I’ve been out for a while.  It’s been a rough couple of weeks.

My tenants of three solid years graduated from college and moved out, and I had exactly 9 days to go through the property, fix what needed fixin’ and clean the crap out of just about everything in sight.

Fortunately for me, the girls that moved out did a fairly decent job of getting all their stuff out on time and doing some general cleaning before turning in their keys, and for that I am extremely grateful.  It could have been a whole lot worse, and I didn’t bat an eye when I gave them their entire deposit back.

Then there was the bathroom.  The old shower surround was probably 20 years old, or at least it looked it, and was yellow, brittle and moldy.  It had to go.

Unfortunately the plaster wall behind the surround didn’t want to stick around either, and it ended up going too.

Then there was the tub itself.  It was definitely original and the enamel had worn off to the point where it was rusting and streaking down the tub.  If it was going to be replaced, now was the time to do it…

Long story short, I muscled the old cast iron tub out of the bathroom, taking about 3 other plaster walls with it, and replaced it with a new, modern tub and shower surround.

I’d rather not do that again.

Luckily I got the placed refreshed and cleaned up just in time for the new guys to move in.

And now I’m back to collecting rent.

I’ll have some more of the saga in the coming days, but now it’s time to relax for a while…  and hope stuff doesn’t break… any more than already has…

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Well, a good three year lease has come to an end, and my tenants have elected to move out.  Two of them are going on to grad school, and I’m not sure what the other is doing.

I must say, they were pretty good tenants.  Sure, I had some phone calls fairly late at night with a broken thermostat and an extinguished pilot light on the water heater, but that is to be expected.  Stuff doesn’t last forever.  Then there was the major plumbing problem in the basement, but my buddy the plumber knocked out that problem fairly quickly.

There was a case where all three of them locked themselves out of the house on Easter Sunday, just as I was sitting down to eat with the family.  But if that’s my biggest problem, I’ll take it.

The current tenants move out July 31st, and I’ve managed to land some new students who move in August 10th.  I don’t expect any major repairs between tenants, but I thought I’d give myself a good week in case anything major needs to be done.  I suspect I’ll need some paint on the interior, a carpet cleaning, and a good old fashioned wipe down.  But we’ll see.

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As I suspected the old cast iron pipe had rotted out underneath the basement floor of my rental unit. My buddy Paul (who has his own plumbing company) stopped by to take a look, and after a few swings of the sledge hammer, found the bottom of an elbow joint completely corroded out to the point where the high flow rate from the spin cycle of the washing machine was forcing water out from under the foundation and back through the stone wall of the basement.

I told him to go ahead and fix the problem, as it wasn’t something I wanted to tackle myself. Twenty bucks in plumbing fittings, and a half days worth of swinging a sledge hammer ($500 in labor and mileage from a neighboring city) and the problem was fixed. Paul finished the job by re-pouring the concrete floor he took out.

Problem solved.

At this point in time I didn’t have time to do the job myself. On top of it all, I could have ripped out all the concrete and then found I was in over my head, and the tenants would have been without a kitchen sink and a washer and dryer until someone else came in and fixed the problem.

Part of being a handyman/landlord/real estate investor is knowing what you can do yourself, and knowing what your time is worth.

This is one of those cases where I’d gladly pay for a pro to come in and do the job.

Rental Property landlord, plumbing, Real Estate, rental