Well, I had shag rugs downstairs, my attic had pots collecting all the drips from the leaky roof, a rug in the kitchen. My upstairs bathroom had frosted mirrors and metallic wallpaper and when he tiled the floor he must have run out of tile because he just stopped and left mortar/cement on the floor. I can understand having different decorating taste but some people have absolutely no pride in home ownership and never want to do any updating for 30 years. Oh, I almost forgot - we have a really tiny backyard and our neighbors behind me are a lot higher up so we have an ugly retaining wall separating the two houses. Apparently the previous owner cut down a whole row of beautiful, mature evergreen trees that would have blocked the ugly wall and given us privacy. Ughh!

HORRIBLE!!!

We bought the house as an estate property. The family matriarch had passed away, and the two kids were left to sell the house. The "kids" were at least in their late 60s, so I have no clue how old the mother was. The house definitely had a "grandmotherly" feel to it.

The son was living in the house, but the daughter was the actual estate executor. He was a recluse, extremely private, and wouldn't leave when we viewed and even inspected the house. We still bought the house, but he left us a final surprise when he left:

Between the time we inspected the house and when we closed, he kept a dog in the dining room. Kept, as in, left it to do its business, eat, throw up, etc on the carpet. We ended up having to mop the concrete slab with straight bleach, because removing the carpet and pad and steam cleaning the slab had no affect on the smell. 2 years in the house now, and no smell - thank GOD! Apparently, he didn't like being "kicked" out of "his" house.

As for the house itself, EVERYTHING was painted white. Cabinets, paneling, walls, etc. We've been moving room to room, painting over the white, scraping the cottage cheese ceilings. We pulled up the white carpet and linoleum and had the concrete floor stained a nice dark walnut.

The strangest aspect is the cabinet hardware. Through the entire house (kitchen, laundry, baths, built-ins) every single door pull is placed dead-center in the door. It's really bizarre and not very ergonomic, especially on the extreme upper and lower cabinets.

We knew buying the house that it had its quirks, and it's actually been kinda fun updating it to our style. I just wish we had more time and money to do it quicker.

The PO was a surgeon, who apparently was too busy to clean or could not afford a cleaning service. She had 2 little dogs who had the run of the house. Dog pee on every single baseboad and every where there is carpet.

We had some doozies here too!

I'll start with the 'Wild West' guest bathroom... Not that the decor was deliberately western, but the splintery-rough exterior grade cedar paneling on all the walls and the short swinging saloon doors belonged only in a western saloon. Imagine the reassuring sense of potty privacy when screened by swinging lock-less doors mounted 2' off the floor and going up only 2' more... Howdy ma'am! ;-)

The ultra-private upstairs bath was another joy to behold. Why ultra-private? Well, the windowless 3x5 toilet room was totally separate from the windowless 4x5 tub room, which was totally separate from the windowless 3x6 sink room, which was almost totally separate from the windowless 3x5 linen closet room. And all of these lovely little windowless rooms were unified by the lavender and periwinkle color scheme. (Who knew they even made periwinkle shag carpet?)

And clearly the prior owners valued family togetherness as the two kids' bedrooms were not fully separated. Picture one large square with a smaller square inside it. The smaller square room had a door, but the larger 'surrounding square' room didn't; it barely had WALLS!! In fact, it had an 8' wide hallway going right into the heart of it. But of course, they had all the privacy they wanted in the purple bath-warren...

And the other end of that 8' wide hallway? Right into the almost doorless master suite. A good method for insuring the family didn't outgrow those 3 bedrooms...

Oh! And how could I forget the downstairs shower?! You're probably wondering why I didn't mention it in the bathroom paragraph? Well - The shower wasn't IN the bathroom! It opened into the closet on the other side of the bathroom wall. Okay...

Wonder why this house sat on the market so long...

This is about our last house. I can't even begin to tell you what we went through with PO's adult children when it was time to move in (they even took plants out of the flower bed, as well as window treatments, etc.) and how many lies the PO told us (like about how the only water ever in the basement was once when the toilet overflowed, only we were told later by an excavator that he'd been in the house when water was up to his chest in the basement...That was some overflow!). And that stain on the living room wood floor was from an incontinent dog, not a leaking chimney.

Anyway, this guy was a chiropractor, but otherwise, not to handy, apparently. His answer to fixing leaks or cracks was plenty of 'goop'. The drain lines were all caked with this stuff. To cover burns in the kitchen laminate, they covered them with masking tape and painted it white.

There was a box in the entry meant to be a rockery type planter. The cats used it, as well as the basement bedroom rug, and the COOKTOP burners as their cat box!!! When I first turned it on, it arced, then I smelled a familiar odor...

"To cover burns in the kitchen laminate, they covered them with masking tape and painted it white"

That is hysterical!!!!!

each of the baths had a large clock hanging in the shower itself. I still haven't figured out what those were for

We put a clock in the bathroom DD uses, and made sure it was visible from the shower, so she wouldn't take so long, and to help her figure out how long she could luxuriate in there.

Wow, compared to some of these stories our house was perfect! As an owner of two dogs, let me just say I can't imagine urine or feces inside our house. :-o

Our house was pretty country when we got it. There were fake birdhouses everywhere, from the window shutters to the curtain rods. Their coffee table was an old wheelbarrow with a top on it. And the toilet brush in the downstairs bath was stored in an actual old cowboy boot.

yes, that is indeed quite awful. i think the actual burns might be preferable to that.

in our last house, the PO's made a "butcher block" out of plywood (picture many many plywood boards glued together and then sliced to make an plywood 'edge grain' board, and then DIY'ed a cut-out out of the laminate countertop to set this treasure into.

of course, the fit was terrible, so not only did crumbs and whatnot get into the 1/2" gap between the laminate and the plywood butcher block, but you could see the exposed cut laminate and the particle board underneath it.

oh, and this kitchen also had an oven set right next to a wall with paneling, and when you tried to open the oven door, you could only get it halfway open before it knocked against the paneling. (knotty pine, of course).

Well,

I got married in the 70's (late 70's- and I was a child bride- no really!), so I DO remember that far back... this house was built then, and I don't remember the decorating mantra that every room had to have a different flooring! We still haven't peeled off every layer of vinyl flooring- but the patterns- yuch! I will be so glad to get rid of the mint green, army green, and baby blue fixtures- each bathroom has to be its' own colour too- right?

And like goofiefoot's PO- what's with the handles in the middle of the cupboard doors? Our upstairs kitchen actually had NO handles- TG I never did get around to buying those...but I truly didn't even notice that the downstairs kitchen even HAD handles until a few months ago (we've lived here 11 years- OK I was busy...), cuz I've never used them!

But aside from these sort of comical decorating choices... the really bad things were the furnace exhaust pipe that was disconnected and for 10 years had been spewing God knows what into the walls...discovering evidence of old leaks as things fell apart- like the shower head that had evidently been held in place by a thread of metal and had been dripping water behind the walls for...? By the time this total house reno is finished, I will figuratively and literally be able to rest easier (furnace exhaust is right behind my side of the bed).

We bought a cool 50's style ranch with real interesting angles and such, but it was built and decorated in the 70's. The kitchen had brown paneled doors with gold/brown vinyl flooring. I dare say that the stove vent was never cleaned. As I was taking it down, it was literally dripping grease onto my arms. The adjacent pantry cabinet and backsplash were drippy as well.

Original yellow shag carpeting hadn't been cleaned in years and that was the very first thing to go. All the walls and woodwork were painted in a faint pink color, except the shocking bright orange dining room wall.

We actually had a lot of fun cleaning up and redecorating the house. And, instead of totally gutting the harvest gold tiled extra bathroom, we bought a bunch of Tiki stuff to complement that color. I'm sure the next owners will be saying, "what were they thinking...?" about us as well. LOL.

Let's see here...

Three layers of linoleum in the kitchen / dining area. Top layer was press-on squares in a brown floral. The middle layer (white with pink flowers) extended up the walls as a "baseboard" / "toe kick".

Kitchen hardware was brass and cream pulls with white ceramic / green gingham knobs.

Cabinets had been painted over with stain. Yes, painted. They didn't prep, mask or stain properly. Stain was in huge globs and runs everywhere.

Pantry doors had been painted over with this tan/brown stone textured junk. Pity because they were real wood underneath but are now garbage.

Chandelier in the dining room is this black wrought iron thing with built-in pot hooks and gold painted grapes.

Kitchen walls were peach/orange which at some point had a wallpaper border that was only partially removed.

That's just the kitchen area.

Love this topic! My previous owners were the laziest of the lazy. I'll just give you the latest in what's been a long series of discoveries of shortcuts, cheap fixes and oops'es in every renovation done by them.

We are currently renovating a bathroom that was apparently carved out of the original master bedroom. When they installed the bathroom, rather than demo the walls/floor/ceiling down to the studs for pipes and electric, they built a "box within a box". So when we began demo'ing this go around, we found plaster/lathe under 2x4's under drywall ALL the way around the room. We picked up almost a foot in height and width and length.

After reading all these posts, I would say they (PO's) weren't so bad. I did change out some wallpaper and wall colors, nothing too extreme though.

One thing I've never been happy with is the fact that they had a couple of large dogs and those dogs left some pretty large scratch marks in the base of the bay window in the living room. The other place they left their scratch marks is on the outside trim of the atrium door that connects the screen porch to the kitchen. I've always wanted to change both pieces of trim out, especially the bay window. I even toyed with the idea of getting additional granite when I get my kitchen counters done. But it looks like it would be a giant PITA to do. Perhaps the base of the bay window isn't really technically "trim."

I have one that no one else does (yet) but will save it for last.

LOOOOONGGG shag carpet, bright mirrors and brass everywhere, wallpaper on walls, ceilings, doors. Yada , yada... you've heard it before....

But........
I was curious why there were "hooks" hanging in odd places. Thought... Hmmm... they must love hanging plants. Well.... neighborhood rumor has it that they... how can I say this delicately, belong to a club of sorts that enjoyed entertaining couples whose personal use for ceiling hooks involved hanging/SWINGING parts way more personal then plants.

Oh...memories of when we saw our current house for the first time. The main living area has a completely open plan, but that didn't stop the PO's from painting adjacent walls deep teal green, extremely dark plum, and bright canary yellow. I get dizzy just thinking about it.

They also had a large stone fountain in the living room, like you'd find in a park or large garden. Non-working..but still!

Another odd thing was that they had their housekeeper only clean the public rooms and the master br. The other rooms were left to rot.

Ha, rank amateurs, I tell ya!

I'm sure my PO was probably very, very proud of her decorating job in the dining room.

She painted it in two shades of bright orange - One above the chair rail and one below. But the piece d'resistance was that one or two walls had the two orange shades in STRIPES on the wall. My husband called it the circus peanut look.

I'd give her points for creativity anyway, but the real topper was that all this paint was over several coats of paint over wall-paper. Sad to say, we added another one; there was simply no way that paper was coming off without WMD.

When we took possession of the house there was a large amount of maple syrup spilled on the dining room floor, just left there! (Dark wood floors so it wasn't immediately obvious either). The paint in the LR was pretty horrendous too; I didn't really mind the bright red wall though it might not be to everyone's taste but it looked horrible next to 3 walls done in a diarhhea brown sponge-painted look. But I probably shouldn't complain because I think that's ALL the PO ever did for the house. I think they got worn out after that initial burst of activity. Heck, when we moved in, there were cruddy shades that were just tattered and shredded. If someone isn't willing to pay $6 to get some new mini-blinds or shades, you can guess they weren't willing to put ANY money into the house. It's a shame because the PO before the PO took care of the house well for decades and lived there into her 80s. You could tell she adored gardening (thanks for the perennials and the lovely roses PO!) and loved the house but it's been neglected for a while...

I have to say I thought the formica/masking tape/paint solution showed a little ingenuity! If I thought I could make a good match, I'd be tempted to try it in my own kitchen. ;-)

Red and blue shag rugs everywhere, dark brown wood paneling in every room, with the exception of 2 of the three bedrooms which had foil, red white and blue wallpaper, red formica countertops with white rust stained metal cabs in the kitchen, pink and blue tile in the bathroom.
We have been there 10 months and it is ALL Gone!!
Me and DH joke we had x-ray vision when we bought that house- it was soooo ugly!!!

Decorating issues were the least of our problems. Our POs didn't show up at the closing, and we had to get a lawyer to force them to sign the contract.

Then, the day we moved in, we found they had absconded with all the window coverings and had not made specific repairs--all of which were INCLUDED in the contract price. They also took away all the accessories for the Jenn-Air cooktop. Our contract specified that we were to give them back their custom-carved front door within two months, but we held it for ransom for six months until they returned what they had taken and made good on the repairs specified in the contract.

All that occurred 21 years ago; it took quite a while before we could laugh about it. Now we are getting rid of "their" kitchen--sweet revenge.

Oh goodness, where shall I start. I bought the house in 2005, three years after the PO died. She and her husband had bought the house in 1972. It's in an area that was once rough, but has been gentrifying over the past 20 years or so. The house was held in trust after she died, and the adult grandkids (at least four of them, plus their significant others and kids) moved in for that three years. They dealt drugs from the house. They used the garage to strip stolen cars of parts. Some of them lived in the garage and basement (which is essentially a cold damp concrete shell). Their kids ran riot through the neighbourhood.

Apparently these people did not believe in training their dogs and cats to pee outside. They also apparently did not believe in municipal trash collection (they preferred to bury their trash in the yard). Oh yeah, didn't believe in gardening either ... here was the yard when I moved in ...

{{gwi:540821}}

Yup those are blackberry vines gone wild. They were taller than me (and I'm 5'8"). The first time I took my Lab out into his new yard, he looked terrified that he would be ambushed from the thickets ! I shed a LOT of blood that first summer ripping all those blackberries out, then digging up their roots (thereby discovering all the buried trash ... car batteries, hubcabs, full paint cans ...).

Then of course there was the kitchen that was so grotesque and filthy that I simply ripped it out immediately and set up a temporary, which I lived with for two years. The roof that had SEVEN LAYERS of shingles. The massive amounts of peeling exterior paint from the cr*ppy paintjob and the useless gutters. Rotten siding and a dangerously rotted front porch. Sigh. My realtor called it "deferred maintenance". Hrmph.

On the plus side, all my neighbours immediately ADORED me, simply because I wasn't the previous bunch of criminals and delinquents. One of them greeted me with a frozen bottle of Absolut and a basket of lemons from their yard. My kinda 'hood ! :-)

edlakin: the PO's of my house must've LOVED polished brass.
every. single. fixture.
i'm not exaggerating. all light fixtures, all hardware, all plumbing fixtures. everything. in the entire house.
nuff said?

and

straw_bale_ln: this is the second house where I've had to go around replacing all the fixtures, doorknobs and hinges. Our goal is to be brass-free by 2010,

And in 2012, the buyer of Straw_Bale_Lns home will be saying,
"The POÂs of my house mustÂve LOVED oil-rubbed bronze every. single. fixture. everything. in the entire house.
nuff said?

Our goal is to be ORB-free by 2016."

Well our current house was purchased brand new in 2001, the only bad thing I have to say about it is it had (and unfortunately still HAS some) all brass fixtures. We have changed out all the light fixtures but haven't changed all the door knobs or hinges yet.

BUT...we lived in one of those 70's throw back houses for a year. ORANGE, yes ORANGE shag carpet, avocado appliances, butterfly/floral wallpaper, pink toilet, shower/tub and sink, brown/gold linoleum and wood paneling. UGH. We rented that place and one time the landlord came over to change out the toilet, can't remember why, and he got mad at me for using the blue stuff in the toilet because it dripped all over his orange shag carpet. I thought it made it look better!

But my favorite YICKY house had to be the condo we bought when we were first married. The master bedroom had one full wall of mirrors. The other three walls were turqoise and purple. The floor was black and white checkerboard. There was a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. There was a matching checkerboard wallpaper border and the best part? There was a black platform, like a stage, in the center of the room for the bed to sit on. The attached bathroom was hot pink with black tub/shower/toilet/sink. It was like going to bed in a disco.

My personal feeling is that PO's start doing things to their house and then one day, they wake up and realize that it's too ugly to live in so they *have* to move!

jayne

I suspect one of the reasons our POs went into foreclosure was that there were too many big fixes needed around the house.

As for taste... they had theirs; we have ours.

Talley Sue, You said what I'm thinking...

"And in 2012, the buyer of Straw_Bale_LnÂs home will be saying, The POÂs of my house mustÂve LOVED oil-rubbed bronze every. single. fixture. everything. in the entire house."?

and they'll be saying it about stainless appliances, cathedral ceilings, open floor plans, great rooms.

'nuff said.

Huh. Cathedral ceilings, too, Patser? I wonder what our children will want in a kitchen. I've noticed that our neighbors of retirement age who have seen or heard about our space are put off by the new open floor plan. Think our kids will do the stereotypical generational 180' and want to close everything off again?

I'm still puzzled over a house we moved out of 12 years ago. When it was built in the 50s, the owners spared no expense to get the finest, the best, etc.: fabulous slate flooring throughout, sturdy oak mill work, floor to ceiling tile in the kitchen & baths, built-in Thermador appliances. The POs bought the most expensive of everything...then did not put one penny into the house for the next 32 years.

So when we bought it in 1988, it had been sitting on the market for 2 years -- too shabby for most people. The slate floors had multiple coats of wax on them, complete with embedded pennies, bottle caps & bobby pins. Dogs had scratched the fine panelling in the family room & also the kitchen cabinets. The built-in appliances no longer worked or barely worked. The mushroom colored carpets in the bedrooms were half dust/half wool, but they probably bought that color because they thought it would hide dirt.

I had a lady come out and measure for window treatments. She said with much reverence, "These curtains came from Such-n-such shop. In it's day, it was THE upscale store for interior decorating." Then she lifted the old curtain to admire it, and it ripped, disintegrating in a cloud of dust!

Overall, our POs were pretty good. They took good care of the house and had lived there for 30 years. But the three things that still send chills down my spine are:

1. Brick linoleum--yes, I know that this was popular once upon a time, but just a bad idea all around. Seriously, you do linoleum to make it look like brick?

2. Baby blue carpet everywhere--there must have been a sale or they must have been HUGE North Carolina TarHeels fans because this was some hideous carpet.

3. Flower wallpapering everywhere--Taking down wallpaper is an ugly job, but it was made a bit more enjoyable by seeing this crazy rose/sunflower/daisy/pansies wallpaper come down.

The POs bought the most expensive of everything...then did not put one penny into the house for the next 32 years.

well, maybe she thought that, since she'd bought the absolute best the first time around, she didn't NEED to change?

She her a Thermador oven, and top-of-the-line curtains from a shop that STILL inspires awe in in-the-know decorators.

Or by the time it got that bad, she was too old or tired or overwhelmed to figure out what to do about it?

I have discovered that is much less exhausting to put in a new kitchen--much less confusing, easier to figure out what to do, easier to find a contractor--than it is to try to fix things on an existing one.

And she probably just didn't see the deterioration of stuff like the curtains.

Shiny brass door knobs and hinges abound in my home and I have no intention to spend the money to remove and replace them. I shall forever be untrendy apparently!

Our POs had a very specific goal in mind: restore the interiors of the house as they were when it was built, in 1890.

So we have MAJOR Victoriana going on. I love the clawfoot tubs, English garden and restored woodwork, but am not so wild about the floor-to-ceiling William Morris very boldly patterned wallpaper in the part of the house that has 10 foot ceilings. We also have the old Federal Pacific circuit boxes which are a fire hazard if you overload a circuit, but weren't a problem for the POs, who had no bulb over 40 watts in the entire house (dim Victorian lighting, dontcha know) and no electrical outlet powerful enough to handle a clothes dryer, microwave or dishwasher, so we're still without all three.

The kitchen has a beautiful old Magic Chef stove from the 1930s but only 2 inches of counterspace, which is the left side of the sink unit. There are also no cabinets, just three closets which I'm using as two jerry-rigged pantries plus a space for the fridge. I have a cheap bingo-hall type-table in the kitchen as my temporary island/prep space.

Both bathrooms are pretty dire as well. The PO told me that it was a violation of the spirit of the house when plumbing was installed in the 1920s, so they went minimal on the bathrooms (in protest?). The master bath, servicing four bedrooms, is 5' x 6', barely fitting in a toilet, sink and clawfoot tub. They had to bump out the wall to fit in the tub, and the edge of the sink overhangs the rim of the tub. You have to close the door fully or you can't sit on the toilet. The second bath, off the kitchen, is painted an unpleasantly dark green.

Needless to say, our renovation begins shortly.

I had never heard of the "beer in one hand" approach to remodeling, but what our PO had done was the "beer in two hands" approach. Seriously. Her *ex*husband did a lot of the remodels, including putting a wet bar 15' from the kitchen...too far to walk when walking is difficult LOL. The interior painter came by one day to show his work to some other clients--he told us that when he came to do an estimate the PO met him at the door with a beer, which he somewhat embarrassedly accepted--then when he finished it and gave the can (!) to her, she asked him if he wanted another! While he was doing an estimate!

The electrics, we discovered, were frighteningly dangerous. Exposed electric wires under the sink, scorch marks from bad connections behind the microhood...it's a wonder we hadn't gotten electrocuted.

And we've discovered the roofing job was crappy.

Aesthetics worry me much less than any of that.

Well, let's see, where do I start. The house was built in 1978 and none of the bathrooms had been updated...ever. Very interesting funky linoleum in each and the ugly cabinets with formica tops. Oh, and the powder room had a harvest gold toilet. Yeah. Some of the kitchen cabinets are original, and then they decided to add some more beautiful orange-y oak cabinets to the plan sometime in the early 90's, in order to make a gigantic kitchen island that takes so long to walk around you're almost out of breath. 3 of the walls in the kitchen were a lovely shade of chartreuse (I think it was intended to be sage green?) with a red accent wall! All of the carpets were replaced about 4 years ago, and are very good quality, but it's such a shame that they're such ugly colors. Each of the three bedrooms was a different shade of blue carpet. Yeah, those had to go before we even moved in. We're living with the dark green carpet in the study and the bright pine green carpet in the basement. I could go on and on. At least they kept up with the important things, like the roof and septic.

This thread should be on Saturday Night Live-- totally hilarious. I only had filthy brown shag carpet, burnt orange countertops, gold and black (Go Vanderbilt) paint colors, plywood walls, walls with glued on rattan mats, disco mirrored walls that were losing the "mirror", 6 inches of wallpaper that comes off with the wall attached and the list goes on and on.
On the brass stuff, HGTV decorators whip out a spray can for those items and in the blink of an eye, they're silver or bronze or antiqued.... I think my grandchildren are going to be wondering "what was she thinking with the "rusted iron" look.

If we as a country don't get a handle on the types of rising costs that are underway now, then why should our kids want to heat ceilings that are 18 ft off the ground? And why would they want to heat and cool great rooms when they only stay in one area at a time? I see a return to regular sized rooms with doors and 8-9 ft ceilings. I also believe that the disposable mentality will be shifting, too. What young people starting out in the 2010s or 2020s will have the money to redecorate every other year?

Re specifics of decor, go to your local library and look at Better Homes and Gardens or other decorating magazines from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. Everything that was on the front pages in the past is what is being critiqued here.

I guess I'm a believer in 'what goes around, comes around'.

Isn't that why we're back to flared leg slacks and spiky high heedled shoes?

House #1, bought in 1989, had PINK laminate counter tops and pink and grey vinyl floor. Plus yellow floral wallpaper in the kids' bedrooms. They had 2 boys, no girls.

House #2 was fabulous. I can't think of anything except that a really expensive addition had been done and space planning wasn't very good. It looked gorgeous, though. The problem was that the garage was tiny, and once you came in the house you were on a tiny landing at the top of the scary basement stairs, then had to go through a narrow door right into the kitchen with no space for shoes, coats, backpacks, etc.

House #3 (current) , oh boy. There was the yellow faux paint on the master bath which looked ghastly with the contemporary and beautiful inset maple cabs with a yellowish finish.

The kitchen sink almost fell off the bottom of the granite.

He also lied about water in the basement, and about the fact that all of the fences on the three sides of the back yard belonged to the other neighbors. They belong to us, thus maintenance and replacement belong to us.

The powder room smelled so bad no matter what I did, until I thought to clean intensely in that little gap between the tank and the bottom part of the toilet. Yep, 3 boys lived in that house and apparently didn't aim well.

And some PO thought he was an electrician. If I had a dollar for every time I've had a repair done and heard the electrician say something like "well, I've never seen THIS before."

Perhaps the kicker was the lamps in the upstairs hallway.
{{gwi:1838498}}

keep in mind this is a slightly mid-century mod house, not a lake house.

And last but not least, he had two good sized dogs and apparently didn't feel it was important to tidy the yard before he moved out!

Anita

In house #1 above, the one with the pink laminate in the kitchen, we also had floral pink and green wall paper on two walls of the FR, green paint on other two, and a matching floral rug. The beautiful oak bannister going to the 2nd floor was, you guessed it, also green!

The funniest thing was that 6 mos after we moved in and banished the pink and the green and the yellow and the nasty paneling in the dining room and repainted, all DIY, she came back in to town for the neighborhood fireworks. not knowing or caring that I was right behind her, she proceeded to rant and rave about how I'd "ruined" her house. I wasn't sure whether to laugh my a$$ off or be mad. I opted for laughing eventually!

Anita

I'm really enjoying this thread!

Our PO was mostly OK, but when we were cleaning the kitchen after we moved in, we discovered that the kitchen had a *major* mouse infestation. They were living in and around the gas range -- unspeakably disgusting when we took the top of the range off to clean around the burners. The mice had gnawed holes next to the electrical outlets!

Thankfully, five years later (and two cats!) we no longer have a mouse problem. Now our biggest annoyance with the PO is the amazingly sloppy paint jobs they must have done. Our house is ~1903 and has beautiful stained hardwood trim, but, every square inch of the trim has paint drips. The PO apparently didn't bother to cover up the wood...

Now we're eagerly awaiting the first round of kitchen designs for our planned renovations -- we meet with our KD next Thursday to see their proposals!

My main design complaint about the POs of our home is that they did some ceiling re-texture work that is horrible. In fact, I hate it so much that I was GRATEFUL they didn't remodel the kitchen, though it was sorely needed, because it probably would have resulted in them asking a higher selling price and me hating the kitchen (versus the lower price but hating the kitchen).

Our home was built in 1978 and probably originally had acoustical spray on the ceiling in all rooms except kitchen and baths. Well...POs thought they would DIY something better than acoustical texture.

They probably worked really hard to scrape the acoustical texture out of the dining area, entry, and hallway. However, they then had the brilliant idea to slather joint compound all over the ceiling, over one cm thick in places, and leave all the blade marks and unlevel joint compound in a random pattern. One person once told me it looked like a very bad attempt at something called "imperfect smooth"--it wasn't smooth at all but looked more like thick stucco on the ceiling. It made the ceilings feel low, not a good thing for eight foot ceilings.

Anyway, to tie this in w/kitchen remodeling, DH and his buddy had to sand all the horrible joint compound off the ceiling (it wouldn't scrape off like acoustical spray) as part of the kitchen remodel. It was messy and exhausting. They re-textured with spray on texture...probably something like orange peel but it's very nondescript. Not my dream ceiling, but so very much better than what was there before.

Now only the entry way and hall have the "succo" ;-)

Two extremely sweet elderly sisters, with absolutely NO taste:

When you originally walked in the front door, with an excellent view of the DR/kitchen wall of brick veneer and splintery, unfinished outdoor shingles:
{{gwi:1838499}}

Looking through the fake benderboard arch into the kitchen. A delightful sight (NOT!) with uppers painted black and the base cabs (all three of them, shown in the photo, in a 10x12' room) painted dark brown.

In a previous discussion thread last year trying to see who had the worst kitchen, we apparently won - or is that, lost?!?

Needless to say, the entire house was completely gutted and remodeled before we moved in. There was no "old house" or "cute cottage" charm about the place - in fact, when my first comment upon walking inside was, "This is the UGLIEST house I have ever seen!"

It looks quite a bit better now. The best thing is that we don't have to put the lights on in the daytime to see inside the kitchen, LOL!

Our place wasn't too bad for style, probably a more unified and clean style than it has now, 7 years later! But it was TOO clean for us, linen walls, beige tile and pickled white oak flooring and stair treads.
But the house looked like the original owner had just run out of money mid-build - so things like cabinets and plumbing fixtures were all just builder grade.
The WORST thing I discovered was that the hot water heater had been installed wrong - with hot and cold reversed. That caused the dishwasher to be given cold water, the fridge ice maker and water dispenser to get hot water, one shower valve plumbed backwards... lots of things to fix!

- D

Well, I don't get much of an outlet to complain about the PO b/c the PO was my DH's now deceased mother (whom I never met). So naturally he's a little sensitive about me complaining about some of the ridiculous things that she did to the house. Some of the things she did made sense others didn't, but EVERYthing she had done was very poor workmanship. Apparently she always found a "friend" rather than hire anyone with skills.

- She built standard non-walk-in closets in the master bedroom that have regular doors on them, so 60% of the space in them is unaccessible. These closets were created by bumping into the room, and she didn't match the texture of them to the existing walls. And the drywall seams were clearly visible due to poor taping and no mudding.

-She painted the exterior of the house and the wood fence Smurf blue. It was like she took Papa Smurf to HD and had them color-match his belly. Now if we lived in an art deco neighborhood instead of the very conservative gray and white neighborhood we live in she perhaps maybe might have been able to pull it off...

-The interior paint colors were obviously inspired by a roll of Smarties candy- lots of pink, lavendar, pastel mint green and a few rare splotches of off-white.

-1000 sqft of tile grouted with what I think was white grout, but I couldn't be sure b/c it was never sealed. Oh, and the tile changed from 10" whitish to 6" grayish tile at random divisions that didn't correspond to room divisions.

I won't even get into the yard...the wooden retaining "walls" in termite country are the least of her sins out there....

There was a clean, large rectangular area on the master bedroom ceiling. You can imagine what we thought might've hung there. We finally asked the real estate agent what it was, and she shrugged. Took us downstairs into the furnace room and showed us a mural- no kidding, 8x10 feet. It was a picture of the Last Supper. We were horrified to find that picture still down there when we moved in. Weren't sure what to do with it- you know, you can't just throw something like that out in the trash. I think we ended up taking it up to the Salvation Army drop off. Why anyone would hang such a thing on the ceiling in the master bedroom is beyond us.

My first house had carpet in the kitchen. So nasty. I asked the previous owners what was under it and they said they didn't know b/c the carpet was already installed when they bought the house 27 years before!!!

My first task was to rip out the carpet and DIY tile. I didn't have much money to play with but I couldn't move in on the 30 year old carpet. When I moved the fridge the carpet was beige but I had thought it was brown when I bought the place.

My second kitchen was when I moved in with my DH. He was living in the house he built 5 years before and his ex had decorated. The tile was green and white alternating industrial tile. The countertops were green flecked and the hardware was green and white plastic. I hate green! THe strangest thing were the curtains - little fried eggs and pigs. Bacon and eggs would be weird but pigs and eggs didn't even make sense and was so ugly. I lived with that kitchen for 5 years because we were not willing to spend any money knowing we were building a new house.

Now I have a plywood counter top and sink and my fridge and a range I got off freecycle. I'm really ready for a kitchen of my own!

This is a great thread. We've been in our house for 16 years and are very slowly getting rid of some of the things that have needed to be gone.

Bad things: wallpaper throughout. Like another poster here, it's hard to get off. We still have it in several rooms - haven't gotten rid of it all yet. The kitchen with the peninsula that you couldn't get refrigerators in and out without going OVER it. The kitchen with the peninsula so big that if you opened the dishwasher, no one could get in or out of the working area. (This is why that kitchen is now GONE.)

Good things: The wine rack and bookshelves built underneath the staircase.

Honestly, though - I think this stuff was all done by the original owners. We're the third owners, to our knowledge. (The house was built in 1979.)

DonnaR/CA

Wonder Bread Bags. Yes, indeed. 31 years ago, when we moved in we found a huge stack, perhaps 500, of brand new, very thick, very sturdy, red and yellow and whatever, super sized bags to fit about 4 regular sized loaves of bread. We could never throw them out! They were exceptionally well made. So we mostly used them in our luggage for traveling,- sorting shoes, underwear, folded clothes.
There are stashes of Wonder Bread Bags hidden in the house and long ago I forgot where I put them. Periodically, they get re-discovered.
The problem is obvious. It looks like a dirty little secret. If anybody, anybody, ever saw them, they could never believe that I didn't wash out and re-use old bread bags!!!! I wouldn't believe it either!

I've gotta tell you about our 1922 beach cottage made of spit and bubblegum. PO's? There must have been a PO for every year of the house's life. It seems that we are the first owners who planned to stay a while, without renting it out. It has gorgeous views, a beautiful beach and is in a very desirable second home and rental home beach community. So po's buy it, rent it for big bucks, never put a dime into it, and sell it-they then buy their 'real' second home. It was the cheapest, shabbiest, and only affordable house on Lake Shore Drive, so we bought it.
1. It's on a dune, and still sits on a two foot tall iffy crawl space. The walls of the foundation have holes. We found brand new boxes of floor jacks (to hold up the floors) in the crawl sp. Pre-sale, the inspector could not inspect the contents of the crawl because it was jammed with 80 years of stuff, deliberately.
2. Crawl contains the plenum (thingy which distributes heat and a/c to the various rooms), lying on its side and connected to the furnace in the first floor util room. Two of the four second floor bedrooms are unheated and un a/c'ed because the plenum is too far from the rooms. There are no chases, no ducts going to these bedrooms. I'm afraid room air conditioners will blow the knob and tube upstairs wiring.
3. There is no real drywall or plaster, just wallpaper smoothed out over paneling. Only thin paneling over random studs.
4. The floor under the second floor toilet was rotted, a common occurence I've been told. The metal linen cabinets in the solo upstairs bath were rusted, dented, disgusting. The shower was uh, kind of blue and rust colored. It was worse than fourth world countries' bathroom facilities. We gutted to the random studs, searched for elec in the most unexpected places, and remodeled into a beautiful room.
5. Bedrooms measured 7X9, 8X9, 9X9 and the master is 9X15 with a sloped ceiling, from 6.5' to 7' high. No upstairs ceiling is taller than 6.5'+. Painted paneling with many, many holes. Had to remove closet doors:they were gerryrigged and never fit.
6. Oh, yes, the popcorn ceiling panels collapsed in two bedrooms. Fixed it once and after the second collapse, we installed new drywall ceilings upstairs.
7. Instead of having regular can ceiling lights in the bedrooms, they had shower lights, which gave off, oh, 10 watts of dim.
8. The walls bow a bit, here and there.
9. The floors have holes but I covered every square inch with inexpensive laminate which looks great and has a few bouncy spots. A marble rolls on the floor from one end of the house to the other in a split second!
10. We have fixed most of the major things and it is now a cute cottage, but
The afterthought utility room which holds the furnace, some water pipes and the water heater has a 13" wide door. However, the diameter of the water heater is 18". This may be the year when we create a new door from the wall of the util room to the outside of the house, to replace the water heater, whenever, not if.
Still, 6 years later, some money, lots of effort, it's delightful and in great demand by family and friends.
Oh, btw, dh and I went there for N.Y. Eve and a big snowstorm hit and we had to evacuate quickly, because, among other reasons, the only way to get down and out, would be like sliding down an olympic luge, aka known as high flights of stairs, unevenly spaced stairs. We went to the casino hotel and had a great time! Bev

Resurrecting a 10 year old thread to promote your sale? Really???

Looks like the Resurrectionist has deleted and absconded.

Why are there so many of these Zombie Threads of late?