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I moved into this house 17 years ago and keep finding little surprises.
The previous owner's porn stash, from the 80's (euch), loads of old copper piping, all in odd shapes, sizes and lengths. Ditto electrical cable. SO MUCH OLD PAINT! Oh my word, gallons of it, now disposed of. Gardening chemicals too, including some pesticides that the recycling centre took care of. A big, corroded tin of calcium carbide came to light last year, along with a Winchester of conc. sulphuric acid. I think these are mine though, left over from my caving days.
However, glory be! A mahoosive container of Nitromors was lurking right at the back of a steel cabinet. I don't know if it still works but the stuff seems to be unavailable nowadays.
There's a filled in inspection pit too in the garage. Previous owner did this with loose limestone aggregate. I'm wondering what might be at the bottom.
What have you got?
He said, get this into your sweet head
There ain't nothing in the woodshed
Except maybe some wood...
Although mine has not one but two ancient lawnmowers. Weird since the place had no grass when I moved in
An increasingly large number of false widows. Not that I find them nasty, but they seem to be porking their way through the (far larger) house spiders I usually find.
Old safe. Our house was a nurses house back in the 60/70s the wages and drugs of some types where in it apparently.
It's easy 1mt sqd and heavy and it all works keys the lot it's great.
Apparently not as good as the partys that where held here in the 70s though.
We also got gifted all the family photos of the previous owner as her daughter slung her in a home and did not care one jot. old air force photos from the second world war ect. They went to the local museum.
The previous owner’s porn stash, from the 80’s
That was probably worth a few quid. There's a big demand for retro porn.
How can you still be finding things after moving in 17 years ago??? I'd have to expose every nook, cranny and it's contents within 17 hours!
I know, I know ...
The day we moved in the old owners told estate agents they had lost the shed key. But nothing really in there, they hadn't been in it for a couple of years.
Later that week I cut off padlock to find that they had lied as thrown all the household rubbish, broken furniture, old carpets, you name it crap into the shed and closed the door.....I know because the top, ripped rubbish bag had a receipt in the top for one week earlier at the supermarket.
The last house I bought, the owner had done a similar hiding place thing with his old crap. I messaged him quoting the clause in the contract about leaving the place empty and asked if he wanted me to get it shifted and send him the bill via my solicitor.
It was all gone by the afternoon. "Sorry mate, forgot about that".
The day we moved in the old owners told estate agents they had lost the shed key. But nothing really in there, they hadn’t been in it for a couple of years.
Later that week I cut off padlock to find that they had lied as thrown all the household rubbish, broken furniture, old carpets, you name it crap into the shed and closed the door…..I know because the top, ripped rubbish bag had a receipt in the top for one week earlier at the supermarket.
I think I would have relocated the newly found "treasure" to the front lawn of their forwarding address.
I think I would have relocated the newly found “treasure” to the front lawn of their forwarding address.
I thought it was de rigueur to hide it in bushes for future generations?
It's even more importation to preserve these ancient traditions now we're in the digital age. Finding a USB stick just wouldn't have the same sense of wonderment as well thumbed copy of Escort, Fiesta or Razzle.
now we’re in the digital age. Finding a USB stick just wouldn’t have the same sense of wonderment as well thumbed copy of Escort, Fiesta or Razzle.
I bet there are many a computer repaiman that has a very large stash of all sorts of things they have found on customers' broken laptops etc...
I thought it was de rigueur to hide it in bushes for future generations?
It’s even more importation to preserve these ancient traditions now we’re in the digital age. Finding a USB stick just wouldn’t have the same sense of wonderment as well thumbed copy of Escort, Fiesta or Razzle.
Interesting that you've focused on two two totally separate aspects of the thread and connected them in this way
Our first house had some 'niche needs' literature in the loft, left by the previous occupant. All stuffed under the insulation.
I was also working in a house once where the loft was strewn with empty booze bottles, apparently the guy just lifted the loft hatch and lobbed them up there as his wife didn't know he was an alcoholic.
Lofts are amazing as insights into people's lives and psyche.
After 17 years, I think that technically it's your porn.
A mummified rat in the bathroom ceiling and a dog's skeleton under the patio, erm, flower bed out front.
Not a shed, a basement. The estate agent listed an 'understairs cupboard' because they didn't see the steps going down. It took hours of clearing before we could even explore the size of the cellar.
17 pickup truck loads before the dump refused me access as they wouldn't believe this was household rubbish!
The highlights included most of a car down there, seats, body panels, wheels, etc. and a steel box (I still have the box) containing 70s/80s porn.
It was probably a year before we'd fully cleared the junk.
I think I would have relocated the newly found “treasure” to the front lawn of their forwarding address.
We moved in late 2020. The house was being sold as part of a divorce and the guy seemed reluctant to move. Eventually got him out onlyto find he'd completely missed emptying the loft. Amongst the family photo albums and his prison officer training records was a bag full of VHS porn. Given that we don't have a VHS player it was useless to me. So, I agreed to take it all round to his new place that he now lived in with his 19yr old son which was only 5 mins away. Rather that than waiting for him to not turn up several times. He said he was going to be in but he wasn't so I just left it all by his back door. I really hope the son came home first and there were some awkward conversations that followed.
I bet there are many a computer repaiman that has a very large stash of all sorts of things they have found on customers’ broken laptops etc…
I know of one who has harvested much home produced material.
Interesting that you’ve focused on two two totally separate aspects of the thread and connected them in this way
Explain?
Not what was present but what was missing.
Under the living room floor was completely clean. As in not even one spider web. Not one bit of rubble or wire or anything except a roller board.
The carpet had been down with paper under it for decades judging by the state of it.
There are air bricks that work
How can you get a space so clean spiders can't get in?
Why do you clean under the floor to that standard? OCD?
Another house, sold after a break up, had a man's fist sized dent at shoulder height in a door.
citizenlee
Explain?
You quoted BillOddie who was talking about matt_outandabout's shed of rubbish not the Bongo mag collection that Ambrose was talking about.
You quoted BillOddie who was talking about matt_outandabout’s shed of rubbish not the Bongo mag collection that Ambrose was talking about.
Gotcha. My comment on what to do with vintage jazz mags still stands though.
We moved into this house in May, there are many, many little odd things we find about the place courtesy of the last owners. However, the standout feature is that the garage is an odd shape internally, with a bookcase in one of the walls. Give that bookcase a hard shove and you find the "secret" room. There are no other features within said room (no carpet, no lights, no anything), but it is well insulated as proven when wife + mates went in and started shouting - I didn't hear a thing from the house.
The owner also laid his own patio...
How can you get a space so clean spiders can’t get in?
I think it’s more that spider food can’t get in
i lifted the floor in my living room to insulate underneath and despite all the original building rubble and 80 year old newspapers and matchboxes dropped by the original builders not one spider and not one web. Which seemed surprising accept there’s nothing down there for a spider to live on
My partners house, the previous owner wife had died under suspicious circumstances (we don't know any more details, but it was found during the 'searches'). We discover that while exending the house, they had boarded up a cupboard, which backed on to the main bedrooms cupboard. I had it uncovered, so we could make one big cupboard out of the two. We opened it up (with trepidation) to find they had literally just boarded up the old cupboard with the contents inside (lots of 70's kiddy clothes). Very weird
"Escort, Fiesta or Razzle"
Sounds like 80's Fords. Razzle STI might not have sold well...
A friend of mine is a joiner and said that for many years he and his colleagues would staple pages of grot mags inside cavity walls in the hope that someone would discover them in the future.
Lofts are amazing as insights into people’s lives and psyche.
I once worked doing house clearances and general shitwork for a housing association.
One trip up to the loft i found a birdcage with a bird skeleton lying flat its back.
I still can't think of a reason alive pr dead for disposing of a bird that way.
There’s a filled in inspection pit too in the garage. Previous owner did this with loose limestone aggregate. I’m wondering what might be at the bottom.
did you meet his wife?
porn stash, from the 80’s (euch): loads of old copper piping, all in odd shapes, sizes and lengths.
Interesting how that euphimism works just by swapping the , for :
I once worked doing house clearances and general shitwork for a housing association.
One trip up to the loft i found a birdcage with a bird skeleton lying flat its back.
I still can’t think of a reason alive pr dead for disposing of a bird that way.
&nb
However, the standout feature is that the garage is an odd shape internally, with a bookcase in one of the walls. Give that bookcase a hard shove and you find the “secret” room
Surely that's where new bike related purchases are stored before being integrated into the main garage?
Escort, Fiesta or Razzle”
Sounds like 80’s Fords. Razzle STI might not have sold well…
There was the Ford Probe too, that sounds like it could have been one
And of course the Ford Pubic (which was made out of old Corsairs)
Building job I was on, converting cellars to flats.
No toileting facilities had been arranged, so we basically pee'd in a large recess. For No2's the general idea was to do it in one of the spare building bags(sand, quietex etc) and chuck it in there too.
At the end of the job nobody was prepared to clean out that recess(which was sized about 4'x3') so we just bricked it up, then plastered the wall.
.
Same job. Floors were solid concrete which was piped in. But due to being a cellar the cement pump truck didnt have enough piping to get the concrete into the furthest rooms so pretty much the contents of 3 jaegers went into the hallway which we barrelled and shoveled into the back rooms. We're talking best part of 20 cubic meters of liquid concrete in about that much space so we needed to work fast, but couldnt shift it all before it went off.
Below the hall floor embedded in the concrete is a wheelbarrow, a few shovels, a rake and my steel toe cap wellies
they had lied as thrown all the household rubbish, broken furniture, old carpets, you name it
For future reference, if somebody leaves a load of rubbish, or indeed anything not listed on the fixtures and fittings list, you have the right to ask the seller to remove it immediately and if they do not comply, you can have it removed professionally and charge them accordingly. Your solicitor should and would act on your behalf over this.
For future reference, if somebody leaves a load of rubbish, or indeed anything not listed on the fixtures and fittings list, you have the right to ask the seller to remove it immediately and if they do not comply, you can have it removed professionally and charge them accordingly.
Which is what I told the seller the day after completion and the threat worked a treat.
Anyway, back to the OP: got any Creosote?
For future reference, if somebody leaves a load of rubbish, or indeed anything not listed on the fixtures and fittings list, you have the right to ask the seller to remove it immediately and if they do not comply, you can have it removed professionally and charge them accordingly.
My house is built on a slope so has a large enclosed undercroft that I can walk into. For this reason I try not to put any "might be usefuls" in there and anything that does get put in there comes out if not used for a year.
We have hooks in the roof trusses that were originally used to lift coaches off their undercarriages while they were being worked on. We have three inspection pits: one in the lounge, one in the kid’s playroom and a third in the garage, all sort of filled in.
Behind one stud wall in the kitchen was some insulation. Behind that, another stud wall with more insulation. All of the insulation is done to this exacting standard:
That's way better than what I have had to deal with.
loads of old copper piping, all in odd shapes, sizes and lengths. Ditto electrical cable.
Did you weigh it in?
Trying to fit that photo to "stud wall in the kitchen" made my brain hurt for a while.
We lived in New Zealand between 2000-2008.
Found a WW1 era bayonet.
Still got it. No idea what to do with it.
In the mid 90s we moved into a house where the previous owner had been a smoker. What we thought was the smell of her habit turned out to be damp... And behind the curtains in the living room we discovered ivy that had grown in through the edges of the window.
The building inspection had been done by the husband of my mum's friend as a favour so she couldn't even go back to him to complain.
We also discovered that oil changes at that house had been dumped straight into the driveway drain. Nasty.
Lofts are amazing as insights into people’s lives and psyche
In our previous house loft we found an old clock and a knife very firmly embedded into a rafter at an angle suggestive that a very short knife fight had occurred.
Almost forgot, when we removed the bath in my old house we found a rotten floor joist caused by damp leakage next to a still live 13 amp socket, which was nice. The previous owner was a copper and the work on the house had been done by his brother who was a (cowboy) builder. His handiwork was everywhere in a random, lash-up sort of way.
Our first house had an unusual bulge in the Hall wall. About 150cm off the floor and in the middle of the wall. It looked like someone had filled a hole with Pollyfilla or similar and it had tried to run out while it cured.
Anyhow first job was to smooth this back down to the wall level so we could decorate.
While chiselling off the 'lump' I found some bare Copper wires. I stopped immediatley and put an electrical test meter on the wires.
Yep they were LIVE with 220v.
It seems the previous owner had ripped out an Alarm Control box the day before we moved in and simply hadn't worried about disconnecting the power!
I used to wonder if Ford would bring out a sort of fun SUV lite type vehicle called the Razzle.
Not a shed, a basement.
The highlights included most of a car down there, seats, body panels, wheels, etc. and a steel box (I still have the box) containing 70s/80s porn.
Is that you Shaun?
Mate of mine (called Shaun obvs.) found very similar, bought a big 3 storey end terrace (late 19thC build) for bugger all as a project.
Found that one of the walls of the cupboard under the stairs was actually a door that had been nailed shut, probably some time in the 60's and filled/painted. House had changed hands many times between then and when he got it (late 90s). It'd been a family home, student digs, a drug den of sorts and empty for several years too. No one who they could track down knew anything about it.
The basement windows and exterior door had been bricked up and covered from the outside (either flag stones, flower beds or weeds all round the house!), there was still working heat, electricity and water down there. Also an almost complete Series II Land Rover, mostly restored and ready to rebuild, two classic motorbikes plus loads of parts, thousands of pounds worth of old tools and workshop supplies, stacks of high quality wood ready for whatever projects the person who bricked it up had in mind. A mini lathe, pillar drill and a few workshop style woodworking tools. Dozens of old workshop type books cars/metalworking/woodworking/electrical/plumbing/bricklaying/roofing all sorts.
And about 200 kilos of dust.
When i moved away from the area a couple of years after they moved in, they were still trying to sort out the basement, while simultaneously trying to make the house habitable...
Nope, not Shaun.
This was a terrace house on the edge of Manchester, bought as a repossession in late 2000. Apparently, according to the neighbors, it was a young couple that took on the house when the parents moved out. They then had some sort of falling out, and BOTH moved out leaving the bank to repossess the house. It appears they were in the process of refurbishing the place but had mostly just gutted it. I think a lot of the junk in the basement was from the parents rather than the young couple. There was no boarded up door, just so much stuff you couldn't see past the top landing to the steps down! We got the place cheap as it was priced to sell to a developer. The first couple of years while living in a building sight was a little tough....
We lived in New Zealand between 2000-2008.
Found a WW1 era bayonet.
Still got it. No idea what to do with it.
Attach it to the rifle and charge the enemy. It's a simple concept.