The lovely flat of doom....
My first flat was bought back in 2003, and it was the first house I'd ever bought.
When I looked round at it I knew it needed some work, which is why I bartered and haggled and got it cheap.

Then I started on the flat.....

WALLPAPER:

The flat was wallpapered from wall to ceiling, and it had been glued on with super adhesive. It took three weeks just to get the wallpaper off the wall before I could even think about painting it. To this day I have no wallpapered rooms in my house because I know how dificult it is to get it off the walls.

WOODWORK:

There were dado rails running all the way round the room, but like most thinks in this flat it had been fitted by a monkey, as the angles were all wrong and it weaved up and down the wall, it was like being slightly drunk. So that got ripped off, and instead of being nailed or scrwed it was fixed with Mr Bodge its favourite tool. No nails.

There were little shelves everywhere, and they were all fixed to the walls with No nails, oh no not screws or anything like that, but no nails, imagine how hard it is to rip that off walls. I ended up hanging rom shelves bracing myself for it to fall.

TILING:

The flat was 20 years old, and as a 20yr old flat the bathroom was nasty dark green, so what had Mr DIY done? instead of painting it bright and airy so the light wasn't being sucked out of the room. Oh no, he found tiles the exact shade of the bathroom suite, and then painted the rest of the walls dark green. It was like bathing in a swamp.

The kitchen, he'd bodged the plumbing so the units under the sink were all rotted, and when I ripped the units out, then the floor underneath was rotted as well. The tiles had been stuck on badly, in fact so badly that some of them were broken or uneven. When I ripped the tyres off the wall came with them, and I had to pay to have the room replastered.

When I sold that flat I'd fitted new floorboards, a new kitchen, a new bathroom, new windows and front door, and new interior doors all the way through. I learnt quite a bit which means now I'm encountering DIT bodges in my current house then I'm better equiped to fix them....

and I'll tell you the new house story later on!
(Lord Monkey of Yorkshire,OBE killed a gipsy on...., Sat 5 Apr 2008, 12:04, 2 replies)

Surely the new house can't be worse than that??
I like the green bathroom/swamp bit but please, for the sake of my eyes and struggling brain, proof read before you post next time. Some of that made no sense at all.
( vix0r was not Matthew on, Sat 5 Apr 2008, 15:56, closed)

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Ooh it's like you're describing my flat! I too hate wallpaper (everywhere and tin foil glued to the wall in places too), discovered a rotted kitchen and had a green bathroom. The suite was advocado with some tasteful advocado tiles and a particularly attractive bath length plastic shelf thing in the same shade.
The bit that confused me was the dark green wallpaper, it wasn't even a shade that matched the advocado and when does a shower ever really work well with wallpaper?
(cmouse is pondering about life in other jobs, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 9:53, closed)