I went to put in an outlet with charging ports and found this monstrosity behind the wall plate. The box is filled with expanding foam, I'm guessing as some kind of support? Then painted all over. I scraped it all out, put in outlet spacers and its much better. I think there's foam around the box too, but I'm not gonna worry about that (yet).
Now I get to spend next weekend replacing all the outlets in the house just in case there's any more sketchy "fixes" ๐ซ
After cleaning and replacing:
Yeah, it was a family who turned it into a rental when they moved out. Then it was eventually sold to an investment company who "remodeled". I think the company was just a regular house flipper who did their own work. It's weird, they did such a good job on a lot of things, and then the absolute worst job on random bits. I'm guessing they realized remodeling properly takes time and rushed the finishing touches to just get it sold. Luckily they left all of the supplies to fix what they messed up haha.
Flippers are a plague. The definition of lipstick on a pig. The business model is buy the worst house in the best neighborhood and put the bare minimum into it to bring the sale price up to the average. Oftentimes that means lots of cosmetic cover-up. Good luck!