The week started off pretty good. It's been pretty cold so Monday I decided to make some homemade soup. Sicilian Chicken Soup, the only soup I know how to make. This took most of the day to cook, but then I didn't need to cook much the rest of the week.
What made my week start to drag was all the time I had to spend at our rental property. I had some touch up painting to do and we also wanted to replace the side entrance door. It was old, ugly and really hard to open. Definitely something we wanted done before a new tenant moved in.
This is a project that John and I would normally do ourselves, but it wasn't a standard size door opening and we bought a standard size door and time was an issue and....we really just didn't want to do it, so we decided to hire someone.
The guy we hired, we'll just call him Mike (because his name is Mike). Mike was a nice enough guy but he had one speed and it was S L O W ! !
He was even 45 mins late the first day. You may think that 45 minutes isn't that long, but when you are standing in an empty house waiting on someone to show up the ticks of the clock just start slowing down. Tick...tick........tick.................tick!
After Mike arrived he said it shouldn't take more than 4 or 5 hours to complete the job, so I gave him my phone number and I left to run some errands. When I came back, he wasn't anywhere near being done. He said he had some problems and it was taking longer than he thought. He also said he couldn't re-use the knob off the old door so I left to go get him a new one. When I got back I stood around the empty house waiting on him to finish up so I could lock up. Did I mention that the house is empty? Like no place to sit empty. So I paced. Once I realized this job wasn't going to get finished that day, I called John and he said he would stop by on his way home from work. By the time John got there Mike said it would only be another hour until he was at a point that we could secure the door for the night and that he would have to come back in the morning to finish up with the trim and re-install the storm door. So John and I went and grabbed some dinner, then returned to lock up for the night.
Then next morning John met him at the house on his way to work to let him in....this was 7:30 am. Remember, he only had the trim and storm door left to do. So I leave our house at 10:00 to head over there and on my way Mike calls me, "Carole, this is Mike". I reply "Hi Mike". He said "I wanted to let you know that I should be done sometime this afternoon". I ask "What happened? I thought you should be done by now?" He said "Well, I had to take the door back out. There was something I forgot to do so I had to remove it." I replied "well, I'm more than half way there already, so I'm going to come and hang out there while you finish up." I was hoping this would light a fire under his but, but it didn't. You would think by the way he was acting that he got paid by the hour, but thankfully he was not!
I paced around the house for another couple of hours. He left twice to go get things he said he needed. At one point I was getting so mad I had to leave before I said something I shouldn't. So, I told him I had to leave for an hour. I got in my car with no place planned to go. Then I remember something that is really close by.....
I got a bowl of frozen yogurt! I truly think this frozen treat might have save a mans life that day!!
He finally finished the door at 6:45 pm! Can you believe that? I think I could have done it all by myself faster than this guy did it. But, at least it is done before the new tenant comes to sign the lease.
Saturday I went and touched up more paint around the new door and caulked it. And then on Sunday our new tenant came to sign the lease. We have all kinds of things for him to sign. First we do a "walk through" where we walk with him through every room and he gets to point out anything he wants written down as damaged or not working before he moves in. This includes the outside of the house and the garage too. After that, we make it pretty clear what we are expecting from a tenant and we get it in writing!
So now we have a tenant living in the house. I cross my fingers that this one works out well. He seems nice but we've been fooled before!
I pretty much gave up my whole week to the rental property, but I did get 3 "Time Out" chairs done for E-Six.
Thankfully last week finally over!!
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