For fun - What made you go "hmmmm" in your new home?

[Wallflower]

Unless you moved into a new home, you took over a home from someone who may have done things differently that you would. So, what did you find in your new home that left you a little perplexed or appalled or amused?

Here are a couple of mine:

• No screens on the windows or the door to the deck. I live in upstate NY and opening the windows in summer, without screens, means bugs, never mind having pets go through the window or out the door to the deck. (The window screens were found in the basement and a new door and screen is on my wishlist.)
• I live in a cape house, which means attic/eaves space front and back upstairs, divided by in the middle of the house by the stairs/upstairs bathroom. So, four attic/eaves spaces. I have access panels into three of these spaces and there is obviously a place where you used to be able to get in the fourth but can't any longer. No idea why they closed off this access.

[Accountingcat]

Wallflower , maybe they removed the window screens seasonally? My installer told me to take them out in the winter so they last longer and makes spring cleaning easier.

My current house was "flipped" so I have had a lot of wtf moments.
- The biggest is that they framed out the basement with 2x2 wood and didn't really do any studs. I ended up gutting the basement when I realized I couldn't hang anything.
- They also added a couple of random niches. The house is a 1950s cookie cutter and I know none of the others have niches.
- My main HVAC vents for the bathrooms are in the showers.

[Wallflower]

Accountingcat, it's possible. The screens are a bitch to put in and take out, so if they did that I'm impressed. It's also possible that they removed them to wash the windows in preparation for selling the house. Either way, the screens were in the basement, at the very back of a closet built under the stairs … I was lucky to find them pretty quickly after moving in.

WFT about those HVAC vents! I mean, seriously, the showers???

[circa1978]

We have most of the screens off our house. I don't care for the way they look and we actually do open the windows often. Bugs have never been an issue. They are all in the basement. 🤷‍♀️

We have a sunroom that was built on by previous owner. There is a bay window in the adjoining room and I guess they couldn't figure out how to make that work without putting in a new window and residing the house so one bay of the window actually looks into an indoor room instead of the outside.

[Susie]

There were a couple light switches we couldn't figure out.  Eventually we had an electrician in for another reason, and he figured out that the kitchen sink area was wired to have a disposal put in, but they never did.  So there was a switch that really did go to nothing.

[litasail]

We found a bucket of used doorknobs buried in our backyard.

[carmenere]

There’s so much bad DIY in our house that I wish we had noticed before we bought it. The one that’s really perplexing is our living room, which has crown molding and wooden ceiling beams. One section of molding between two beams is installed upside down.

[oregonpachey]

We have a secret room. It was not in the house listing and the only reason we found out about it was the inspector was looking at the HVAC system and found the entrance behind some duct work.

Turns out, our living room (now has a vaulted ceiling) used to have a loft and a spiral staircase going up to the secret room. I think they used it as a library.

[Accountingcat]

Oct 29, 2020 10:26:45 GMT -5 circa1978 said:

We have most of the screens off our house. I don't care for the way they look and we actually do open the windows often. Bugs have never been an issue. They are all in the basement. 🤷‍♀️

We have a sunroom that was built on by previous owner. There is a bay window in the adjoining room and I guess they couldn't figure out how to make that work without putting in a new window and residing the house so one bay of the window actually looks into an indoor room instead of the outside.

How funky. I looked at a house that had this except the window was from the laundry room looking into the new family room.

[circa1978]

Accountingcat, What's really weird is that based on the flooring and everything else, the sunroom was added within a year or so of the construction. It's on my list of things to deal with but because we have seagrass shades on both sides, most people don't notice. We actually didn't even notice it the first two times we walked through.

[lilac05]

Our main level has nice tile floors and the entry even has a custom tile mosaic (that's totally NMS), but the master bathroom has the cheapest, most awful vinyl floor that I've ever seen.

[deadwing]

The light switches in my house are a mess. Most are installed so that up is off, but not all. There is one where the left switch is up for on, the right switch is up for off. Most of the switches have a little dimmer slider next to them. These are installed correctly (up = brighter, down = dimmer). Also, the dial to control the water temp in the shower is installed backwards.

In my last house, we had to open the ceiling in the kitchen to repair a small drip from the upstairs bathroom. I'm pretty sure the bathtub was being held up by magic. There was nothing under it. I have a residual, low-grade fear of bathtubs crashing through the floor and ending up in the basement.

[Wallflower]

I'm getting a good laugh from some of these! Not the bathtub maybe falling through the ceiling, though, deadwing. That's one of my "I hope it's irrational" concerns.

So here's another … One of the bedrooms had a wall with cork panels, about 1/4" thick, glued to the walls. It was ugly, especially after my cats decided it was good scratching material, but whatever. But then they later put up crown molding and put it ON TOP OF the cork board. So, when I took the cork down, I had a gap between the crown molding and the wall.

[hamster]

So many. The painting of the counters with non food safe spray probably tops it. Most recently a nail that was left in a tree for my husband to find when he was chainsawing.

Best part is we bought from my MIL.

[deadwing]

Oct 29, 2020 13:28:23 GMT -5 Wallflower said:

I'm getting a good laugh from some of these! Not the bathtub maybe falling through the ceiling, though, deadwing . That's one of my "I hope it's irrational" concerns.

I mean... the bathtub never actually fell.  It just seemed like it should.  I'm not gonna lie, that was one of the things I was most excited to leave behind when we sold that house.  

[InBetweenDays]

Similar to oregonpachey, our last house had a small secret room above the dining room. We discovered it because there was a window from that room out to the backyard, but no way to enter the room. We ended up cutting a hole in the ceiling and putting in a ship's ladder and turning it into a little hangout space (it had a low ceiling).

The house was built in 1895 and one of the previous owners stopped by a few years after we bought it. They said that previously that room had been accessed from the stairwell to the second floor (which was behind the wall). But the entry would have been midway up the stairwell and there was no sign that any door or other entry had ever been there. These were 100+ year old lath and plaster walls so we would have noticed a newish patch. The previous owner also said that way back when that room was where a family had put an aunt that had had a mental break of some sort. It was all very weird.

[tacokick]

We have a side door in the driveway that opens to a landing where you can either go down a few steps to the basement or go up a flight to the first floor opening into the kitchen. There is a deadbolt that locks from the basement side that so you can’t open the kitchen door and go down the steps to the basement or the side door. It is an unfinished basement with low ceilings. Why would you want to lock yourself down there? It doesn’t seem like a safety/fake “safe room” situation because the side door to the outside is right there.

There is also a deadbolt in one of the bedrooms.

The old owners painted all trim metallic gold.

There is paneling or wallboard in a bunch of the rooms.

[dove]

I think I can win this challenge!

The previous owner had floor to ceiling bookcases installed in every single bedroom, save the room she slept in, complete with Putnam* rolling ladders. She also enclosed 2 patios to put more free standing bookcases that were left in the house.

*if you aren’t familiar, Putnam rolling ladders are fancy af. I learned that after I was researching what to price them at for sale

[Accountingcat]

Oct 29, 2020 14:06:37 GMT -5 tacokick said:

We have a side door in the driveway that opens to a landing where you can either go down a few steps to the basement or go up a flight to the first floor opening into the kitchen. There is a deadbolt that locks from the basement side that so you can’t open the kitchen door and go down the steps to the basement or the side door. It is an unfinished basement with low ceilings. Why would you want to lock yourself down there? It doesn’t seem like a safety/fake “safe room” situation because the side door to the outside is right there.

There is also a deadbolt in one of the bedrooms.

The old owners painted all trim metallic gold.

There is paneling or wallboard in a bunch of the rooms.

Any chance you are in Michigan? My aunt had a house with that same basement/kitchen set up and they used to always call it a "michigan basement". No idea why though. 

[brooklyn]

We just bought a house where the only access to the attic is through the master bathroom.

I want to finish the attic someday and have the stairs down go to the upstairs hallway instead of through the bathroom.

My grandmother’s house in PA has the entrance to the basement through the first floor bathroom.

[tacokick]

Oct 29, 2020 15:56:50 GMT -5 Accountingcat said:

Oct 29, 2020 14:06:37 GMT -5 tacokick said:

We have a side door in the driveway that opens to a landing where you can either go down a few steps to the basement or go up a flight to the first floor opening into the kitchen. There is a deadbolt that locks from the basement side that so you can’t open the kitchen door and go down the steps to the basement or the side door. It is an unfinished basement with low ceilings. Why would you want to lock yourself down there? It doesn’t seem like a safety/fake “safe room” situation because the side door to the outside is right there.

There is also a deadbolt in one of the bedrooms.

The old owners painted all trim metallic gold.

There is paneling or wallboard in a bunch of the rooms.

Any chance you are in Michigan? My aunt had a house with that same basement/kitchen set up and they used to always call it a "michigan basement". No idea why though. 

I am not! That is interesting though. In googling it does look very similar to what I have going on— we do have a thick cement floor that I’m pretty sure was once just dirt. Maybe it was popular when our houses were built? Our house is around 90 years old. I feel like it was right around the time when people started to actually want to be able to put things in the basement like washing machines and not just have a crawl space.

[bcv513]

I swear the previous owner of this house was an undercover agent or something. The entire basement was taken up by a giant safe. It was the size of a small car. I have no idea how they got it out of the house. There was a second safe in the bedroom closet that they uninstalled and took with them. The alarm system is state of the art and has a control panel in every room. Even the driveway had an alarm on it. It took us months to realize the random chiming we heard happened whenever someone was in the driveway. Even a squirrel can set it off.

One thing I love is that the house is set up for a lefty. The faucets, light switches, outlets, etc are all where I naturally reach for them. Washing dishes is so easy!

[thatgirl2478]

so many...

we have a very obviously rectangular house - literally twice as wide as deep. they put the furnace at the other end of the house instead of say, the middle so the air/heat is never balanced.

in some rooms there are 3 switches - one operates outlets. which would be cool except that the switches are by the door so you still have to go across the room to turn them on/off.

speaking of the switches - in some places the first one operates lights, in other places the fan. why no consistency?

then there's the dumb/dangerous stuff - like not tightening the drain connections enough so they leaked. or using masking tape on electrical wires instead of electrical tape.

there's more that I can't even remember/haven't found yet I'm sure. :/

[libbygrl109]

We have spent the last 14 years uncovering all kinds of “fine craftsmanship”.

We had some scary discoveries with the electrical - like the breakers for the AC and dryer just hanging out on their own on the wall, bypassing the main board shutoff, the outlets to 4 different rooms on 1 circuit, and other fun stuff that had our electrician saying, “That’s not good” several times when he was doing our box upgrade.

We had an approximately 5x8 inch hole in the Sheetrock that was covered by wallpaper.

They used extra pieces of linoleum flooring to line their cabinets. It covered up some holes.

We have a small window that I guess used to house a wall AC unit. The trim doesn’t match any other in the house, and bright cherry red stained was just slapped on everywhere - wood, caulk, window.

And a screened in porch that has “studs” that are not nailed to anything.

Wallflower - I think we live in the same area?

[Wallflower]

libbygrl109 , your window reminds me of my brother's house, when the former residents took a saw to the window frame to make an a/c unit fit. Sounds like maybe yours is this same!

Are you in the Albany area too? 😊

[libbygrl109]

Oct 29, 2020 22:38:47 GMT -5 Wallflower said:

libbygrl109 , your window reminds me of my brother's house, when the former residents took a saw to the window frame to make an a/c unit fit. Sounds like maybe yours is this same!

Are you in the Albany area too? 😊

The window frame is intact - just whoever painted the trim did not like having the job.

Yes I am! Just north of it.

[Wallflower]

Oct 29, 2020 22:41:13 GMT -5 libbygrl109 said:

Oct 29, 2020 22:38:47 GMT -5 Wallflower said:

libbygrl109 , your window reminds me of my brother's house, when the former residents took a saw to the window frame to make an a/c unit fit. Sounds like maybe yours is this same!

Are you in the Albany area too? 😊

The window frame is intact - just whoever painted the trim did not like having the job.

Yes I am! Just north of it.

LOL - people are weird. In my brother's case, you couldn't even close the window securely. It leaked cold air like mad. 

I'm in Brunswick, so north and across the river from Albany. And snow this morning?? At least, if you have to drive in it, the roads look mostly wet right now. Thankfully, I get to sit in my home office and just look out at it.

[libbygrl109]

Oct 30, 2020 6:35:30 GMT -5 Wallflower said:

Oct 29, 2020 22:41:13 GMT -5 libbygrl109 said:

The window frame is intact - just whoever painted the trim did not like having the job.

Yes I am! Just north of it.

LOL - people are weird. In my brother's case, you couldn't even close the window securely. It leaked cold air like mad. 

I'm in Brunswick, so north and across the river from Albany. And snow this morning?? At least, if you have to drive in it, the roads look mostly wet right now. Thankfully, I get to sit in my home office and just look out at it.

Oh, I would have flipped my ish if there was air coming through. There have been just so many things that looked fine on the outside, but was a real mess.

I’m in Saratoga county, CP area - not very far you!

[aprilsails]

Our previous house had an incompetent DIYer as the owner before us. The next door neighbour was a contractor and he tried to help when he could, but he said it generally ended in disaster no matter what.

- When DIYer finished the basement he set up all the outlets on light switches. So you had to leave the lights on in the basement to run the washing machine or it would turn off. I can’t count how many times we thought we had run the laundry but had turned it off accidentally with the lights while walking out of the room. You could only plug the freezer and the hot water tank into specific non-switched plugs, the only two in the room which were nowhere near the freezer or hot water tank.
-DIYer ran out of outlets in the utility room and had the furnace plugged into an extension cord that he had fished through the ceiling from the electrical panel.
-DIYer built a deck on the back of the house that extended over one of the basement windows. He put a mirror up in the basement to hide the useless window. He filled the window well with dirt and sand and sawdust while building the deck. Three years after we moved in the window well flooded and we had water pouring down inside.
-DIYer buried an above ground pool in a hole in the backyard and then built the most rugged deck imaginable around it. Apparently he got the height of the deck wrong on the first pass so he built another deck on top of the deck 8” higher. I cannot describe how much wood we removed from that hole. Of course the above ground pool caved in and the tin walls were completely rotten when we ripped it all out. They are not meant to be buried. I’m actually shocked it lasted as long as it did, and I attribute much of its structural strength to the insane deck holding the dirt back a bit.
-Finally, before we moved in DIYer put down new tile floors in all the bathrooms, the entry and the kitchen. He used wall grout instead of floor grout. It looked great when we moved in but about 6 months later you would just vacuum the grout out of the floor on every pass.

[Wallflower]

aprilsails, wow. Just wow.