Before moving into your home, what did you do?

[konapoppy]

Change locks?
Have a cleaning service come?

[Deleted]

Nothing really. We moved in the day after we closed and I cleaned it myself. We changed the locks pretty soon afterwards.

[TBM]

We had the laminate flooring and carpet removed, so more like had a 'mess up the house' service come. lol

We also lived in the house while a new roof was put on, new air conditioners were installed, and the new floors were put in. That was just in the first month. We didn't change the locks, since we had contractors in and out and our contractor had our keys before we did (we were out of state when the house closed). We do need to change them now though.

That is not our usual way of doing things. In the past, before we have moved in we have replaced toilet seats, locks and cleaned everything ourselves, except in a new build home. In the new build, we installed a ceiling fan and a garage door opener, and we painted the face of the cabinet boxes in the kitchen, and we had the locks rekeyed.

[kaylie]

We removed wallpaper and installed beadboard in our mudroom and then painted the mudroom and our master bedroom. We painted the wood beams on our family room ceiling from dark wood to white. We cleaned the carpets (not a service, just bout a Bissel carpet cleaner at BBB and did it ourselves). We tried to do anything that would be harder once we moved in.

[housegeek]

Nothing. But it was a new home

[mrs.jacinthe]

Our current home, we changed out the upstairs flooring, painted the kitchen cabinets, and changed the toilet seats. I also cleaned every square inch with bleach due to a long-past rodent infestation that they Never. Cleaned. Up. Blech.

Our OH house we repainted and changed out the toilet seats. It was clean when we moved in (they hired professionals to do it before they listed)

[pumpkin]

I changed the locks and had the carpets cleaned. I also deep cleaned the kitchen and bathrooms and painted a couple of walls, but the painting could have been done after I moved in.

[cjeanette]

Had painters do the kitchen and cabinets, great room and dining room. Upstairs we removed wall paper in kids rooms and painted. Painted master. Has all the carpets cleaned. Seller had a service clean after she moved out so we were good there.

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[treedimensional]

Bought light bulbs. The previous owner removed every one of them. There are ceiling fixtures in every room. I didn't own a lamp, and I didn't own a ladder. So I had to stand on a chair and screw a bulb in every single room, and all the hallways.

[konapoppy]

Apr 12, 2014 12:21:06 GMT -5 treedimensional said:

Bought light bulbs. The previous owner removed every one of them. There are ceiling fixtures in every room. I didn't own a lamp, and I didn't own a ladder. So I had to stand on a chair and screw a bulb in every single room, and all the hallways.

Ugh, how annoying!

[konapoppy]

Thanks, all. We are getting the ceiling scraped and hope to do a few hvac and plumbing repairs before we move in. I think the seller had cleaners come through before she staged the house, so I guess I should just do some light cleaning. It will help us save a little money.

[hbomdiggity]

Painted (DIY)
Locksmith to the-key locks
Change toilet seats
Cleaner

[cjeanette]

I am jealous of getting the ceiling scraped. It didn't occur to me to do that before moving in as our old house didn't have popcorn.

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[auntie]

Oh dear Lord treedimensional. We had that happen on one of my parents' moves. Previous owner pulled everything- even the bulb from the fridge. He was like the Grinch cleaning out Whoville.

Our last house was destroyed in a flood, we moved in with my parents and bought their place a couple months later. We did nothing first, although I did repaint a room for DS when we first came here. My mother insisted on deep cleaning her bedroom when we made settlement and I had the fun of packing all her crap and supervising her move to storage/beach house.

ETA: I had recently changed her locks to match mine so I only had to carry a single door key. So I didn't have to change the locks. That reminds me, I need to re-key her house in FL. 

[cjeanette]

Apr 12, 2014 12:21:06 GMT -5 treedimensional said:

Bought light bulbs. The previous owner removed every one of them. There are ceiling fixtures in every room. I didn't own a lamp, and I didn't own a ladder. So I had to stand on a chair and screw a bulb in every single room, and all the hallways.

Who wants to take the time to pack used light bulbs?

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[pumpkin]

I also replaced the batteries in all my smoke detectors.

I was highly annoyed that the several times I looked at the condo one of the smoke detectors was beeping. It drove me crazy! And I was surprised that the listing agent hadn't bothered to change it (the condo was empty at the time).

[konapoppy]

Apr 12, 2014 12:38:35 GMT -5 cjeanette said:

I am jealous of getting the ceiling scraped. It didn't occur to me to do that before moving in as our old house didn't have popcorn.

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It is going to be about 2,700 including painting after they scrape, but figured it was better to just get it out of the way.

[TBM]

Apr 12, 2014 12:56:20 GMT -5 pumpkin said:

I also replaced the batteries in all my smoke detectors.

I was highly annoyed that the several times I looked at the condo one of the smoke detectors was beeping. It drove me crazy! And I was surprised that the listing agent hadn't bothered to change it (the condo was empty at the time).

Good call on that.   It is such an easy thing to do, and you have no idea when the previous owners changed them.

[pumpkin]

Apr 12, 2014 13:28:39 GMT -5 TBM said:

Apr 12, 2014 12:56:20 GMT -5 pumpkin said:

I also replaced the batteries in all my smoke detectors.

I was highly annoyed that the several times I looked at the condo one of the smoke detectors was beeping. It drove me crazy! And I was surprised that the listing agent hadn't bothered to change it (the condo was empty at the time).

Good call on that.   It is such an easy thing to do, and you have no idea when the previous owners changed them.

I've heard that one should do this once a year. I can't say that I'm that on top of things, but figured it was a place to start

[TBM]

Apr 12, 2014 13:42:57 GMT -5 pumpkin said:

Apr 12, 2014 13:28:39 GMT -5 TBM said:

Good call on that.   It is such an easy thing to do, and you have no idea when the previous owners changed them.

I've heard that one should do this once a year. I can't say that I'm that on top of things, but figured it was a place to start

We used to change ours when the time changed...twice a year.

Our new detectors have some kind of super long term/lifetime batteries.  We are supposed to check them monthly, but have not been on top of that.  They are only a few of months old though, and were checked to make sure that they were working when they were installed.  Actually, one wasn't working properly and the manufacturer replaced it.

[savan]

We painted the bedroom walls (DIY) and that was it.

[gtkim]

We actually had it in our contract that the seller have the home professionally cleaned after they moved out so we didn't have to worry about it.

We spent 3 weeks doing all of the following:
Painted 4 of the 5 bedrooms
Replaced carpet in 3 bedrooms
Replaced carpet in the living room with hardwoods
Replaced carpet on the stairs and in the hall with hardwoods
Removed carpet from main area of basement, and had the concrete floor cleaned and stained.

[mrspez07]

Changed the locks and front door hardware, painted all upstairs bedrooms, THEN had the carpet replaced up there. Cleaned.
The painting took forever doing it on nights/weekends for a couple of weeks, but so nice not to have to worry about paint on carpet and furniture in the rooms.

[chikastuff]

DH replaced all of the electrical and changed the locks. I think he may have had cleaners come in as well.

[sillygoosegirl]

Did a deep cleaning on the kitchen and hired a guy to clean the carpets. That's it. I wish we'd done more (cleaning and rennovations), but we were so excited to move in already! And friends available to help with the move that weekend...

[ruthie7532]

We had 6 contractors in our house the day after closing to fix minor things--sweeping the chimney, draining the septic,  fixing minor plumbing leaks and some fuses in our geothermal system, and an attempt to fix our broken dishwasher (they failed over and over again), and an exterminator. Our realtor talked the bank into getting some dead trees removed before we moved in, but they refused to fix anything else since it was a foreclosure. We had about a week after closing before we had furniture moved in, so we also painted 4 rooms. We also spent a lot of time getting rid of spiderwebs and dead bugs (hence the exterminator).

[bunnymendelbaum]

Made a functioning bathroom!
We changed the locks too.

[kayakjenn]

Had family come to help clean (especially kitchen and bathrooms,) replaced toilet seats and locks. Friends came over to help paint the bedrooms.

My big regret is letting H convince me that we could live with certain paint colors in the house and that I didn't put my foot down about refinishing the floors. H wanted in the house so fast that we barely got anything done and now 5 years later I wonder if we'll ever get to any of it.

[Susie]

Almost nothing. Our closing was a couple weeks late, so we only had one weekend overlap between our rental and the house. We painted the master bedroom, put in a CO detector, and moved our stuff in.

We're only now changing the locks, lol -- in conjunction with replacing the entire front door + lockset. We've lived here 5.5 years.

[aweilba]

We changed the locks, cleaned the house thoroughly, and replaced a few of the light fixtures.  The house was disgusting, and the seller was supposed to have it professionally cleaned before we moved in, per the contract, but he didn't.  We were so sick of dealing with him at that point that we didn't fight it and just cleaned it ourselves after we closed.