Paved back gardens, thick blue carpets, 1970s curtains...

A thread to share those interior decor shockers you have encountered in your search for a place to live.

(Bonus points for links to estate agent pages with extra-nasty photos... )

You've just described the house I lived in before I moved from England. My housemate owned the house and she was 31 years old. Changing any of this didn't really seem of interest to her. We had thick blue/green carpet with swirls in it that had been there since the old lady who lived there previously put it in. My cats made a point of puking all over it. This frustrated her and she said that, 'the cats are ruining the carpet'. Really?? I don't think that's possible. The curtains were some gem that her mother picked up at a medical clinic that was closing. She never closed the ones in the living room and I discovered that's because they weren't long enough to meet in the middle. The one room that she did redo was the bathroom - and she specifically removed the lino to put carpet in there. 

People would come over and describe the decor as 'retro'. I would describe it as 'hideous'.

I've been here over 5 years now and I still encounter the thing that grosses me out time after time.....

Carpets in bathroom/toilet areas. 

I swear....this seems to be so common over here.  When we bought our house, the first thing I did was rip up the carpet in the bathroom.  I can't deal with how unhygienic this is!   

We were once shown what seemed quite a nice house, until we looked out of the back window; they had concreted (not paved) the entire back garden, meaning you had a completely uninterrupted view of the electricity sub-station on the other side of the fence.

Bathrooms with wall-to-wall freak me out A LOT.  *shudder*  But what was really perplexing was the kitchen with wall-to-wall.  Not that any of it is UK specific, because I have seen (and lived in!) some awfulness in the US, too.

Adequate words fail me when trying to describe the hideousness of the carpet in our house.  It's old (I was told it was second-hand to begin with), threadbare, and frayed.  It's in the front room, entryway, up the stairs, and on the landing…so there's a lot of it.  When my cat (brown/white tabby) is sitting on the staircase, she becomes the Cheshire cat because she blends in almost perfectly.  Just eyes and a devilish grin.  Ok, well maybe not the grin….. 
It is the exact colour of cat sick.  (this I know for a fact)  Baby poo also comes to mind.  Or a block of mouldy cream cheese. 

We haven't changed it, because we want to take down an internal wall, and the floors will have to be redone then. 
But the day that crap comes out of that house, I shall be doing the Riverdance of Joy down the street. 

The up side - I don't give a crap if anything gets spilled on it.  It all blends right in….

A bunch of us were helping a buddy move into a new house, which had a carpet in the family room/den that had a pattern of 3" squares of brown/white/blue and was about a 1.5" deep shag.  One of the guys was moved to ask "How often do you have to mow this carpet?"

Carl

I saw a house a few years ago in which each bedroom had been painted a different color.  And when I say that I mean the entire bedroom was that color - Walls, ceiling, baseboard, window sills, door & frame, radiators, even light switches, electrical outlets, and the door handles!   I think about the only things not painted in each room were the actual glass in the windows and the lightbulbs.  As I recall, one room was bright red, another was purple, and the third was dark-ish green.

I tried to buy a house in the States many years ago that was so horrible I fell in love with it. One storey, long and low. Dutch roof. It had stucco and pillars in the livingroom, and the master bath had beatiful tiles and porcelain accoutrements -- in vivid purple and green. It broke my heart (and several real estate laws) when they sold it out from under me during negotiations.

Just as well. I wouldn't have like to sell THAT beast in the middle of the crash last Autumn.

ugh, the carpet in the bathroom.  We have it and I hate it! Can't do anything about it though, since it's a rental (it's hard too because I know that there are gorgeous wood floors underneath the carpet that I would much rather have in my bathroom!).

When we were house hunting we semi-viewed a house with just a bed of gravel where the back garden should be. Not even an attractive paved courtyard, just...gravel.  That definitely put us off (well, that and the flaky estate agent!)

Thank all the gods I've never lived in a house with carpet in the bathroom or kitchen, but I have witnessed it and it is gross!

My parents sold our family home (to retire in Florida) some years ago and I can only imagine what the people who bought it thought--probably that they were going to have to spend a lot of money bringing the place into the 21st century!

My parents never re-decorated beyond the mid-70's and the house was a time capsule of 1970's "style".  Our family room (den as it was called) had very long black and white shag carpeting, the living room had thick lime green carpeting with textured wall paper just for starters....

Our house had wallpaper that had been painted over!!! Why, why, why?? I dont know what they were thinking but when we steamed it off it bubbled and oozed its way down the wall! Ick.

Also, it had hideous blue carpet and matching blue walls in one spare room and nuclear green in the other. The only upside is that when we painted it all, we didn't have to worry about getting paint on the carpet because we replaced it before we moved in.

I think at one point the entire inside of the house might have been blue because every piece of wallpaper we stripped, we found the same blue paint and every bit we sanded.. you guessed it, blue paint underneathe. Not to mention they painted the wooden gate and the wooden shed blue as well 

ugh, the carpet in the bathroom.  We have it and I hate it! Can't do anything about it though, since it's a rental (it's hard too because I know that there are gorgeous wood floors underneath the carpet that I would much rather have in my bathroom!).

Ask your landlord if you can change it!
They probably won't mind, if all the work is done at your expense, not theirs.

Our house had wallpaper that had been painted over!!! Why, why, why?? I dont know what they were thinking but when we steamed it off it bubbled and oozed its way down the wall! Ick.

We had a house with really amazing brass doorknobs that had about 8 layers of paint on them.  I spent weeks stripping that off, probably permanently damaging my lungs in the process (haha).

The same house had green linoleum floors throughout; living room, dining room, bedrooms, all had green linoleum.  First thing we did was carpet it.

Ask your landlord if you can change it!
They probably won't mind, if all the work is done at your expense, not theirs.

We suffered with the bathroom carpet for a year and then asked our landlord as part of our renewal if we could have it ripped out.  He said sure and had it done for us.  Score!