Owning your own home

Our house was full of piss-soaked carpets, some five layers thick...... There was also a strong smell of piss in the cupboard underneath the bathroom. The smell does go away after several weeks once it's stripped.

Oh, also, I found large quantities of mouse droppings between the layers of carpet. They just laid it straight on top.

We had a similar thing, we bought at auction, husband had been ill, wife had been an alcoholic - both heavy smokers so all the walls were yellow.

Doesn't take long once everything is pulled up and skipped. We got through a lot of sugar soap

I should also add the first time the mrs so the place she cried. That was partly as she'd never been south, secondly the old sofa on the front lawn didn't fill her with joy

Nothing says "Shameless" quite like an old sofa on the front lawn.

Congratulations joe, I will be using your experience (and taste) to do our place ;)

guess I need to move mine back inside... Hoping ive aired it long enough to get the smell of piss out.

Nothing says "Shameless" quite like an old sofa on the front lawn.

What else are you going to sit on when you drag to TV outside to watch the snooker in the summer?

Saucer of vinegar absorbs the smell. Houses that have had heavy beer users living there have a similar problem. Radiators and walls look like toilets after 16 pints.

Whom I kidding... There's no way I can get it out the tree

@PQR @rodabod Thanks guys. People having similar experiences makes it that bit easier to take.

Contractor in today and stripping the place and then cleaners in tomorrow. Vendor has agreed to pay. He said he felt really bad/ashamed - so as I suspected, so glad I didn't fly off the handle at him. Hopefully by Wednesday it should be cleared and I can get in and more accurately spec jobs and start to remove wallpaper.

What else are you going to sit on when you drag to TV outside to watch the snooker in the summer?

The roof terrace dear boy, the roof terrace...

Good work. I'm glad the vendor is being reasonable.

That looks really exciting, don't know what your plans are but the idea of ripping out carpets, cupboards, shitty bathrooms, wood panelling, basically skipping everything in there and starting again fills me with a pleasure last experienced back when the new Kays catalogue used to drop through the letterbox.

There's a lot to be said for taking a deep breath and not losing your shit, well played.

If the seller feels so upset and embarrassed now, why would he leave it in such a state in the first place? I suppose leaving your home and moving might be a bit of a wrench, but there's no excuse for that.

Run out of time to get everything sorted, so just left it maybe?

^This but also he was pushing for completion which doesn't make a whole bunch of sense

Struggling to cope with sick wife and upset at having to leave their home? Who knows, man - but a bit of humility goes a long way in life.

+1 There is a sad story behind Joe's inconvenience. There are loads of ways that circumstances can render an individual unable to look after their surroundings despite realising what they are doing.

I had a similar problem (soaked in dog shit and piss) with a flat in Streatham a few years back. There was no back story to that other than the previous resident left their dog locked inside for a week and then denied there was a problem.

The fact that there is no help given to less capable people is why our original purchase broke down. The lady was older and clearly had no clue what she was doing. Yet the estate agent and her solicitor were happy to let the pound signs tick over in their eyes and allow her to fuck everything up.

If any malice is felt, I reckon it should be towards the estate agents, natch.

I expect the damp in the wall is caused by internal factors rather than anything to do with the external render - unless there's leaky guttering or something like that.

The render, however, will be preventing it from drying out. Walls need to breathe, and the 1960s-present fad of slapping cement render onto external walls is a hideous and costly way to prevent damp walls from drying out.

Hack off all the render and in a few months time the wall will have dried.

Why is it so common to use render in the first place then? Genuinely interested. There certainly are internal issues which I'm seeking to address (cold / damp bathroom) but the render is clearly damaged, letting in water and getting worse.

Unfortunately as this is a shared freehold, that's probably not an option.

I think it started off purely as a fashion thing, when bricks were considered ugly in the post-war concrete era - hence the appearance of pebbledash, etc.

Since then it's often used as a 'solution' to damp, because people think that damp is only ever caused by water getting in - a myth seized upon and perpetuated by damp proofing companies. If you have properly functional guttering, then a well-pointed brick wall will not get so damp from rain that the damp comes all the way through to the inside, and between rain events the wall will dry out fine on its own.

The trouble is, once you've slapped impermeable cement render all over bricks then there's no way that any damp is getting out - and any that's caught inside - perhaps by a crack in the render elsewhere, or an internal leak - will be prevented from escaping.

NB If you have a wall cavity, then external render is less of an issue, but I'm assuming that's not the case

Buildings are sometimes rendered as it's seen to be cheaper than raking out and re-pointing/occasionally replacing bricks which can break apart due to frost.

Silicone render breathes

Loads of houses (including mine) in Leyton / Leytonstone are painted with heavy paint, presumably to mask shitty pointing and crumbling brick. My walls never dry out. I'll be forking out to have them stripped.