Confessions Of A Landlord

Yep, I'm a landlord. It's not a part of life I'm pleased with and I can say that with even more vigor since last week's "vacation". We're only renting out our old house because we couldn't sell and you can read all about that saga here. Anyway, as you can probably tell from my last post I was pretty excited about this vacation and it started as planned. We ditched the kids and dogs with Grandma and then headed to our old homestead to clean out the pond, spray for bugs...a nice way of saying "check up on the renters who'd been living in our house for the past year." A quick check up to get our chores over with before kicking back for two weeks of vacation.

Then on our way to the house the renter calls to say they'd be moving out. Turns out they'd moved out 2 weeks before and it seems they just weren't going to tell us or pay us this months rent. It got better. When we arrived at the house we could see immediately it hadn't been cared for. The yard had never been mowed and as soon as I saw the backyard I started crying. Nature had taken it back. The inside was the same, dirty, never been cleaned, hole in the wall, nasty couches left behind, filthy walls, never cleaned toilets. We were shocked. I could go on and on but in an attempt to keep this short I can sum it up like this: I cried, we stressed, we opened a Lowes credit card so we could spend way more money than we actually have, and for 10 non-stop hours a day for the entire next week of our "vacation" we cleaned and painted and repaired. Now the inside of the house looks better than ever and I never want to see another paint brush for as long as I live. The rest is probably best left to before and after pictures. If you feel the need you can click any image to enlarge though it's not for the faint of heart on some of these.

Backyard Before. This is actually greatly improved from what we saw initially. When we saw it the entire yard was like that spot in the back corner with the fenced in pond area. The renter did knock most of it down with a weed eater but it still took a few days to fill the pond (it wasn't worth saving), cut down weeds and mow.

The Backyard After with mowing and edging and freshly filled pond. Even after all that work it still didn't look like the nice lush green yard we left behind.

We had new french doors put in after we moved in and now they're dog scratched and filthy. They looked the same before and after. Boo hissy.

Living Room before, complete with carpet stains and disgusting furniture and milk crates. I did get a cool giant emerald green 70's lamp out of the deal that's now on my piano. I suppose that's something of a plus.

Living Room after a fresh coat of neutral paint and carpet shampooing.

Laundry Room before. Ok, this room always needed some help. Other than my obnoxious bright orange paint it was already in need of a new floor.

Laundry Room After the fresh paint, new parquet linoleum floors and closets to make it a 3rd bedroom.

Dining Room Before. Yes that's yet another gross couch.

Dining Room After. Clearly I don't prefer neutrals for my own house but this house is looking clean and cute and good enough to rent (or sell!) The major house-wide scrub down didn't hurt either.

I don't have a before of the kitchen but wish I had one of the fridge, eck! But the after is nice.

Every light switch in the house was grimy as were almost all parts of every wall. This one just happened to be in the master bath, along with the gross shower below it. The shower was also leaking so badly we could here it as soon as we walked in the house. It was more like a gush than a leak.

Master Bath After. Hey, I'd actually use this bathroom again!

Man hand sized hole in the wall that used to be the boys room.

Boys Room after with patched wall and the closet doors we'd never gotten around to putting up the 4 years we lived there.

The nasty that was the Boys' Bathroom. I can't believe they had kids in this house!

A good scrub and a coat of paint to cover up my granny turquoise and the bathroom is back to spiffy.

I wish I had the pictures that we took right before we moved when we were trying to sell but they're MIA since my last computer crash. All of those bright colors actually looked cute instead of trashed out and the pond was surrounded by rocks and had a functioning fountain that was so nice to sit out next to. Not to mention my beautiful duckies that had to find a new home when we moved. Guess these people didn't share the same ideas on pond relaxation! In spite of it all my husband and I enjoyed each other. The building of the pergola must have been practice for this because we did good. There wasn't even one tiny little cat fight!