The Push to Front-Unit Victory

Man oh man... what's been going on in the world of the house?

Well, we've got the front unit officially ready for tenants, so that's exciting. The new (legal! functional! not deadly!) heater got installed just fine, the wall got plastered back up and painted, the moulding got reattached, and we are go.

Oh man, side-rant here: Whoever lived there before obviously thought that the living room was simply getting too much sun on the west side. And instead of getting, oh say, curtains, they decided to implement the most annoying solution possible and get a film of bright purple tinting attached to the three windows on the west side of the house. If you're not familiar with these, let me give you a quick rundown:

1.) They look terrible.
2.) They're a pain to remove.
3.) As you do remove them, they smell revolting.

We thought we'd restore some of the front unit's innate class and take these... what amount to these sticky sheets of purple cellophane... take them down, see? This ended up taking a good number of hours since the sheets were either a.) on the pane behind the screen, in which case they peeled off relatively easily, but left a thin layer of glue that we had to besiege with an acetone-soaked scour pad to remove, or b.) on the pane with no screen, in which case the direct sunlight had made them brittle and unpeelable, requiring us to break out the glass-scrapers.

It was a sticky, purple, toxic-smelling undertaking and I quietly curse whoever installed those, but all this is neither here nor there. The house is ready!

We celebrated by putting the official ad for the place up on Craigslist and fashioning up a rental application (and by eating dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and drinking beer). We used the rental application from our Landlording book as a base, added/removed a few things in line with a couple other applications we found online, and I got a chance to flex my atrophied graphic design muscles trying to fit everything we needed onto one page and still have it be readable and look good.

We'll be drafting up the actual rental agreement next (maybe tomorrow... it's a bit longer than the application, and I'm pretty tired tonight), and I personally want to write/copy every word myself, choosing bits and pieces from example agreement as opposed to just grabbing a random pre-made one and calling it a day. That way, not only will it be totally applicable/tailored to our place, but we'll know it inside and out.

Things are starting to move fast. We'll try to keep this thing updated a bit more.

-AKC

light fixtures

We finished our interior light fixtures over the weekend. The florescent overhead light in the kitchen in particular had been grating on me. It made this terrible buzzing sound, and the light was too blue. We took it down and we had to paint the ceiling that had been obstructed by it. We put it in a 3-bulb fixture and we bought some of those miniature 100W replacement CFLs (the ones that use 23 watts each) to put in it. It's really bright and it looks much much better.

So now we've replaced most of the interior fixtures, and everything looks the way we want it to. By the time I did the last one, I was feeling pretty competent at it. Too bad I won't get to use those skills again for a few years. I guess that's how it goes though!

Fresh-Squeezed.

You know what they say. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

Seriously.

The citrus tree* in our front yard full of fruit, and while we've assumed the green ones are limes and attempted to give them away and/or make mojitos with them, it's just not doing the trick. So at Nate's urging, we bought a little juicer yesterday and took the (assumed) lemons to it today.

It worked! We made lemonade! It's really tasty!

Amazing how that works.


-AKC


*- I'm always amused when the name of a tree is just "citrus."

"So... is it lemons, or limes, or...?"

"Man, whatever."

"Oranges?"

"Maybe. Who knows."

Garden 2.0

If you were wondering what Nate was scheming about in that picture of the office, here's what it was!

A garden!

We've got:

-Lettuce
-Green Onions
-Tomatoes
-Beets
-Strawberries (lots of those!)
-Brussel Sprouts (I have no idea how those will work out, but it sounded fun)
-Celery (funny story: I looked up how to grow celery after I bought the tray, and the first sentence I see is, "Celery is a notoriously hard plant to grow; it tastes about the same when you get it from the store, so most gardeners just grow it for the challenge." Well then. Awesome.)
-Mint (peppermint AND spearmint, because that's just how we roll)
-Cilantro
-Oregano
-Rosemary (the little guy wasn't doing so hot recently, but hopefully it'll recover and become the hardy monster we expect it to be)
-Sage
-and a Lemon Verbena (apparently you can make tea with the leaves, and it smelled so amazingly good that I just had to get it)

I think that's about it... not bad for our initial run. Southern California is pretty awesome in that you can almost completely disregard any "seasonal" guidelines. It's all good.

We've got the whole "raised bed" thing going on this time, which is supposed to be advantageous, or at least that's what the gardening book told us. Nate's brother and sister came down this last weekend to help put the whole shebang together, which we greatly appreciated. We also bought a soaker hose (the black tube in the pictures), and we'll have to get a feel for using that (timing, best placement, etc), but I think it'll help us get less sporadic watering, since we don't have sprinklers back here. The idea is that you plug it into the regular hose, turn it on, and it seeps water through all the little holes in it. You leave it for a couple hours to get a decent watering.

I think that having a garden again will be good for us. I'd grown pretty attached to the one at the old house; there's something about just checking in on the little guys every day that smooths out the spiky bits in your brain. Additionally, it'll be nice having herbs only a few steps away from the kitchen.

And this is only the beginning! We've got lots of space around the house and plan on putting most of it "to work" in one way or another(Nate's got ideas, make no mistake). It'll be a long process, but a highly enjoyable one, I predict.


-AKC

Some more pictures

A few pictures of things all moved in (including a kitty):

http://www.picasaweb.google.com/nate.austin/HouseMovedIn

In the office picture, Nate's making the plans for... the future garden! DundunDUUNNN. It's one thing after another around here.


-AKC

Solutions in Heating!

Alrighty so. Turns out we will be able to get that new heater in, thanks to the magic of "Financing With No Interest for 12 Months. "

We talked to the heater guy about our situation with getting tenants into the unit, and he agreed that yeah, it would be dumb to pay for repairs that probably won't work when what you really need is a new heater altogether.* It's in everybody's interests (ours, his, and even technically the future tenants') to make that happen, and since we have decent incomes (of which the tenants will be a part), a financing plan makes total sense in this case.

So yeah, I think that's a big load off our minds. They're supposedly going to start the work next week.


-AKC

*- One that doesn't set off the carbon monoxide detectors when you try to turn it on. (Insert Debbie Downer noise here.)

"Ooooh-oooh-oooooh I feel mah temperature risin'..."

Aw man, we figured it was coming. The first "big unexpected expense" is turning out to be the heating in the front unit. It kinda... doesn't work. And it's not just the thermostat, like we had hoped. So we had a guy over to look at it this morning, and I wasn't there for the technical talk, but the takeaway message appears to be, "it's old, it's busted, and even if we could get it to work, it's totally not up to code."

An aside: Now, we could play the "oh, why didn't we have someone check X more thoroughly" or "why didn't we think about Y" moan and groan game, but I feel like we covered most of our bases. The inspector certainly looked under the house around the heating area, but Nate remembers him making a point that heaters were not his thing, so he couldn't in good faith give us advice there. We did put a clause into our offer demanding that the seller fix the heater, but she refused. So it was either fix the heater later or have things get ugly, and we decided that it was something we'd be able to deal with.

So, where we stand at the moment is between any combination of three options:

1.) Say screw it for now and give tenants a bunch of space heaters: Euuugggghhh. That's the absolute last-ditch option. We really don't want to do that.

2.) Have them simply fix what's immediately wrong so that the heating works: This would solve our problem, but we'd still have a really outdated heater, and another fail would be inevitable eventually (of course, whether "eventually" means a few months or a few years makes a big difference to me, but I don't know that right now). This is pretty expensive... under 1000 but still pretty expensive. Also, they're not even sure yet if fixing it is possible, or if it's kaput beyond repair. However, if it's possible, it's much less expensive than...

3.) Putting in a new wall heater: This is the best option, and will probably have to happen in that "eventually" I mentioned up there. It's also by far the most expensive. Like, "yeah we totally can't afford that right now" expensive.

And here's the catch-22: once we get tenants into the front house, that'll be enough extra monthly income to pay for the new heater relatively quickly. However, in order to get tenants in there at a decent rent in the first place, we need heating. So now we have:

3.2) Do the #2 fix now, get tenants in there ASAP, and replace the heater when we've got enough saved up from the rental income. The major drawback here is that we end up paying for both the fix and the new heater, which is techincally wasting money. But the other option is,

3.x) Wait until we can afford the new heater, and delay putting tenants in for a month. Not a huge fan of this idea, since the amount we'd lose from not having tenants for a month is much greater than the amount we'd lose by doing the extra fix when we're going to replace the heater regardless.

So, a lot of this hinges on whether that #2 fix is possible or not. If it is, we'll probably go with that as a temporary fix. If it's not... well, I'm not sure.

It'll all work out one way or another though, and with the blog, if anyone else has dealt with stuff like this, or deals with it in the future, we've started some "collective wisdom" here at the very least.


AKC

more odds and ends

This weekend we tied up a lot of the loose ends that have been bugging us.

Back unit:

• buy dining room chairs
• clean up the moving boxes
• buy a couch
• get a compost bin

It's looking like a real, functional house. We had James and Melissa over last night for a game of Descent and our new table and chairs performed admirably.

Front unit:

• motion sensor light
• replace gas line
• replace kitchen light
• clean bathroom
• arrange appliances

Now we just need to get the heat working, and get our garbage bins back, and we'll be ready to put our ad on Craigslist.

Fixing things makes me happy :-)

taking over

Well I fixed the broken sprinkler in our yard, it turned out to be pretty easy since I was able to simply unscrew the broken section. So I didn't need to do any PVC joinery (this time.) I also moved all the concrete scallops out of the garage, in order to organize things so that we can use the door when cars are in there. Annie and I installed some towel racks in the bathroom and put together a shoe rack. I replaced the shower head.

We're slowly taking over control of the place, it seems. More and more of the little house decisions are ours now instead of someone else's. That feels good. We have a long long way to go before we take over everything, but for now it's nice that we've made a few mental leaps: when things break, we fix them, when we don't like something we change it, and when something's in the wrong place, we move it.

Tomorrow, shelves, and maybe some more outdoor work.

The Boxes That are Left

Due to our work schedules, today is the first time we're in the house during the daylight hours (not just morning) with things actually moved in. It's nice to experience that.

I'm not one of those math types, but there's probably some "tailing off" graph that could work for "Boxes Still Not Unpacked After a Move." At the beginning, the line drops really fast while you unpack all the important day-to-day stuff. But as time goes on, the line flattens out, always approaching zero but never quite getting there.

Those piles of not-yet-organized possessions always remind me of little refugee camps. The tissue boxes and the Legos are huddled together in a corner, the power strips are making small talk with the paint tubes and spare towels, and they're all trying to figure out What the Hell Just Happened Here.


-AKC

The Great Move of '09

Chapter 1: Preparation

With the walls painted, this last week was split between preparing the house(s) for our arrival and preparing our stuff for the move. This included:

* Cleaning up the slightly sticky tape-and-tarp landscape still covering the floors of the house,
* Getting as much of our current stuff packed into boxes as possible, and
* Having a fridge delivered to the front unit.

Surprisingly, packing turned out to be the most straightforward of the three. Because of the whole one-lot-two-addresses thing, turning on the power only applied to the front unit. The back unit has been powerless for about a week now, which made cleaning it up in the evenings rather difficult, even with flashlights. The fridge got here on Thursday, but it wouldn't fit through the doorway without its own doors being removed. In the process, something got knocked out, coolant started leaking, and the delivery guys had to come back the next night for about an hour to fix it. By Friday night though, there was at least one working fridge on the property, and that was all we needed for now.

Packing happened in small spurts throughout the week. Despite my inherent cheapskatery, I have to admit that buying a bunch of boxes and a taping-gadget was the best way to go on this. They pile easier, and that makes the loading of the truck much less of a puzzle. Speaking of which...

Chapter 2: The Move

Once again, we're greatly indebted to everybody who helped haul, lift, tape, secure, direct, and disassemble all of our earthly possessions this weekend. Time was of the essence because a.) we only rented the UHaul for one day, and b.) there was still no power in the back unit, so we really wanted to get everything in there before our daylight ran out.

The truck got packed pretty tight, but in the end, 2 trips were still required, primarily because of the fridge. This was the fridge we had bought from another roomate who moved out previously, so it was going into the truck for our back unit, but before we moved it, the people still living at the old house had to secure another fridge to replace ours and minimize the time that food would be left out. Sort of a weird game of "musical perishables." Nate can probably tell you more about this, since my involvement in the fridge moving process amounted to "staying out of the way." But long story short, we again had doorway-width issues that required the fridge doors to be removed.

Pro-tip: if you are ever moving a fridge, just take the doors off ahead of time and save yourself a headache. Chances are, you'll need to anyway.

It was already getting dark, but thanks to the magic of extension cords, we were able to run some electricity into the house. Enough to navigate a fridge and its doors by, anyway. And with everything out of the truck, we were able to return the sucker after a nice dinner and bidding our fearless movers a good night. The bed hadn't been assembled yet, so we dug out some sheets and crashed on the mattress.

Chapter 3: The Aftermath

One tricky thing that required moving was our inherited cat, Chloe. We'd heard stories of cats in new houses darting into cupboards and not coming out for 3 days, so we were prepared for the worst. But after a willful resistance to the cat carrier and some inital hiding behind the new washer, Chloe actually took to the new place pretty well. Within a few hours, she was poking her head out of the mud room, where we put her and her stuff initally, and starting to explore. By that night, she was sleeping at our feet again, and by the next day, I'd chaperoned a few excursions into the front yard. There's been no puking, no trying to run away, and minimal hiding under beds and couches; I am pleasantly surprised.

Sunday was mostly taken up with furniture/housewares and the unpacking, building, and buying thereof. We've got the living room and bedroom basically set up, holding off on the office until we get power, which should be sometime today (fingers crossed). There was an excursion to Ikea for a coffee table, TV stand (for our as-of-yet-non-existant TV a.k.a. extra computer monitor), and loads of rugs and mats. I'm quite satisfied with the amount of awesome color.

The evening required one more trip over to the old address to pick up some left-behinds and sweep out the old rooms, and the unpacking will continue throughout this week, I'm sure. We were dead tired last night though, and I konked out around 10pm.

Nate, if I missed anything, feel free to fill in the spaces here. :)


-AKC

pictures!

Here are a bunch of pictures of the house, with some before and afters of the painting.

we finished painting

Thanks so much to everyone who lent a hand! We painted the house in seven colors over Saturday and Sunday. For now you'll have to take my word that it looks amazing, but we'll post pictures soon to prove it.

The internet guy came by on Saturday to install our life line. He was banging around outside for a few hours to get it all set up. I haven't been able to confirm that it works yet (I tried plugging it into my laptop but it didn't seem to take), but I'm sure we can get it working by the time we move in for reals. Yes, I'm quite certain.

Also we met the gardeners who have been taking care of the place. They were very nice, and quite keen to continue working for us. At $30 a visit it's hard to say no. That's not more much than I would have charged when I was mowing lawns as a teenager, and these guys actually do a really professional job.

So for now they'll keep coming around every 2 weeks, at least until we come up with another plan. I think eventually we may want to take over ourselves, but we just have a lot of lawn that needs a lot of regular attention, and we need a chance to settle in and re-evaluate our yard master plan first.

...So next weekend is the move, and I guess the thing to do before then is to clean and pack. The new place needs to be cleaned and unmasked, but that shouldn't take more than an evening. That and we need a few more supplies. We got a few things from Target but we'll need to make several more trips (Ikea, Home Depot, Smart and Final, etc..) before we're really on solid ground for household supplies. Trash cans, trash bags, cleaning supplies, kitchen odds and ends...I love this stuff!

washers and dryers and fridges oh my

Over the past two evenings we solved our washers and dryers sourcing problem. We found a stackable, gas combo for the front unit and a regular pair for the back unit, all from the same guys. These guys run an appliance business on craigslist where they repair old appliances, deliver and install them, and offer a 30 day warranty, all for 40-60% of retail. Apparently business is going pretty well for them these days, since nobody's buying new appliances.

On Wednesday they installed the back units, and the washer started leaking when they were testing it. So on Thursday they brought another washer to replace it with, along with the stacker for the front unit. Everything is installed, tested, working, for $900. They also dragged off our old junky washer for us. All in all we are really happy about it.

On the refrigerator front, we have one for the back unit, but for the front unit we have a conundrum - we could take my parents' old fridge, but getting it here may not be worth it. They live about 50 miles away, and we'd have to rent a truck. So we're weighing whether to just go back to our new appliance-installing friends instead.

I guess we'll have to figure that out pretty soon here, ideally we'll start advertising the place around the 20th or so, and we'd like to have everything in place by that time.

keys in hand

We met our realtor at the house last night and got the keys. After our agent left we spent some time walking around the back unit where we'll be living, talking about colors and inspecting window hardware and things like that. Our plan is to come up with a color scheme and paint the house (interior) this weekend, and then move next weekend.

We also noticed some things that will need near term attention:

• we can't open the mailboxes (didn't get the keys)
• there's no cat-door for Chloe (though we want to make sure she's comfortable inside and can hold her own outside before we install a door that might let other cats inside....)
• we need to paint over some termite work.

This is in addition to our big list of mid-term attention items, which I won't go into right now. Yesterday I called around and set up our utilities:

• Gas
• Power
• Water
• Internet (Time Warner Cable, but no phone line or cable TV service)

And then today I got an email from LADWP saying that they don't service Hawthorne, so I had to set up water and power again. I went ahead and set up service for both houses. I'm not really sure how that will shake out yet, because I don't know exactly how they're set up in terms of meters. More stuff to learn.

Speaking of which, our agent recommended a book to us, Landlording. When we decided to buy a 2-unit property we talked a lot about what kind of land lords we wanted to be. Specifically, we don't want to be the evil/greedy kind. Which to me means that we need to be careful not to over-leverage ourselves, so that we don't depend on getting the rent in order to pay the mortgage. I suspect that reading this book will be difficult, morally strenuous, but also valuable.

...

Also, pictures coming soon, probably this weekend.

towards adventure

Well, we seem to have bought a house. Two houses actually, on one lot in Hawthorne, CA. With a couple of garages in between. And some yard space to boot. We'll be living in the back unit (2 bed), and renting out the front unit (3 bed). We'll most likely be moving in within the month.

Speaking only for myself, I'm a little stunned that this is happening. Being a homeowner doesn't yet fit into my sense of self. Which is not to say that I lack optimism or confidence, but it is to say that I'm out of practice. I'll have to get my hands dirty a lot more often, I expect, and overall I think that's a good thing.

In any case we've got tons of ideas for the place, and we're really excited about it. So here's to experimental homeownership: we are confident that we can make it work, that we can build a home, that by investing this place with our love, we can improve both it and ourselves.

So let's explore!