I wasn’t close to the computer today, and probably won’t be tomorrow because a ‘little adjustment to a door’ is becoming a major project.
[Old houses are so annoying.]
Sunday update: It’s almost midnight and I just got on-line for a few minutes. Maybe tomorrow.
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Established: 21 November 2004
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23 comments
So I take it the house has settled, and the doorframe is no longer square? LOL, I have that problem with my hallway door, unfortunately it is a rental so there’s limits to what I can do about it.
no, old houses have character.
there are a number of things about the old house I live in that I have looked at and thought “that wouldn’t take all that much effort to fix”….
after a couple of such adventures, I have learned to just live with the little imperfections that give the house its character.
I squared the frame before the tenants who just left moved in, and it is still square, but they have warped the door itself when they kicked it open, but they don’t have any idea when that occurred because there was ‘no sign it had been forced’. Like the piece of the jamb around the strike plate being busted to hell isn’t a sign, or the fact that the door has an obvious dent in the outside. We need a better class of liars…
The exterior doors has to shut and lock, it is kind of a bad thing if they don’t. People get upset about it. This house has more than enough ‘character’ in other ‘features’ to make up for those things that work.
Dent? What dent? Just because we kicked the door in doesn’t mean that’s gonna affect it….
I failed to mention the busted chain lock on the door – the chain was ripped out of the holder on the jamb side. I just talked to a friend of the tenants who told me they would move a large chest in front of the door when they left. Yeah, but ‘nothing was wrong with the door when they left the place’. Yeah, right…
Rental properties are not the goldmine that many people assume.
There is a reason why my landlord charges below-market-rate rent and looks for mature people to rent his property. He locks in a tenant for 5 years or more, and refreshing the property at the end of it is a case of putting down more cheap apartment-grade carpet for $3/square foot and repainting the walls for another couple hundred bucks of labor and paint. I think he’s ten times smarter than the landlords who rent for cheap for the 1st year then hike the rent every year to make up the difference, that just encourages people to jump ship and find a cheaper apartment once the hikes hit market price.
He did have to hike the rent last year though, because the lateral to the water meter developed a leak and he had to replace it so he raised the rent to pay for that over the next couple of years. Bummer. Still not enough to make me want to move though.
door won’t close? no problem! just get a big dog, nobody will bother your stuff. 😈
of course, with cats, it’s a different story, trying to keep them confined, even when all the doors do close, can be a challenge. otoh, my lucrezia kitty, if I could just teach her to bark, would be a far more formidable foe than the fluffy black dog ever was, although the cuteness factor would probably make some people underestimate her — at first. on the other other hand, when people saw the fluffy black dog, they quite often ran the other way without taking the time to find out if he was friendly or not.
ok, I guess fixing the door might be a good idea after all….
The real problem is that renters today have no skills that are applicable for home maintenance and repair. They expect the landlord to fix everything. I had to go over and replace a toilet tank flapper valve because the tenant said the toilet had been running for a half hour. It didn’t occur to him to take the top off the tank to see what was wrong or to shut the water off with the shut off valve, and he works with irrigation systems. If you want that kind of service, you are going to have to pay for it.
Oh, we have shifted to laminate flooring because it looks better and lasts longer than carpet. It also tends to be cheaper to install, even with the water barrier underneath the laminate.
Well, the new tenants do have a dog. It looks like a corgi more than anything else, so it isn’t likely to scare anyone. The door is now functional, not perfect, but functional. After plumbing doors are the biggest cost in maintenance. For some reason tenants seem to abuse doors a lot.
“They expect the landlord to fix everything.”
well, yes. I do expect my landlords to fix everything, that’s why I pay rent. if I wanted to fix stuff, I’d have bought a place and dispensed with the hassle of having landlords. 😈
otoh even I can fix a flapper valve in a toilet, especially if all it needs is to have the handle jiggled (but I can actually replace the whole assembly too).
“It looks like a corgi more than anything else, so it isn’t likely to scare anyone.”
one thing I have learned from owning dogs – people are afraid of all of them.
All it needed was to have the chain untangled and to allow the flap to seat properly. I have to wonder how it happened because I put in a new flapper and make sure it works before before I put the top on. Chains don’t tangle themselves, nor do they shrink. ‘Tis a puzzlement…
For the very low rent being charged, and the fact that the owner just wanted to let the house to sit empty without spending a lot more to make major repairs, people ought to be able to fix minor things, especially since that’s what the lease now says.
This dog is so ‘well fed’ that it needs to take a nap after running across the yard.
“For the very low rent being charged,”
I didn’t know there were any of those any more.
The place I’m working on has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with with a large fenced backyard, a large storage shed, for $700/month.
By and large I don’t want to remind the landlord that I exist, ’cause then he might raise my rent. I swapped out the faucet in the kitchen when the prior one developed a leak around the handle, I fixed the oven when the door fell off, and fixed the toilet when the tank started overflowing. I also prune the trees and trim the hedges and all that regular maintenance stuff on the outside, as well as fixing the occasional sprinkler head that decides to pop off.
That said, there are definitely things that I’ll call the landlord for. The water not running in the house ’cause the lateral had sprung a leak and created an unplanned fountain in the front yard was one of them :). I won’t touch the furnace other than to blow any cobwebs out of the jets before recommissioning it every fall and re-taping the flue if the old tape appears to be getting raggedy, gas furnaces are scary cause if you do something wrong, you blow the place up or suffocate yourself. If the valve goes bad in the toilet I *will* call the landlord, because this is one of those annoying bathroom counters with a shelf over the toilet — realistically, the only way to fix it is to remove the toilet and while I have the know-how to do that, it’s enough of a PITA with enough opportunity to do it wrong (such as not getting that bloody wax seal placed correctly and thus getting sewer gases into the house) that I won’t. Not on a rental. I’d do it on my own house, but my own house is my own house.
Regarding carpet vs laminate, the problem with laminate is that people spill liquids on it, then it looks like crap because it bubbles up at the edges, plus people don’t take care of it, they just shove furniture around on it without putting down skids under the feet and scratch it all up and make it look like crap. You can spill liquids on carpet and all it requires is a pass with the shampoo machine to make it look decent and carpet doesn’t care if you shove furniture around on top of it.
Personally I prefer laminate because it’s much cleaner than carpet, but landlords here have found that keeping laminate looking rental-ready is more expensive than carpet, at least in our local market that has access to cheap apartment-grade carpet from Mexico and where labor is expensive (putting down carpet requires very little labor — rip the old out, slap the new down, stretch it onto the hooks, done). I suppose if labor is cheap in your area, that changes the calculation a bit though.
Labor is very cheap and the new laminates are much more water resistant. I was concerned about the scratching, but that hasn’t been a problem. One of the problems with carpets down here are insect infestations, especially fleas. Another big one is mold if the carpet gets wet, because the pad doesn’t dry out quick enough.
Flooring on a concrete slab is a lot different than on a wooden subfloor, so different materials react differently on the two dominate subfloors.
We don’t have a lot of concrete slabs here in the Bay Area because they tend to turn into concrete crumbles in earthquakes. Pretty much all our houses are on heavily reinforced perimeter foundations with piers in the middle if on flatland and with grade beams if there’s a slope. That allows the wood-frame house tied to the top of the foundation to wobble at will in an earthquake, which, it has been found, allows the house to survive far better than more rigid structures. I’ve looked at new construction going up and they even have the wobble points built right into them, almost like the Transamerica Tower, which sits on a giant ball bearing and where if an earthquake hits you’ll get quite the ride at the top (which is predicted to wobble 1-2 feet back and forth in time with the quake waves when the Big One hits).
Labor is *very* expensive here. According to the BLS laminate flooring installers get $25/hour here and carpet installers get $20/hour here. Figure it takes 5x more hours to install laminate flooring than carpet (probably an understatement), and a 2 hour carpet job has $40 worth of labor, versus a 10 hour laminate job that has $250 worth of labor. And the tenant is likely going to destroy it over the course of the next three years, so $1.25 /square foot for cheap laminate versus 99c/square foot for a cheap apartment grade carpet plus pad adds up over time.
We don’t have flea or other insect problems here due to the humidity being so low during the summer so that’s not an issue.
That said, I wish laminate *was* cheaper here. It’s easier to clean up after the cats barf on it (toss some kitty litter on the barf, wait a while, sweep it up), and definitely better for my allergies. Alas, it doesn’t seem to be — landlords invariably put down this crappy apartment grade carpet everywhere that doesn’t have tile or vinyl. I’m sort of lucky in this duplex that the hallway and office are laminate, most don’t even have that.
wow, that is cheap. my whole house, and probably the tiny yard too, could probably fit into a “large storage shed.” and would cost more too. even the apartment I moved from (when moving into this house, which was a bargain compared to the apt) cost more than that.
actually, there are houses like that here, but they’re way out in the boonies, so the driving, especially with the old gas guzzler and $4 gas at the time, would have negated any advantages from the lower rent.
re floors, all my acquaintances in houses on slabs have put in tile (or that painted concrete) recently… 😈
I understand about the problem with concrete slabs and earthquakes. We tend to build more rigid structures here because of the hurricanes. Different designs for different conditions.
Carpet layers are paid more than laminate installers and their tools are more expensive. You need a bigger vehicle to haul carpet than laminate sections and the sections just snap together like Legos. A miter saw and rotary cutter are the most expensive tools needed. It doesn’t take much longer to install laminate than carpet.
Yes, Hipparchia, if you are looking for a permanent solution, then ceramic tile is the best choice for a slab floor. My Mother had it installed after she got tired of the expense of getting her carpet cleaned repeatedly.
i was thinking “waterproof” …
The tile is but, unless it is properly sealed at regular intervals, the grout isn’t.
On a slab foundation I’d definitely go for tile. I have this “distressed” pattern tile in mind, it’s kind of brown speckled tile that isn’t slippery like most tile and doesn’t show dirt well. But it seems unlikely I’ll ever have a chance to do tile. If I move out into the redwoods like I’m planning, it’ll be on a grade with a wood subfloor and I’ll put down real hardwood floors if it doesn’t already have them. Real wood flooring doesn’t bubble up like the sawdust backing for the laminate flooring if someone spills a drink on it, and will outlast the typical lifespan of a human being with proper care and occasional refinishing every ten years or so.
Oh yeah, the fact that the grout isn’t waterproof is why when you’re building tiled kitchen counters, you use concrete board rather than plywood for the underlay if you’re doing it right.
If ‘you’re doing right’, you don’t use chip board for anything in the house. Most bathroom cabinets are laminated chip board and they rarely seal the hidden edges. The damn things ‘melt’ within two years. Before I’ll put one in I seal the raw edges with urethane which doubles the life of the cheap crap.
Cement board is the only backing to use for anything tiled in a kitchen or bathroom. I’ve seen tiles installed on sheet rock and it isn’t pretty. The new laminates use a better adhesive/resin in the construction that is much more water resistant than the earlier versions.
That said, the oak floors that were common in houses built a century ago in upstate New York are still going strong. The modern urethane finishes really protect them and they have a great look.