Share surprises that happened after you moved into a new place...

[mysteryowl]

Share a true story, or two, about surprises that happened in the first year of moving into a new place.
It can be good or bad things that happened that was unexpected.

[elleng]

1. Learned I could enjoy The Law, through high school typing and via helping others

law school >>> life.

[mysteryowl]

3. That's interesting

When I posted I was thinking in terms of the physical space.

Thanks for sharing.

[elleng]

6. AHA! Learned about the Cook County Jail,

where I had my first job, NOT scenic.

LATER, apartment(s) on the Lakefront, were GOOD!

[elleng]

24. Chicago was just voted the 2nd most beautiful city in the world!!!

https://www.timeout.com/chicago/news/chicago-was-just-voted-the-2nd-most-beautiful-city-in-the-world-090921?

[tblue37]

2. 1975: My (then) husband was vaccuming in the living room when we heard a loud bang and

something went whizzing by my head. It was a bullet set off by the vaccum.

[mysteryowl]

4. What?!!

The vacuum shot off a bullet?
Definitely a big surprise!

I take it no one was hurt, right?

[tblue37]

8. No one was hurt, but we were shaken. He put away the vacuum and we crawled over every inch of the

room to make sure there were no more bullets!

The Second Amendment doesn't even mention vacuums. Maybe it should.

[mysteryowl]

9. Wow, what an experience.

So, it was a bullet on the carpet and the vacuum discharged it.
Wow!

[tblue37]

10. Yep. We had just moved into the house. It was a rental in a nice neighborhood.

[NJCher]

28. Oh, a bullet.

Then I guess this knife post will be an anti-climax.

Our first winter: I had gone to a flower show designed to boost the spirits of gardeners impatient for spring. I purchased pots of colorful tulips, red, magenta. I put one pot on the kitchen counter and was reaching for the other when I saw a plastic knife fly from out of nowhere and cut off the heads of my tulips that were on the counter.

Hmmm. Now the aroma of cherry tobacco from a pipe started making sense.

Someone didn’t want us there.

[Lochloosa]

5. Found a quarter pound of pot in the rafters.

Gave you a great headache.

[mysteryowl]

7. Ha!

So, bad weed, but you smoked it anyway.

[Freddie]

11. Found a box of old postcards in the attic

From the 1910’s and 1920’s (this was in the 90s). Fascinating and probably worth some $. But we bought the house from the seller’s nephew and I gave him the box, which he very much appreciated.

[mysteryowl]

12. Wow, that was a surprise. Did you read them first?

[Freddie]

13. Yes

Lots of local stuff, “we went to visit Aunt Sue”, all very innocent, back in the days when people wrote letters. Since it involved the nephew’s family it was a real treasure chest for him.

[mysteryowl]

14. Sweet

[unblock]

15. Boiler and water heater both failed 3 days after moving in

House inspector had said, "they're both around 10 years old. They could last another 10 years but for legal reasons I have to say that they could go tomorrow."

So he has carefully hedged himself against getting sued, but gave us a massively wrong impression. Everyone who inspected it after it failed said there's no way any housing inspector should have given the impression that they could last another year let alone 10.

Oh well. At least once they was replaced, that was two things we haven't had to worry about. Nothing like brand new equipment.

[mysteryowl]

17. Wow, big ticket items too.

[NJCher]

29. Just saw bills for those two items

In my files. Had to run around 8-9000 gs.

[unblock]

34. Everything is more expensive where I live. It was more like $15k

Someone once told me "good real estate advice" was to buy a cheaper house in an expensive area. So I'm surrounded by rich people who won't think twice about paying an arm and a leg for home improvements.

So when I try to get a bargain on anything, they just laugh and say I can do a job down the street for twice that so why would I waste my time with you. It's really nuts.

[Demovictory9]

30. whats diff between boiler and water heater?

[unblock]

33. The boiler heats water in pipes in a closed system to heat the house.

The water heater gives us hot water for showers and such.

In our case it is a combined system in the sense that one of the "zones" of the house heating, boiler-driven system is the water heater -- pipes with water heated from the boiler form a spiral inside the water tank, heating it.

I guess "water heater" is now a misnomer as it's really just a water tank that gets heated by the boiler. The old system was a separate water heater, heated with electricity.

[Pinback]

16. After moving into an old house we'd bought, I shimmied through the little hole up into the attic

to have a look around, and found a bundle of about 20 Life magazines from the 1930s and ’40s. They were in remarkably good condition.

[mysteryowl]

18. That is fun.

I think some people collect items like that. Did you try to sell for profit?

[Pinback]

20. Nah, we kept 'em. Way too cool to sell.

One had General Patton on the cover posing next to a very phallic tank gun in the late 1930s as the nation prepared to take part in WWII. Others had amazing photos by Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, W. Eugene Smith, and many more.

My ex-wife ended up with most of them, but I still have a couple around here somewhere.

[mysteryowl]

22. Very cool

Thanks for sharing

[Deuxcents]

19. I moved into this place 3 years ago this month

Not even a week in n boxes still all over. Got t up in the middle of the night n water everywhere from a toilet that cracked and leaked for hours. After my meltdown, had an emergency plumber come that morning. Sunday morning. I had some ideas of how it happened but could never prove it.

[mysteryowl]

21. What a shocker!

Did you have a home warranty?

We bought a home warranty and have used it a couple times all ready.
It is helpful.

[Deuxcents]

23. Yea.. the real shocker was the clean up bill

New toilet n I wasn’t even out of boxes yet n my insurance denied me a claim .. I made it, tho!

[Tikki]

25. We bought income property in 1978. Two houses on the same

lot. Both houses had been rentals throughout the years.

While renovating the front house to be our home we pulled off layers of wall paper in the kitchen and on the painted drywall we found painted
a 6 foot high...Peace Symbol.

Made us smile.

The Tikkis

[NJCher]

31. Awww

That’s so sweet. And very nostalgia-inducing.

We pulled some wallpaper off in the butlers pantry and found the former owner had written on another layer, “Bibi has PMS today.”

[Ocelot II]

26. Found a small secret room behind a built-in buffet in a house built around 1900.

You could get into it by crawling through one of the lower cupboards. It was big enough to stand up and move around in. My ex still lives in that house; I hope that if he ever sells it, he first gets a fake human skeleton and dresses it in old clothes and leaves it in that little room before he moves out...

[NJCher]

32. Oh!

He absolutely must do that !

[PJMcK]

27. My first NYC apartment

When I went to college in the mid-1970s, I sub-let a room and bathroom in a beautiful pre-war apartment in NY's upper West Side. While cleaning and painting, I found a quarter-pound bag of marijuana in the back of a closet shelf!

College was great!

[mysteryowl]

35. Nice and it was illegal then, so it was an extra treat.

[onethatcares]

36. a neighbor down the street

knocked on my door and after I opened it he asked if I had anything he could get high with. Just any old thing, weed, meth, crack, whiskey..............just something to take the edge off.



Sadly, I didn't so I sent him on his way. He hasn't asked me again..


That was three weeks after we moved in.