Eric and I are coming to the end of our well deserved house renovation break for the winter but in retrospect there hasn't been nearly as much relaxing as we had hoped for. We had no idea that we would lose not one but both of our original tenants over the past 3 months, as both left their leases early with not a lot of notice—all in the nature of the economic downturn I guess. In retrospect I might not be so nice as to let tenants out of their contractual obligations in the future—it certainly did create quite a mess for us in both instances, but it did seem like the right thing to do, especially when they specifically tell you they can no longer afford the rent. Sure, they are contractrually obligated to pay through the end of the lease and we could have taken them to court but I was really hoping for less strife in my life, not more. I might be singing a different tune had we not gotten signed leases on Unit #2 late last week—just in under the wire for 2/1 occupancy—whew!
Our third floor tenants left just before November 1st and our 2nd floor tenant left last week. Both of these tenants were our original ones who took occupancy back in late May 2007 just as the renovations were winding to a close and we were scrambling to get everything done in time to refinance and go on vacation. This was also right around the time that I broke my foot so that coupled with renovating fatigue and a desire to just be done with workers in our home every day meant that a lot of corners were cut and a lot of work was overlooked. Eric and I never really got a chance to inspect the rental apartments fully before we rented them out—there was so much going on and in such a small span of time. However we did get to deal with the myriad of issues that arose due to the shoddy construction work of Tim and company—the leak in the 2nd floor shower, the leak in the third floor tub, the leak in the 2nd floor kitchen sink, the leak in both units' toilets, etc. Basically if there was a plumbing connection it was done incorrectly and in the first couple of weeks of occupancy we needed to go back and correct the horrible work that was done. But after that it was pretty smooth sailing until the leases were getting ready to change hands.
In both cases we got to finally take stock of each unit and see exactly how many corners were cut and used a bit of elbow grease to bring the places up to par. In mid 2007 the rental market was on fire which is why we were able to rent these units so quickly and for so much cash with no demand that the little issues be fixed. In this market however, there is a lot more available inventory at lower prices so all that shoddy work simply wasn't cutting it.
Take for instance the stainless backsplash in the kitchen of unit #2. It looks pretty in this after picture after it was all cleaned up, but when we got up the apartment to inspect the place we realized that it wasn't even attached to the wall! There were screw holes that just went into the drywall (not the studs) that were literally hanging out and the sheets were just held up by friction! I have no idea how they didn't fall at an earlier date or what a pain they were for the tenants to deal with and clean. Well now we re-drilled the holes and all is well, but talk about an absolutely horrible installation! Where are the good remodeling contractors when you need them?
And speaking of these awful stainless backsplashes, the one in the shower was an absolute mess. I swear, the next time we have a change of tenant we are going to buffer in some time and take all this stainless the hell out. This is truly the worst installation by a contractor EVER and that is saying something! It's absolutely crap, thin stainless that is already rusting out and it was installed directly into drywall, not tile backer board.—IN A SHOWER WHERE IT IS BOMBARDED DAILY WITH WATER! To make matters worse the edges are cut unevenly so drywall is exposed in the corners and it wasn't attached in any way to the plastic base. So water collected around the rim of the base and made it up behind the stainless sheets which are barely attached to the wall and flopping all over the place. I can't even imagine how much water damage is behind these walls, but we didn't have time to rip it all down so we just took out all the old caulk and re-caulked HUGE areas in the corners to cover the drywall—yes those white spaces you see in the corner is the drywall! Eric also built a grout ledge at that bottom where the stainless meets the base and covered it with a plastic tub border stripe to block mildew. As with the upstairs shower, we needed to replace all these screws because the morons who installed it didn't use stainless screws and they rusted out—again they are being exposed to water being in a shower and all! Seriously, I don't think they could have done a worse job. But here's the finished project after we did the best we could with it
And here's the toilet that Eric needed to reinstall because it was installed on the subfloor with no regard for the height added with the tile—thus it didn't sit flush and the workers solution was to simply use more putty around the flange to hold the thing in place. They did this with both toilets and needless to say they both leaked slowly around the base. Eric needed to remove both toilets and install flange extenders to make the things sit properly. Again with the extreme idiocy! Did they not know how to do this? Did they not care? I'm thinking a little bit of both. Seriously I wish there was some place that you could post contractor information online where I could trash this guy so no one would make the mistake of using him and his crew again. Are there good contractors out there? Surely there must be. We just haven't been lucky enough to find them. Thus we are pretty much doing everything by ourselves now. It may take longer but at least we won't walk away until it is done right.
Aside from all the kitchen and bathroom work, there was tons of wall/ceiling patching and painting that was never done by the original crew that we've been scrambled to do over the last few days. We also installed the Ikea shelving units that our last tenant left new in the apartment as he never got around to putting it together. I'm here to report that as annoying as it is to put furniture together normally, it's even harder when you don't have the directions. Or the right kind of Scotch. But as this unit has no closet and is short on kitchen storage I can see these shelving units coming in handy for these and future tenants. You can see the fruits of our labor here.
Man it looks good now! I can't believe I lived in that place from 2004 to early 2007—it looks totally transformed! It's also nice that we have some good photos of it for the next time we need to rent it out. The bad news is we had to lower our rent a bit in the market but we got a little more for #3 back in November so it pretty much evens out. We are netting $50 less per month than we were before but at least the place was rented for 2/1 and we didn't lose a month to inactivity. We also signed a 14 months lease with our new tenants so we don't need to worry about trying to rent in the dead of winter again! I'd say we probably have another couple of weeks left to really rest before the weather warms up and it's full steam ahead to the never-ending task that is correcting our crappy contractor's work and beautifying this house!
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