Today was the first day we had possession of our new house. We are so excited to start customizing it, but it was disheartening to discover that the previous owners left it filthy. Surprising too as it was clean when the inspection was done three weeks ago – that’s a lot of dirty living for three weeks!
One of the bathroom toilets was clogged, the yard was full of dog poo, there were food smears all over the counters, in the drawers, the fridge reeked of rotten vegetables, there were new stains all over the carpet, and huge gouges out of the wall where they took off pictures that they had glued on with some type of putty.And the garage door doesn’t work now (it did on inspection day). Oh and a giant hole in the deck.
Nice, huh? We asked them to take out the hot tub on the deck because it didn’t look well maintained. And they did. And left us this:
Yep, they never treated the wood underneath the hot tub. What you can’t really see is that the dampness from the hot tub around the edges made the boards rotten, so those need to be replaced. Plus…even if we just wanted to paint over it we don’t have the matching paint color so the whole deck now needs to be repainted. And, you get to see a little piece of an old, rusty, broken table they left us.
Personally, I’ve never left a place less than sparkling when I’ve left it to new people. I do understand the “not my problem” feeling of moving, and this family was likely annoyed with us because our lender couldn’t get it together and close on the schedule they would have preferred (although they did sign the contract agreeing to a later closing time before randomly changing their mind). Still, I’d be ashamed to leave a place I lived in that kind of condition, especially because it’s a beautiful home on a beautiful piece of property.
Not the best welcome to our first home but we’ll put some elbow grease in and in a month or so it will likely look better than it has in years. Let the madness begin!
Shelter the Heart 