, there was no way to do it.

We had to disassemble that cabinet to get at the rad.

15

That reminds me; the basement bathroom has a small jacuzzi tub, that for one thing is inset into the floor, but the real head-scratcher is they buried the motor for the jets underneath, with no access panel whatsoever. Did they think it was going to run perfectly forever? :confused:

16

Last place I lived was over a century old, and had been added to over time.
Each new roof has to be lower than the existing roof for the addition to drain right- add a room to a room, and the roof comes out just above the door frame.
Calling it claustrophobic would be charitable. Inside, no line was vertical or horizontal.I worried it would fall into the basement, which was an unfinished hole in some dirt.

17

I have a staircase which descends 9 ft in 5 ft. It’s basically a staircase/ladder hybrid and there is no way in hell they got building permits for the work in the basement.

They raised 3/4 of the floor in the basement by 1/2", some tile, some hardwood and they raised the only drain in the basement when they did the work, installing it in the tiled section. Unfortunately the furnace, laundry room and AC outlet are in the unfinished section. We’d need 1/2 of water before the drain is of any use. I have a large stack of old towels in there now.

When preparing the house for sale they repainted the basement - the parts you could see anyway. When they moved out we discovered entire sections of the wall that were behind furniture that were the old colour.

18

The previous owners of our house sub-divided the large “bonus room” into a main room and a smaller storage room, which actually works out pretty nice. A couple years after moving in I decided to build some storage cabinets against one of the original walls that butted up against the new wall. While removing the carpeting and baseboard molding where the cabinets would be, I discovered that whoever built the wall apparently skipped that step when putting the wall in. The wall was built on top of the carpet and the molding runs through the wall and out the other side. Lazy shits.

19

The furnace/air conditioner is in the attic. First off, I hate that as the machinery is always in the outside environment you’re trying to negate in the house. It’s 120 degrees up there in July, or 20 degrees in December, and the poor thing is trying to maintain a 50 degree difference.

Anyway, ours is in the attic. The air conditioner drain is piped directly into a sewer vent stack, so sewer gas is free to escape into the attic when the AC isn’t running. Fortunately, there’s an air gap, or the sewer gas would be venting into the AC unit itself, to be blown all around the house. Pee-Yew! Fortunately, it’s a rental, so it’s not our problem to fix.

As for the house we owned a few years back, the previous owner decided to make the front yard a xeriscape. We had the only front yard on the block that was nothing but boulders, gravel and a few scrubby things that looked like tumbleweeds that were almost ready to break loose and tumble away. It took a lot of scraping and digging to undo all this ugliness and prepare the land so we could lay sod and earn the gratitude of the entire neighborhood.

20

I bought a large co-op in a big 1920s brick building. The building has about 90 units and dominates the neighborhood. I got the place pretty cheap (by NYC standards) because it was in rough shape.

In particular:

  • With the exception of the dining room, all the beautiful, original parquet hardwood floors were covered with cheap-ass stick-on linoleum tiles. The bedrooms, living room, etc. In the dining room, the floors has been scratched up so much that they might as well have been covered anyway. First thing I did before moving in was take a belt sander to all 1500sf and re-finish it. After going through about nine zillion pounds of sandpaper I realized I should have just rented one of those big floor sanders, but whatever. The floors look brand new.

  • They installed a doorbell. By “installed,” I mean they glopped some wet plaster on the wall in the foyer and jammed the doorbell ringer into it. I guess that’s one way to affix an object to the wall. The doorbell does work, though.

  • The kitchen had so many layers of flooring that it was actually about a one-inch step up from the rest of the place. I ripped all of that out and replaced it with some nice tile when I did a gut renovation of the kitchen.

  • One entire wall in the maid’s room (now my laundry room) is covered in 1x1-foot, pink-tinted, mirror tiles. I’m slowly peeling them off one at a time, trying not the break them.

  • At some point, the nice big solid wooden internal doors in use in the rest of the building were replaced by the cheapest, flimsiest, crappiest hollow-core nearly-cardboard doors you can find. They door frames have been painted over so many times that I’ll probably have to re-trim everything before replacing the doors.

  • There was a transom window between the kitchen and maid’s room that had been covered with duct tape and the duct tape painted over. That was removed during my kitchen reno.

  • They had been using the living room as a bedroom, and they constructed a “closet” out of unsupported sheets of plasterboard, stuck to the walls with construction glue and joint compound. There was a similar structure in one of the bedrooms. I ripped them out before I moved in.