The Return Home After Eight Months On The Road - A Flurry Of Activity In The Pacific Northwest

Publish Date: 
6/20/2019
My View Out The Back Window At Mt. Vernon TT | Tracy Marie Lewis | www.stuffnthingz.com

Today we have finished our first 21 days back in our home town area. We adjusted our schedule so we could be home for a vacancy in one of our units. We suspected it was going to be a bit of a rehab project, but we didn't anticipate the level of work needed. The tenants got a dog and we believe there were two dogs for some of that time.. Evidently they are not very good dog owners because it urinated everywhere in our nicest unit we own. Dogs don't urinate in their own space unless they are stressed the heck out! I made a short video showing the damaged hardwood floors. Video Length 3 min.15 sec.

This unit has gas water heater and forced air with hardwoods on the main floor. It is a three story with two bedrooms and a garage in a nicer neighborhood near the hospital. The stench of dog urine was overpowering and it took us a week of work to mitigate the smell alone. ALL flooring had to be either ripped out or shellac'ed. We wanted to save the baseboard moulding, but they reeked so bad we threw them out as well. Before Shellac'ing we sprayed many coats of Clorox Urine Remover on all surfaces, the two bedrooms, two stairwells and the main floor hardwoods.

If you did not know this, shellac is the best odor blocker out there even though it is also the oldest wood finish. (I've added a link to the product on Amazon for more details. Note: we paid $46/gallon at Home Depot)

So, we hardly saw family, and only had one one day relaxing at one of our favorite Thousand Trails and today we moved to a different Thousand Trails. 

Though we have moved, the work is not complete. We will be installing fresh baseboard moulding after the flooring is installed, then the PM can get it rented! 

It is amazing to me how poorly some tenants take care of places that they rent. The costs to rehab the damage is way, way more than their security deposit. Hub is doubtful that he will see a penny more, but I am always the optimist. The damage they did is very, very visible so it isn't like they can say, but we did not do any damage. They didn't even bother to clean the place, it was filled with dog hair, everything had dog hair even the walls which I had to wash thoroughly. 

Part of being a landlord is not stressing about this type of event. It is part of being a landlord and bad tenants will come and go. Between the two of us, we did all of the PM (yes, we use a property management company) repair list items except installing the flooring. The list contained a wide range of tasks from remove the dog urine odor from the unit to landscape the front and side yard. We had to repair many damaged items from broken door knobs to dog scratched window sills. There were some owner tasks on the list as well including updating some lighting, replacing old fire alarms and recaulking the tub.

It did feel good to exercise our home maintenance skills. We sold our home three years ago now and yes there have been some small trailer repairs and projects but nothing like this. Even in our own homes, we never ever had to gut all flooring, and make repairs asap. We would work on one or two projects a year at most.

Next up for us is surgery for me which I held off on last year due to time constraints. It isn't major, Carpal Tunnel surgery on my right wrist. I did get the left done and I wasn't willing to do both at the same time. I will finally be finished taking care of my hands which have been troublesome for many years. After all our medical stuff is finished we will depart for new places!

Thanks for stopping by, please feel free to leave comments or questions, I am here to help!

~Tracy

Comments

omg - what a nightmare - so sorry!

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