this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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Mine installed a pegboard in the pantry. It's incredibly useful for hanging up pots and pans.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

They had me. Right now I'm back at my parents' house.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Kept the left over floor tiles. Nearly 30 years later I needed to replace one, had a box ready to go.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago

Remember folks, you're supposed to leave extra shit like this behind for exactly this reason

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago

In the living room they routed audio cables through the walls for a surround sound system

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 hours ago

Patched CAT6 cable to nearly every room in the house. WIFI is good these days but still cant compete with good ol ethernet.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 hours ago

They planted two plum trees and one cherry tree. I picked so many plums this year. Still have a bunch on the freezer ready to go in pies. Made two batches of slivovice moonshine back in the fall just so they wouldn't go to waste.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 hours ago

As a kid we moved into a house in the middle of winter, the previous owner had left the fire ready to go, including matches and a couple days worth of wood.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 12 hours ago

Man, so many things.

They fully remodeled it in 2016, and by virtue of being stupid rich, left it fully furnished and equipped. To them it was just a line on their balance sheet that they wanted liquidated. To me, it was an extra $10,000 I didn't have to spend on furniture and appliances.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

Mine hired a bad realtor who listed the house poorly. It means we didn't compete with cash offers and could actually buy the house.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 32 minutes ago

My friend got his townhouse that way. It was a pretty decent place, and nobody was interested because there were, like, 2 almost-identical exterior shots, maybe one of the kitchen? and 5 from the master bedroom. None from the living room or anything like that

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

I wish there was a website listing bad or lazy realtors.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Fuck if I know. These people were idiots and did so many stupid things

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 hours ago

Hello fellow sufferer. May your future surprises be boring.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I suffer with you. This is my first place so I didn’t have as good an eye of what to look out for. Now after having lived in this place for a while I realize the previous owner took a lot of shortcuts and did a really crappy β€œremodel” job.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

I’m pretty sure my house got flipped by some DIY morons

[–] [email protected] 31 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Soundproofing in the wall shared with next door unit. Like, really good soundproofing. I can't recall hearing anything from them ever.

Bad landlord move: IDK WTF they were thinking with the shower. There are SO MANY little nooks and crannies that are narrower than a pencil. I spray so much crap in there trying to prevent mold. I hate it. Landlord is lucky I'm a diligent tenant, most would let his bathroom rot, it takes so much work to keep it clean. When I build a house the shower will be SO SMOOTH and I'm going to lay it out so I can just plug in a power washer and spray it down.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 39 minutes ago

Fill them with clear silicone caulk.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Nothing.

And that's why we were able to afford it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago

Same. The redneck stuff would be more concerning if I didn't know how to fix redneck stuff.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

My apartment used to be owned by a landlord cop who moved to Florida. So I appreciate that he reduced the population of landlord cops in my area by 1

[–] [email protected] 16 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

A COP AND LANDLORD?

🀨

Bruh, that's terrifying. Imagine how much surveilance they put in the house, knowing the cops be weird af and want to spy on people all the time.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

NYC's mayor is literally one. Turns out landlords and cops both enjoy abusing people to their benefit

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

You would think.... An ex of mine had a cop for landlord for a while. He neglected to change the keys after the previous really sketchy tenants. Guess who got burglarized. And yet they never found the culprits, not recovered the items.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Kitchen faucet is hands free if you put batteries in a thing under the sink. I don't think the last people used it because it didn't have batteries when we moved in. Works great though, turning a faucet on and off without touching it is really convenient when your hands are dirty.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

How long do the batteries last?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Not sure yet, more than 1 year at least. It takes AAs so they are easy enough to replace.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

Nice I thought it was going to be less then a year. I also had the thought of just plugging into the garbage disposal outlet but that might take the redneck engineering to accomplish.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 15 hours ago

The owner prior to the last planted fruit trees in the 70s. I love having fresh fruit to eat/share.

The previous owner switched the central AC to split units. Definitely saves on electricity being able to cool/heat individual rooms vs the entire house.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 14 hours ago

...can't think of a single thing.

Fuck you, Larry.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

They installed some sort of sound isolating suspended/floating (?) ceiling in my apartment. I absolutely love it. In my neighbors apartment I could constantly hear people above, but in mine it's almost always silent.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Is it something like this?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 13 hours ago

I have a terrible problem in my apartment with noise through the ceiling. I am curious what this is that you have installed as I havent seen any good options such as this. Can you take a picture of this or something? I would love to explore options to get rid of the noise.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 13 hours ago

Screwed up every single bit of electrical wiring. I've learned so much replacing it all.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago

I love the battery powered blinds on the master bedroom. I can control them with an app (1000+ downloads on google play lol) or remote control.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Somebody installed a sump pump fairly recently. There's plenty of evidence that the basement used to be partially finished, but it was probably all ripped out due to water damage. It's dry now, thanks to the pump.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I just un-finished my basement to put in a full perimeter drain. Prior owners put in a partial drain and (re?) finished over everything. Took 5 years to get (visible) water down there but when it happened I wasn't surprised. So much other stuff had been covered up that I just kind of assumed there were issues behind the paneling. And there were. More bucks to clean it up and finish the demo of a side room they had partitioned off. Then I found out that the chimney leaked when it rained sideways.

...it's been an eventful and expensive year. πŸ’€

[–] [email protected] 1 points 28 minutes ago

That's why I'm thankful somebody did it before I moved in! The chimney, on the other hand, didn't have a cap, so it leaked when the rain fell vertically. The re-lining and new cap was pretty expensive, too.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Built shelves into the back wall of the garage. It's been great for storage.

Installed a water softener, but more on that in a minute.

Also wrote with sharpie on the wall of the maintenance closet the dates of routine PMs for the furnace and water heater. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that they weren't particularly diligent about the water heater stuff. It just said "bleach" and dates, but they clearly weren't flushing it properly. I found and removed probably like 15-20 pounds of scale and replaced the lower element that it killed. I have a theory that they installed the water softener well after living with hard water for a while, and by then there was already a bunch of scale in the water heater. Combine that with dosing bleach which is higher pH and not properly flushing it out and they welcomed crystallization of the dissolved solids that were already there. Then under deposit corrosion killed the lower element. I'm not sure why they felt the need to dose bleach though. That would only really attack organics, and the water is already treated before coming through. Idk, it's my first home so maybe I'm the one who's a clueless idiot here, so I shouldn't judge too harshly here lol.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe they were bleaching the well. Double check your well cap?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

Excellent thought, but we're on public sewer. That's why I'm confused about why they would've been bleaching the water heater.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 13 hours ago

Put the sump pump pit next to drain, so if the pump stops, the water just flows into the drain. Illegal, but who’s looking?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 14 hours ago

Bars on the windows and a nice big hedgerow out front. Extra security, and occasional package deliveries are obscured from the street to deter porch pirates.