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landlording blues
Thursday, May 4 2017
Today was the day that our new tenant was supposed to move into the Brewster Street house, and I showed up there as early as I could (around 10am) to do some last-minute things: use a weed whacker to cut the longish grass in the front and near-back, spruce up the dilapidated picket fence in the back, and, most importantly, install six smoke detectors. Two of these detected carbon monoxide and four just detected smoke (one of which I'd bought for $1 at the Tibetan Center thrift store). It's a surprising amount of work to install six smoke detectors, particularly when there are the painted-on mounting rings for old smoke detectors to remove (they're never compatible with the one being installed). While I was doing these things, some guy was in the bedroom installing a ceiling lamp while a couple chuckleheaded plumbers dicked around with the sink in the bathroom. At some point the tenant showed up, wondering if the carpet guys had shown up. They hadn't. Then she drew my attention to the state of the kitchen appliances, which nobody had had a chance to clean. The refrigerator (which we'd bought used) looked bad enough, but the inside of the oven looked like a cave full of grease stalactites. For some reason, I'm embarrassed to admit, I'd signed off on keeping that oven without having ever thought to look inside. "It looks pretty bad," I admitted, and then I hurried off to install the last of the smoke detectors.
Back at the house, Gretchen had been on the phone with the new tenant, and things weren't going well. Not only were things that should've been done not done, but there was that nasty oven. Now, in addition to everything else, Gretchen had to rush-order a replacement. On top of all that, Gretchen had to go to court today to deal with the eviction of the resident of #2 in the brick mansion. Amusingly, that tenant's court-appointed attorney would turn out to be none other than Peter, our lawyer friend from the early Aughts. The court found in Gretchen's favor, of course. It was clear the tenant owed us something like $2900. She will have to vacate on the last day of the month, though for some reason she is entitled to her security deposit even if she doesn't pay us the complete amount that we are owed. (As unjust as that seems, it's still not quite enough to make us into Trump voters.)
Later in the afternoon, I got a Facebook instant message from Gretchen saying simply, "I'm in hell!" A brief yelling match with the new tenant earlier in the day had somehow resolved itself and now Gretchen and the tenant were unified in their fury at the carpeting subcontractor. A bunch of carpet had been dragged in and dropped on the only floors not to be carpeted, a few pads had been installed upstairs where the carpeting was to go, and that was it. The carpet installation guys had vanished, leaving no place for the tenant to move in her stuff. Gretchen was forced to put her up in a hotel for the night. What a fucking disaster!
Tonight Gretchen and I unwound as best we could in front of the teevee, watching the bizarre third episode of the third season of Fargo, alcoholic beverages in hand. In this episode, the machine that switched itself off was a complete novelty to Gretchen, though (being a maker who keeps up on makerly trends), I was familiar with it and had even read articles in Make Magazine and Instructables.com about how to build such a useless device.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?170504 feedback
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