What do you wish you knew before moving into your house?

[Jason]

It's very common that after moving into a new home you make some unpleasant discoveries. 

Some can be expensive and time consuming to address. Others you just learn to live with.

What do you wish you knew before moving into your house?

Jason

[Darren]

Check the pipes! About 18 months after moving in we had to replace all of the pipes under the house, which wasn't cheap. While we did a building inspection that covered the structure of the house, we missed the plumbing.

Also, another nasty surprise and one that is fairly common - asbestos. It's amazing where you find this stuff, again another costly oversight.

[Kermit]

We had a similiar experience to Darren when we moved into our place. The water was rust coloured. I wish I'd tried the taps!

And it reminds me that I must post about our current plumbing issue...

[ProjectPete]

Nothing too major for me but relates to plumbing...

1- hot water system was ready to die so was producing lukewarm water at best which didn't make our first winter too enjoyable.
2- reticulation had a major leak so our first water bill was about $600 for 2 months. Hasn't been that high since I fixes it, even with new pool install.

[Kellie]

I would have liked to have known about how dirty the oven and rangehood was. 

[Andadams]

Building inspection came back with roof tiles had slipped in some part and just needed to be realigned. Partner got up on the roof to clean the gutters a week after we moved in to find out the whole roof needs to be re-pointed as the morter was crumbling. After several quotes from roof sepecialists, consensus was they put the morter in with a paint brush and over time just fallen apart. 

Who would have thought roof specilists in Melbourne are all booked out until May to complete the job!

[timjeffries]

Check to make sure the taps in the shower have been sealed! The shower in our ensuite hadn't been sealed properly and the water was dripping down the back of the taps and into the wall. We had to rip the plaster off the other side of the wall and rebuild the door frame right next to it. If I'd known what to look for at first it would've saved a huge amount of trouble.

[Shane]

I'm a bit like Darren. I wish I knew how much plumbing work would be needed to be done at our place. 

[darylhewston]

Both our ensuite and bathroom showers were not waterproofed at all. Previous owner patched up the wall damage prior to our inspection, but after a couple of weeks all the render was falling off the walls adjacent to both showers. We ended up pulling up all the tiles, reapplying the tile bed (this had actually washed down the drain), waterproofing and retiling. It was a job we didn't need at that moment in our lives.

[Jason]

We have a 50s-era house. At the moment we are repainting all of our steel-framed windows. I wish I knew how much work is involved in stripping paint off them when the previous owners simply applied layer upon layer of paint on them!

What do you wish you knew before moving into your house?

Jason