oneoffaccountok

Sorry, my previous answer was a bit short and uninformative. I rushed it because my 4yr old was dancing in front of our open fire.

So, I won't start with the worst I've experienced - I don't want to peak too soon here - but the following is definitely one of the most horrible.

The contractor would generally accompany me first thing in the morning to the job site, show me what needed doing, leave me to prep and make good then come back either later that day or next day with paints, etc.

In this instance he was cagey and said he couldn't stop long as he had other jobs to get too before lunch. The flat is on the 7th floor of a block in an area usually reserved for families. I drag myself and my tools up the 7 floors (we never use the elevators) to find the door to the flat is missing. A temporary metal door is in place. The metal doors and window shutters are often used to secure void residences to dissuade squatters and drug users, but not usually as replacements for the standard front door.

"Where's the door?" I ask casually. The contractor informs me the flat was broken into and the door stoved in.

Fair enough. In we go. And it's as we enter the hallway that I feel I might lose my lunch.

There's blood stains on the floor and up the wall. The lakes of blood that must have been here have been cleaned up to an extent, but nobody has scrubbed the stains. What's more there's strange fleshy matter in the corners where wall meets floor.

On into the living room as the contractor studiously avoids the subject of the blood and points into each room telling me what needs doing. We come to the living room which he gestures at without entering. "They're going to replace the floor so don't worry too much about paint spatters. Magnolia throughout and woodwork. Do your best with the ceiling."

And he's leaving at speed. I enter the living room, suspicious about this ceiling, expecting it to be falling in or fire damaged. Something shitty that'll take me an age to sort out so the job won't be worth the money.

I'm not prepared for what I find which can only be described as gooey chewing gum-like substance, blood and, all down one wall, more of the gooey smeared stuff that looks like red shit and smells like regular shit.

I start on the hallway and at about lunch time the carpenter arrives to sort out the front door. Being another sub-contractor he has nothing to lose and gives me the whole story (with no small relish as he knows I'm about to knock off for my lunch).

The flat belonged to a registered sex offender - a pedophile. Someone in the block found out and got together a posse of dads who descended on the guy one night with baseball bats. They kicked in the door and beat the guy in the hallway. He ran into the living room where one of the posse dealt the killing blow, exploding his skull with a well aimed swing and smearing the ceiling and walls with his brain.

Apparently the cleaners had done their best, but given up at some point. I think I must have looked so appalled he regretted telling me the story in such vivid detail as he helped me scrape off the shit on the walls which, upon as close inspection as I dared give it, did indeed look like brain matter. Behind the radiator I also found bits of skull with hair and skin still attached. He told me to just paint over the stuff on the ceiling, spraying it for me with stain block before setting himself to the task of the front door.

So I painted over that ceiling brain shit and did the rest of the flat as quickly as I could.

In my defence, I was young and inexperienced. Looking back it was extraordinarily irresponsible of me to just leave that stuff on the ceiling. I'm in no doubt that a new resident (maybe a family) would have been moved in within a few weeks of the redec.

TL;DR had to decorate a living room covered in the brains and skull of a murdered pedophile.

Coolest experiences: that's easy. I LOVED doing what we call 'assisteds' which is basically decorating elderly resident's homes. Rewarding and fun. When I first went on assisteds I felt so sorry for these guys. They're, on average, between 70 and 90, usually capable of looking after themselves but desperately lonely. Many spend the entire day watching TV and waiting either for rare visits from family or for the meals on wheels lady to deliver their hot dinner at midday.

As you can imagine, having a decorator around for a week gives them a sounding board to talk about their lives. And I was never bored of hearing them talk. I would even stay late to help them out with little odd jobs around the place in order to hear more about their experiences. I was particularly fascinated by their wartime accounts and gained a huge local knowledge of how things were during WWII in my area.

The most striking thing about these stories was the fact that they were all so upbeat. Very few were about fighting or hardships, most revolved around the fun they had when they were younger, even if they were directly involved in the war.

Plenty.

I found a dead cat in a cupboard once. It had been hanged, which for some reason disturbed me more than the brain matter.

I think the way some people live disturbed me more than actual physical findings though. The state of some people's homes, where they live, sometimes 24 hours a day like prisoners in some self imposed cell.

The creepiest instance was a flat in an area used primarily to house drug addicts. Hardcore heroin users who would sleep until mid-afternoon then emerge like zombies and queue around the local phone box to call their dealer. It's council policy to house drug addicts within easy reach of their dealer so they don't withdraw too often.

This particular guy had died of an OD. His flat was high up and the flats around were empty, so he'd lived a really isolated existence in the clouds. He'd covered every inch (and I mean every inch - ceiling, cupboard doors inside and out, floor etc) in marker pen, writing down, apparently, every thought that came into his drug addled head. The things he wrote were not profane, but they were very very disturbing.

It was a long time ago. He was clearly a paranoid and believed demons were coming for him. He wrote about things he saw flying outside the window and a bunch of trippy poetry. The creepiest line, for some reason, was where he described lying on his bed waiting to die while the ghouls flew round and round the light bulb.

It might be an anticlimax from the perspective of a reader, but my personal worst was an occupied house in an immigrant region. It was a difficult job because it was a hall, stair and landing (always tricky where people occupy the house because it's a thoroughfare and you have to be careful of your tools, ladder etc.)

In this case there was an extended family of, I assumed, Jamaicans. At first I thought they didn't speak great English, but I eventually realized they were speaking in patwa. The family consisted of a terrifying big fat momma, two skanky daughters and a little girl. During the day various men would come and go, always surly and usually to have some kind of argument with the old lady.

The girls also came and went and were abusive to the mother. The little girl belonged to one of them, but I couldn't work out which. They never paid her the slightest attention.

Most of the time it was just me and the old lady.

It soon became apparent to me that the little girl never came out of her bedroom. The old lady kept her in there all day. When I was decorating the landing I would chat with the girl through the half open door and she was a lovely little kid with amazing brown eyes and a lovely smile. But if the old lady heard her speaking she'd come thundering into the hall and scream up the stairs. When she brought the girl food, which was brusquely shoved through the door without much communication, she would go in and yell if I'd been chatting with the girl.

The two young girls were flirtatious with me and I asked one if the little girl was being kept in the room for my benefit, so she wouldn't get in the way of my decorating. The girl told me no, she was kept in there because the old lady hated her. No further explanation was given and I didn't talk much to the girl again because the old lady saw us chatting and immediately tried to arrange a date between us - she kept laughing in an unwholesome way and saying "once you try black you never go back". It was sort of disgusting, especially as the girl kept nodding and grinning knowingly as if to say 'yes'. It felt very much like a green card situation and it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

The thing came to a head when I'd progressed to painting the stairs and the little girl ventured out of her room to chat to me. The old lady comes pounding out of the dining room where she spends most of the day, stomps up stairs and just starts laying into the kid with fists and feet.

I grabbed her and restrained her, resisting the urge to throw her down the stairs, and told her to back off, that she shouldn't hit kids. I was shaking and horrified. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

That evening I went home and called social services, then I phoned the contractor and told him I wouldn't go back. He was extremely pissed and refused to pay me for the four days work served, even though I'd nearly finished. I just couldn't face going back, knowing I was really powerless to do anything. It was a depressing, impotent situation and I have very little hope that social services did anything but file away my complaint.