One Tenant Filled Her House With Murals, But When The Landlord Ended Her Stay, She Chose To Repaint Before Walking Away
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A home’s personality often comes from the person who spent decades transforming ordinary rooms into something unforgettable.
For one longtime tenant, hand-painted fairy tales and a cottage-inspired exterior made her rental a neighborhood landmark.
That creativity attracted the new landlord’s family, but their appreciation soon came bundled with a devastating housing decision.
Let’s see what remained when the artist packed up.
Neighbor who’s very artistic by nature getting a sudden eviction because the landlords daughter wants the house with the art inside, what art?
There was a house in our area that was known for having really cool murals inside done by the previous tenant.
Outside was pretty tame she has a pre built facade to make the house look like a cottage, inside all hand done murals of Disney movies and fairy tales.
The lady was a art teacher when she was younger and later she started one of those paint with wine type business which she did well before fully retiring to just doing paint commissions and furniture decorating.
She’s always been nice to everyone even when I’ve been mean to her when she complained about the truck being loud or speeding, we worked that out and been friends since.
It didn’t work out the way the artist had hoped.
She had an agreement with the original landlord about the art since it wasn’t outside it wasn’t going to be a problem, she’s been living in that house since the mid 80s with promises of getting the house in time.
Unfortunately he passed before anything was signed and legitimized and his kids took over.
One of the sons visited the house to inspect it with his daughter and apparently they fell in love and wanted the art house for his daughter.
My neighbor didn’t have a lease which made the fight harder and they used the art on the walls as an excuse to kick her out.
It wasn’t the end of the world. Some friends were there to help.
She was devastated but she was able to buy a property that fits her needs at the last minute in another state that had a full art studio area on the first floor.
She originally wanted to leave the house as is without the cottage looking front but my friend offered to restore the house to “Rebecca standards” for free since he needed to figure out how to use powered paint sprayers.
He also had a friend that did landscaping to help her wirh the front of the house.
She agreed and we moved all her furniture out to storage units and my friend let her stay in his guest house free of charge if she did a mural on the living room wall.
She had the house cleaned out in a week.
Bye, bye murals!
On the second week they buffed all the walls with sanders.
All the murals from the front to back were gone it just looked like blotches of colors.
My friend being the ever diligent painter that he is masked anything that wasn’t paint and sprayed kilz primer everywhere with his new toy sprayer, this thing was pretty awesome you can spray a whole wall in 4 passes.
After the paint dried he used his “Rebecca” collection of colors to essentially kill the character of the house.
Here’s what they mean by “Rebecca” condition.
Rebecca condition is what we call flipper houses it’s always the same colors white with greys all over the house and the darktone pergo flooring.
The floors were tile so he left it alone but the walls were white semi gloss.
The wood panelling walls, trim, switch covers, outlet covers, counters and cabinets were sprayed in the most depressing shade of grey.
The house looked dead inside when I went in to check it out. It was weird not seeing all the murals.
It didn’t work out the way the daughter had expected either.
The front of the house was the last project she agreed to give his landscaping friend the bushes in exchange for the labor of removing the cottage facade without breaking it.
The landscapper basically ripped everything out and just dumped gravel and sand with a boulder for decoration.
This weekend i went to fix some problems at a old neighbors house and noticed the house was still empty and asked the neighbor if had seen anyone move in.
He said earlier in the week there was some U-Haul’s there but none of them were unloaded and that was the last time they remember seeing anyone there.
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Bet that daughter was in for a surprise when she saw the house get turned into a basic hell hole.
She wasn’t obligated to leave the murals. That was the perfect revenge.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
They should have paid her.
Here’s a similar comment.
This person thinks the revenge goes beyond petty.
An artist weighs in.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a home buyer who was surprised to learn his neighbors were upset about him removing a fence.
The landlord was really cruel.
After the new owners evicted her partly to claim the famous art house, the tenant and her friends sanded away every mural and removed the cottage facade.
They returned the property in generic white and gray flipper condition, while the would-be occupant apparently arrived with moving trucks and left without unloading.
The daughter came expecting Cinderella’s castle, but her eviction prize contained primer, gravel landscaping, and fifty shades of rental-property sadness.
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