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I had to remove the outdated tile in the kitchen and we also decided to remove all the wallpaper except in the small bathroom.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…
