I gotta get all my rentals before I'm too old to do renovation work.
I've decided to start giving myself Thursdays off from my friend's job so I can work my business. I'm afraid last night I drank too much, stayed up too late, and slept in too late after all the stress of running down this month's rent on my Problem Child tenant. I probably should've stayed home and did desk work today--bookkeeping, lining up an attorney, lining up a property manager, getting a plumber to hook up the gas fireplace in the vacant rental. But I wanted to get out and do things with my hands. So in the afternoon I fired up the Awesome Van and took it over to clean out the garage in the vacant rental.
Turns out there was more than one vanload of junk in the garage. I've still got the bathroom over-toilet cabinet the renters left. And the wheelbarrow and trashcan they left. And then all my tools--mostly rakes and brooms and shovels at this point. They also left me six 60# bags of ready-mix concrete. The problem is, even in "waterproof" plastic bags, you need to use concrete pretty quickly--especially if it is stored in a garage in a town where the nighttime humidity gets up around 100%. So basically they were bag-shaped 60# chunks of concrete. Because I'm cheap and I've got the fish pond there, I decided to bust up the concrete to use as gravel to line the bottom of the fish pond. Some experimentation and modification of the plan left me with assorted "rocks" (and yes, a little gravel) to use to complete edging for the pond.
There was also a 7' hunk of granite that came with the house. No doubt someone's Plan was to use it for kitchen countertops. Now, if you're Old and you still think you're Young, try moving a 7'x17"x1.5" slab of granite. It will quickly humble you. That's why I left the bugger there when I rented the place out. But now I decided to get rid of it. Some smart work with a furniture dolly and I had it in The Van. Unfortunately I wasn't quite as smart in unloading it and painted myself into a corner, so now I have 3 randomly sized chunks of granite that, when lined up amount to 7' worth of granite. Oh well. Such is life. Finding a buyer for the stuff would've been a headache anyway. There actually was probably 60# worth of concrete from the bags that didn't harden. That's all on a sheet of 6mil plastic right now. I assume it will be a hunk of concrete that needs to be busted up next time I get back there.
Besides that, I've got to weed the pavement in the backyard and hose down all the pavement. Ideally I should restain the deck. That probably isn't happening. A downside of a vacant property in the winter is that it isn't--it can't be staged as nicely. There are 2 hooks on the sides of the patio door. In May of 2020 they had geraniums or something hanging from them. The renters didn't do anything with them so there aren't even planters of dead/dormant plants hanging from them. Same for my lattice. At some point, someone bricked over a bathroom window. Before showers were so big--and natural light was more important, a lot of bathrooms had windows over the tub. Well at some point, mine got bricked over. But apparently they don't make that orange brick you see in 1960s elementary schools anymore, so there's a much more rust-colored window-shaped spot of brickwork on my patio. Now climbing plants are a goddamned nuisance in Louisville, so I got a cheap lattice to hang in front of the mismatched bricks and stuck a planter under them. Then I found some wild climbing plants and planted them in the planter. It worked and when I rented the place in July of 2020, I had the beginnings of a nice decorative vine working its way over my former window. Unfortunately, like the hanging plants (and the goldfish--fish ponds are another thing that are hard to set up in the dead of winter), the climbing plants didn't survive the renters.
Well, I think that's about it. Some progress was made. And I'm realizing how old I am as all the heavy work starts hitting me right now, just about the same time the Scotch does.
OH! Small victory. At some point about a year ago, Zillow updated their software such that, if a house originally got its info from an MLS listing, you couldn't "claim" the property and use the dashboard to update the pictures and description. So my beautiful renovation reverted to its peacock blue kitchen, its bewildering red accent walls in the living room (and battleship grey glossy fireplace with a shiny black mantel), the U of L room (red above the chair rail, black below), and he glossy battleship grey room with a neon green closet interior. Well a few days ago I got a "home report" in my e-mail. And I realized the picture associated with the e-mail wasn't one of the old pictures--it was one I took. Went there and--sure enough--all my pictures were back, in all their glory. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
I've also decided I should hire a property manager. I should be able to afford it; might even make me more money than me doing it myself. I dunno, we'll see.
