Gus - the Guinea Pig

Victor and Francesca were tenants in 102.  They were pretty good tenants, but got behind in their rent a few times.  They were behind again this in June. 

Saturday, July 13 - we found them moving out on Saturday morning.  So, we approach and ask "what's up?" 
"Jana's mean," they tell us.  What?  Jana (our fabulous property manager)  said they had to pay their rent and I guess that's mean. 
So, they're moving out.  But they promise to leave it clean because Franchesca used to work for Merry Maids.  Somehow that supposed to console me.

Oh yea, they also promised to pay us their back rent. 

Monday, July 15 - I check the apartment.
Dirty, cluttered, big TV in living room, furniture in both bedrooms with clothes!
The carpet in the hall was all clawed up by the puppy they had closed up in the bathroom!
Oh yea - and Gus, the guinea pig in the kitchen.  Sigh.

I ran to Safeway and picked up a guinea pig snack stick to hold him over, praying they were going to come back for him. 

I checked in on Gus every day with fingers crossed, hoping he'd be gone.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Oh brother.  How am I going to get rid of Gus?  Thursday, Friday - nothing.  Saturday Victor and Franchesca show up!  "Yea," I'm thinking.  They took all the furniture, but when they left, Gus was still in the kitchen. 

Sunday, they show up again and I tell them I'll give them $100 of their deposit back if they come back and clean AND if they get the guinea pig.  I figure that it's going to cost me $100 to clean!

Three days later they call me to collect.  It's clean - really clean!  Merry Maids clean!  And, best of all, Gus is gone. 

Will we get our back rent?  I'm sure of it  - when guinea pigs fly!

Back to Back to Back Vacancies

So we turned over the keys to the Hillside House on May 15 and really finished up on June 1.  But back at the 4-plex things started ramping up.

A little history.  Remember the 6 month renovation of 102 back in 2012?  The tenants who moved in were problematic (understatement!).  There were 5 people living in a 2 bedroom townhouse.  The dad was big, imposing, and not a nice guy. He antagonized the neighbor and his friends had gang ties.

By May 1, the cops had been there one-too-many times and we invited Jose and Clarissa to leave.  We told them that they could move out by the end of May, or we could start eviction process.  Although they asked for some extra time they agreed to leave and moved out by the end of June.  Fine, whatever - just leave!!!

So here we go...
June - We're busy with family stuff out of state, knowing in the background that Jose and Clarissa should be out by the end of the month.

July 4 - 102 is vacant and  the work begins.  Cue the cleaning crew. Remember the peel and stick tiles we installed in May 2011?  They still look pretty good!  And, as I hoped, I was able to remove and replace individually replaced tiles.  Use a hair drier to soften the adhesive (not the hot air gun!), and 2" scraper to help get underneath.  My only caution in using these tiles is to be aware that the tiles that are in the direct sunlight they do shrink a bit and the seams open up.  Those are the tiles I had to replace!

July 13 - Tenants in 103 are moving out - without notice.   Why?  The Property manager was being mean to them...The reality is they were behind in their rent (again) and we weren't giving them any more time.  So they started moving out.  Key word: started.  This story is worth a blog post all by itself...stay tuned. 

August 1 - Tenants in 104 moved out.  (At least we knew about this one!) Lots to do in 104, but it is scheduled renovation, not tenant damage!  The repair on 104 gets its own blog post, too!

So here we are, the end of August. Unit 102 is rented to 2 grad students.  103 is finished but vacant.   104 done with tenants on the horizon.

Move in date

May 15, 2013

After eight months of seemingly non-stop work at the Hillside house, our God-sent tenants started moving in. Can you say "hallelujah?"  They are young professional women who are absolutely a joy and God’s gift! 

We took the basement back to the concrete walls and then built a fabulous bathroom, media room, 2 bedrooms, a laundry area and have the potential for a great kitchenette downstairs.   The kitchen and bathroom upstairs were also gutted and rebuilt completely.  We replaced every inch of electrical wire in the house, including the circuits.  Likewise, there is not even a single inch of the original copper plumbing. 

We did hire a couple of guys to do some of the jobs or we would never have finished!  As it was, we  still spent every weekend and several hours each week from October – May at that house and it looks great but I was exhausted physically and emotionally by the end of May.  The last few weeks I was kind of dragging my feet but the end was in sight!  Diego, on the other hand, is like the Energizer Bunny!  

However, don’t be fooled!  Just because the inside is done, doesn’t mean the job is done!  Now, the outside beckons.

Yea! A we have a toilet - well kinda.

Utilities -

If I had to sum up the last week in one word, it would be 'utilities.'  The folks from Air Extreme (heating/AC guys)  got furnace fixed, gas lines ready for inspection.  City inspector approved the gas lines.  Atmos came out to put the gas meter back on and reconnect the gas so we have heat in the house and are ready for those cold days to come!  YEA!!!!  So far the only thing keeping us warm was the 1000 trips up and down the stairs (see below!).

City's water meter guy came on Thursday and swapped out the meter and then turned the water back on.   Although many of the pipes are split, we now have one faucet in the basement with which we can fill up a bucket with water.  And with that bucket of water we can flush a toilet!  This alone will save quick trips around the corner to Carl's Jr. 

Saturday, Oct 20, 2012, was a quick clean up day.   We hired a high school student to help us carry out all the demo'd basement walls.  The three of us carried everything in the basement upstairs, packed the dumpster with drywall, packed the pickup with paneling and a made a big pile of scrap wood in the garage.  When I say packed, I mean carefully layered, each piece laying flat with as little airspace between pieces as possible.  A bit OCD?  No - I'm just too cheap to pay for a 1/2 empty dumpster!  (See $$ alert below)  We also pulled nails and knocked out the drywall in the basement staircase. 

Finally, we talked to a contractor about installing egress windows in the basement and doing all the work in the basement.   

$$ alert -
We had 2 cubic yard dumpster delivered. Cost? $60/load - emptied on-call
Diego took a 1 1/2 cubic yard pickup load to the Larimer County Landfill and it only cost him $10.69. What is wrong with this picture? Of course he was already in Loveland, so there wasn't the issue of driving over there AND the extra time it take to get there.   The dumpster is definitely a necessity but it sure is a money-saver when we can take a load over ourselves! 

What's up next? 
1. Call electrician to rewire the house (with the 1956 original wiring fairly exposed, now is the time rewire!)

2. Give a key to the contractor so he can get started in basement while we're gone.  We'll be out of town for the next two weekends, so we're trying not to lose momentum. 

3. Keep an eye out on Craigslist for used kitchen cabinets.  By the way, I used the Virtual Room Designer on the Lowe's website to redesign the kitchen.  Love it!  (the software, that is!). 

Reciprocating saws and brute force!

Renovation - Day 2

Recriprocating saw and brute force.

Deconstruction:  We got a late start today since church took priority!  More de-construction.  I don't say demolition, since that implies total wreckage.  We've learned that plunging in with a sledge hammer isn't always the best approach.  Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't demolition!  Crowbars and a recriprocating saw were the 2 most used tools of the day.   We still have 2 more rooms to clear out.

Neighbors:  We met the neighbors on both sides today.  Sounds like a really stable neighborhood - the lady next on the south has lived there for 23 years and with the exception of our house and one across the street, they're all owner occupied for years!  That's encouraging.  We also got some of the gossip -

Water:  Diego inserted a faucet right above the shut-off valve for the house.  He'll do an air pressure-test and if that's good, then we'll as the City to turn the water back on.  We still need to replumb the house, but this will at least give us one source of water and the ability to manually "flush" the toilet. 

Electricity:  On Friday Diego noticed that some outlets worked, but other didn't.  My husband, the Hardy-boy detective, discovered that we only had one leg of electricity coming into the house.  Translation?  Apparently there are 2 legs/wires of electricity that comes in from the street.  Each leg has 110 volts for a total of 220 volts.  We called Xcel and they sent someone within 20 minutes.   The power comes into the house through some tree branches.  The branches were weighing on the wires and effectively broke one of the wires.  A definite fire hazard, according to Robert,  my favorite electrician-friend. 

A dive into the pool!

We've taken the plunge again and bought a house intended to be a rental.  It's a HUD home, had been foreclosed and vacant for a long time - so we knew at the outset that this would be a crazy ride.

The ride began in earnest this week. Here's the list:

1.  We can't turn the water on because the pipes have been frozen and blew out in numerous places.  Additionally, the existing plumbing is corroded and in some places the pipes are touching either heating ducts or other metal surfaces, causing them to corrode and leak. Many of the joints weren't soldered well and are literally breaking apart in our hands.

We'll have to completely re-plumb the house.  Meanwhile that means we can't wash our hands or answer nature's calls while we're there.  Good thing Carl's Jr. is only a block away!

2.  There is no heat -The gas/furnace guy hasn't made it over to the house yet, but this we know:
2a  the furnace won't turn on - why?? Diego has tracked down wires and fuses, but it still doesn't come on. 
2b  The gas lines leak. 

3.  The basement is 'finished' but horrible!  So we had a dumpster delivered and started tearing the basement out today.  We filled up the dumpster, but not by dumping!  We carefully packed the dumpster so that there is no empty space - really, the stuff in the dumpster looks like a completed Tetris game:  paneling, ceiling tiles, shower base, more paneling, some drywall, a few wall studs (we separated most of those out!). 

Whoever 'finished' the basement loved construction adhesive.  The light switch in the bathroom wasn't even nailed it - it was glued.  On the other hand - they also were screw happy.  They used scraps of drywall on the ceiling and used 2" drywall screws every 3"

The basement bathroom is a plumbing nightmare - so we tore out everything except the toilet.  Ultimately, we'll have to jackhammer up the concrete floor and move the pipes. 

A Little Maintenance goes a Long Way

President's day may have been a day off of paid work, but a day of work nonetheless.  We told the tenants that we would be there on Monday afternoon to replace the furnace filters and check smoke detectors. 

Minutes before leaving the house I got an email from Jana that unit 104 had no heat and she'd already called McCreery for a service call.  I quickly cancelled them and we headed over. 

Diego started looking at the furnace.  Nothing looked wrong immediately and, as he had a bundle of wires in his hand, he said "we may just have to have McCreery look at this.   If it were my house I'd just track it down.  It's probably just a loose wire ... kind of like this one."  Sure enough just as he said that, one of the wires just fell out of it's place into his hand.

He pushed it back in, firmly, and we were back in business.  I don't even want to think about how much McCreery would have charged us for that call.  Not only would there be the service call, but I'm just guessing that they would have found something to replace, rather than just plug in the loose wire. 

That's my guy - what a gem. 

Crisis averted, we moved on to each of the other apartments.  The furnace filters were nasty dirty.  We also checked for leaky faucets, looked at the grout/caulk, and just generally checked the condition of the units.  We encouraged to see how good each unit looked - clean, in good shape, overall.  Whew!