Finally All the Work Is Done on the Rental…

This blog will wrap up what we did at our rent house . A ton of work was needed and we were the only two it seemed who were wiling to tackle the job. We certainly didn’t plan on spending most of the summer in Texas but here we are…

The first thing we did was rip out the carpet and the old pad by cutting it in strips then rolling it up. We carried it out to curb along with the heap of garbage already there left by the tenants. Our house already looked a lot better with the nasty carpet out.

Next we sanded and painted the 35 year old wood cabinets in the kitchen. This was a lengthy process as each step would take the better part of a day to dry. Finally after a coat of primer and two coats of enamel, they were ready for reattachment of the hinges and knobs then to be put back on the cabinets we painted.

I had to remove the outdated tile in the kitchen and we also decided to remove all the wallpaper except in the small bathroom.  This was also a lengthy and tedious task. Meanwhile the walls and ceilings had dirt and hair all over them so they had to be cleaned before painting. Most of the walls in the hallway and one bedroom had urine stains from the tenant’s dogs (disgusting).  We used a great product called TSP for cleaning the walls, ceiling, cabinets, window sills and baseboards. Another great product I read about called Nature’s Miracle indeed miraculously eradicated the overwhelming dog smell in the house.

There were also a zillion small sheetrock holes along with several large ones which needed to be repaired. We were then at last able to put two coats of ceiling white on the ceiling and two coats of a soft grey on the rest of the walls in the house.

With the paint up I started the flooring as we decided to replace all the carpet with a luxury vinyl waterproof product similar to what we put in our motorhome. This took a long time for me to complete on my own but once done we were off to finishing up the smaller but necessary tasks. Door repairs, more painting of the doors, removing a small mountain of ash in the fireplace,  hanging new blinds, installing new door knobs and locks, replacing mismatched bathroom faucets, repairing plumbing, replacing the damaged A/C intake, replacing broken light fixtures, ceiling fans and other items.

The backyard also needed some work as their were many holes the dogs dug which needed to be filled. We also raked up three large bags of leaves, removed discarded dog toys and dog feces.  After seeing the damage by the dogs to the carpet, the walls, the doors and the backyard there will be no more dogs in our rental. The lease allowed for one SMALL dog yet he had three LARGE ones (sigh).

The tenants moved out on the 30th and we worked until the day we left on the 14th of August. I worked 10 to 12 hours a day the last 10 days and although we often made time to visit Mo’s Irish Pub for happy hour we amazingly got the job done and were finally able to hit the road again on August 14th.

While wrapping up the work on the rent house that final week we had a prospective tenant drop by for a tour.  He left a deposit the very next day and we like him already as he asked to improve the backyard with some dirt and new sod.  Finding a new tenant right away who has no pets and really seems to care about our property made all the work worth our time  Now we are ready to resume a more carefree life on the road!

NOTE: We are back on the road and in Waco Texas until  August 18th and then up to Wichita Falls to see our new nephew working our way to New Mexico via Childress and Pampa, Texas…

Amazing What Filth Some People Can Live In…

Wow, it is hard to believe the last time I blogged was way back on Saturday, July 20, 2019, nearly four weeks ago. Where did the time go and what were we doing during that hiatus?. Well we were mostly working very hard on our rent house although we did have a few fun days (mostly in July).

One fun thing we did was attend the Dixie Chicken’s (a well known college bar near the Texas A&M University campus) 40th birthday party. We do recall having had a little too much fun on a few occasions there in the 1970’s. Anyway, this was a great little event even though it was pretty dang hot. We has some fun listening to a lot of musicians at the bash, the best of which was Roger Craeger.

 

We actually hoped to be out of College Station by August 7th but the tenant in our rent house informed us he couldn’t be out of the rent house until July 24th. Well the 24th came and went. They did not move out until the 30th. We had an agreement where we could go in before they moved to do some work but that meant we would really only have 7 days to flip the house and make it ready for new tenants. That was definitely not enough time so we added yet another week to our stay.

As you may remember from our last blog these renters have been the most disgusting renters we have ever had with regard to cleanliness. They were great in making their rental payments every moth for the last 8 years but apparently they never ever cleaned the place… NOT EVEN ONCE in 8 years. I mean there was even dirt and dog hair on the ceiling – did I mention they had three large dogs even though only one dog was allowed in the lease? Some of these pictures are taken before and then after we cleaned…

We soon discovered we had several major projects to do. We had already built a new fence and replaced the concrete driveway but after seeing the inside we realized we needed new flooring, new paint, several repairs and a massive cleaning of their filth left behind.

Once they moved out the first thing to go was all of the carpet. Although it was only 8 years old it had been destroyed by the dogs digging holes in it and peeing all over the place. After donning gloves the carpet was cut into smaller pieces and carted out to the curbside thrown atop the huge pile of junk the renters left behind.

I neglected to mention that upon entering our rental the stench of dog urine and dirty dog smell was overwhelming. We thought removal of the carpet would help eradicate  the foul smell but it hardly made a dent.

I will rant a bit more about our ordeal in the next blog but just to let you know we are now happily back on the road of retirement…

NOTE: We are back on the road and in Waco Texas until  August 18th and then up to Wichita Falls to see our new nephew working our way to New Mexico via Childress and Pampa, Texas…

Finishing Up the Outside Work on the Rental…

We are a little over midway through our return stay in College Station to whip our rent house back into prime shape after having been rented to the same two fellows with three dogs for 8 plus years. The good news is that we are about halfway finished with our major repairs as well.

I spent the better part of a week completing our fencing project. The first 3 days were spent removing and rebuilding the side fence after negotiating with the neighbor to purchase materials as long as I performed the labor. I mostly worked from around 7:30 am to about 1:00 pm as it was simply too hot and muggy to work any longer than that.

It took longer to build the back fence because it took more time negotiating with that neighbor to pay for the materials. She finally agreed so I was able to tear down the old fence situated on her property line. Without her approval my alternate plan would have been to build our fence in front of her old fence without tearing it down since it was in her property.

Since there was slightly more fence in the backyard than the side it took another day to finish. Also temperatures had risen into the upper 90’s along with the usual summertime high humidity so there were heat advisories suggesting the “feel like” heat was in the mid 110’s. As a result I rarely made it 1:00 pm on those days. Thankfully the fencing project is all done now so we can check that off the to-do list.

While I was finishing up the fencing I had a concrete contractor come in to tear out our old, cracked driveway and replace it with all new concrete. As they were finishing up I also repaired our backyard deck and the side gate. While I was doing the fencing Sharon was busy with the power washer power cleaning all of the deck and the outside of the house . With all that done there is only a little touch up painting and tree work left on the outside.

The majority of the remainder of our work will be inside where at least it will be air conditioned. Our tenant will be closing on his duplex sometime near the end of June but because of the pre-existing leases in his new duplex, he cannot move in until late July. He has communicated with us that as he packs and empties rooms we can come inside to begin the last of the work.

We will replace all the flooring, repaint the entire inside, do some minor repairs and lots of deep cleaning.  During our down time while waiting to start the inside work we have reconnected with friends in the area, scheduled Sharon a series of physical therapy visits for an overuse injury and explored some of the new happy hours in town.  Such is our life right now in College Station, Texas…

NOTE: We are back in our old home town until  August 7th…Done

Going Back to Work in Texas…

With our time ending in the hill country we sadly started heading east (instead of west as we would have preferred) to head back over to College Station Texas. We are back in Aggieland and have returned to our old home town because we need to do some work on our rent house.The last tenants have been in it for over 8 years and since they were two guys with three dogs you can imagine how much work needs done on the rental.

After soliciting many bids for the work we finally decided it best to go back to College Station to do much of the work ourselves to save a bundle of money. The bids had come in at around $13,500 to have everything done and we figure to save at least $6500 doing much of it ourselves. The only thing we for sure won’t do is the replacing of the concrete driveway at a cost of $4500.  

We pulled into Holiday RV Park with a plan to stay until at least July 7th and perhaps longer if we need to extend to get the work done. Thankfully our being full time RV’ers allows us the luxury to change plans as needed at a moments notice. We can simply point our home (RV) in a different direction to take on whatever it is that challenges us.

One of the first tasks I chose to tackle was replacing our very old and dilapidated privacy fence. Two sides of the fence needed replacing and one neighbor agreed that if I did the work they would pay for materials, meaning the fence would cost us no money. Fifty feet of privacy fence on open bid would have been over $1100 to have built.

Well, it has been 8 years since I have done any kind of hard work and this is some very serious manual labor. The first day I spent tearing down the old fence, digging new holes with a metal post hole digger and finally putting in new posts in concrete. The following two days were spent framing the fence runners and screwing in the pickets.

It took a little less than 3.5 days to build which saved us at least a grand but man that was hard work. After the first day I felt like I had been in a car wreak. Fortunately Sharon offered to give me a deep massage that evening and friends of ours offered  the use of their hot tub which I graciously accepted. I didn’t feel great the next day but I also can’t imagine how I would have felt if I hadn’t had the massage and hot tub therapy.

So here we are a week into our work and we still can’t get in the inside until our tenant leaves later this month. A hell of way to spend your birthday but at least Sharon made me a fantastic carrot cake!

NOTE: We are back in our old home town until July 7th…