Wednesday, March 15, 2006
New TownHouse Renovation - Day 16 (3.12.06)
Sunday:
pics: Day 16 Photos
I also put the listing page up where I found the townhouse. Rachel Raia was/is my zip reality real estate agent. You might think she looks like a psycho in that picture, but I always thought that she was kind of hot in a "I will eat your soul" kind of way. Come Get Some...
Goals: Finish leveling and securing the base cabinets.
Well, Sunday started out wonderfully. After we had our dinner with the helpers on Saturday night, we went home and proceeded to get cozy on the couch. I of course fall asleep instantly, only to be awoken by a piercing scream a few minutes later. It seemed our slipshitz of a landlord had done something to the sink in the upstairs unit (we had a few messages saying they were turning off the water on Sat.)which caused all the water they had been flushing through the system to come up through our bathroom sink. Rena had walked into the bathroom and gotten a foot full of cold water. We call and wake his smarmenian ass up and tell him that he had better be here first thing in the morning to clean the mess up.
A little background on the landlord and his "plumber". He uses the same homeless guy to fix anything that goes wrong with the place; electrical, structural, plumbing, roofing, windows, etc.. He absolutely refuses to use anyone else.
We go to bed, and wait for his call on Sunday morning. He of course calls 2 hours after he was supposed to be there, and when he finally does call, he says the plumber is sick and he won't be coming at all. I think he just doesn't want to pay the guy (or any guy) to work on Sunday. I and Rena tell him to call another plumber like a sane person would, since our bathroom is currently unusable and we would really like to take showers and not step out into a cesspool. He eventually comes over (Rena had to wait for him, I had to meet Kyrie and Nader at the new place) to clean up the mess himself with paper towels. He gives Rena the song and dance about the plumber being sick and how he doesn't trust anyone else to work on it, because other plumbers he has hired have caused more damage than what they fixed. "Like your plumber did to our bathroom," says everyone in unison.
Anyway, I get on the phone with him as he is cleaning around our toilet and berate him for being a bad landlord, a bad person, and generally being annoying. After arguing with him for 20 minutes I finally tell him to just clean up the mess (to my satisfaction) and do what he needs to do to get the sink fixed. At this point, I just felt like being an ass to him to get back at him for being so evasive and borderline retarded.
He wouldn't listen to the reasons why we were upset (being delayed for 3 hours because of his F-up). He thought we were upset because we couldn't use the damn sink. Here is a typical snippet from that phone call and maybe you can see why I was such a dick to him:
Tony: Look Vic, we just wanted the sink fixed this morning at the time you said it would be fixed.
Vic the Dick: You know in the olden times, people got along with only one sink and they didn't complain.
Tony: Ok...I'm not paying 1300 bucks a month to live in the "olden times" in a place with one sink. I'm paying that much to live in the here and now, in a place with 2 damn sinks.
Vic the Dick: I do you favor by not raising your rent as much as everybody else. You I raise 25, others I raise 50 dollars a year. You get a good rate.
Tony: You are changing the subject, I am talking about how I pay for a service and expect what I pay for. I don't give a shit how much you raise the rent for other people....and, by the way, we would have been out of here after a year if you tried to pull that 50 dollar shit with us. The rent of the place next door (a different owner) which is a mirror image to our place is 200 bucks cheaper a month.
Vic the Dick: Why all the anger Tony, we have a good relationship, you just need to be patient.
Tony: No, I am upset because you run a bad dishonest business. You said you were going to take care of this 3 hours ago, and now you say it won't be until tomorrow. You are wasting Rena's time. I need her over here. I am really upset because you don't answer simple questions.
Vic the Dick: We have a good relationship...blah blah blah.
He never really got the point of why I was mad. He wasted 3 hours of our Sunday with this B.S. instead of being honest with us from the getgo. He still thinks I am mad because we couldn't use the sink for two days. The plumber eventually showed up half an hour late on Monday.
I guess this is supposed to be about Townhouse remodels and not slackjawed landlords.
So Kyrie and Nader show up at around 11, and we get to work on leveling the base cabinets. Kyrie worked on vacuuming the mess upstairs and putting together the shelves for the tall kitchen cabinet. Sunday was kind of a slow day, the work we were doing wasn't glamorous and was slow going. Rena picked up the lamps we had ordered from Lamps Plus on the way over so we've got that going for us. The highlight of the day was the trip to the old school Ace Hardware. We all went for the ride just to get warm. We got some more wall anchors and an electrical box so I can move the box that is for the fridge (it is in the way of the cabinets) My and Rena's head cold seem to be getting worse. After we get the last cabinet level, Kyrie and Nader leave. Rena and I stick around for a bit to clean up. She had been sanding the upstairs ceilings all afternoon, so she cleaned up that mess. I moved the electrical outlet and patched up the hole where the old one was.
As we were getting ready to go, we decided to take some measurements to admire our new kitchen. The last 12 inch cabinet sticks out an inch longer than it is supposed to. The Fridge won't fit. Shit.
We decide to leave the last cabinet off (which was never installed due to the outlet needing to be moved) and to deal with it on Monday.
We head home to change, head to Home Depot to buy a sink. Then over to Joyce and Paul's for dinner.
This just in from the Norwegian Contingent: Kai says:
"Indiana viewers might laugh at a 46 degree day??" Us Norwegian viewers feel neglected!!!
To tell you the truth, I didn't think my Norwegian fan base was that big. But now that I know he is reading I will account for his sensibilities: So, the temperature was cold to us, but was probably 156Niner° in metric which would have confused some of our less worldly readers.
pics: Day 16 Photos
I also put the listing page up where I found the townhouse. Rachel Raia was/is my zip reality real estate agent. You might think she looks like a psycho in that picture, but I always thought that she was kind of hot in a "I will eat your soul" kind of way. Come Get Some...
Goals: Finish leveling and securing the base cabinets.
Well, Sunday started out wonderfully. After we had our dinner with the helpers on Saturday night, we went home and proceeded to get cozy on the couch. I of course fall asleep instantly, only to be awoken by a piercing scream a few minutes later. It seemed our slipshitz of a landlord had done something to the sink in the upstairs unit (we had a few messages saying they were turning off the water on Sat.)which caused all the water they had been flushing through the system to come up through our bathroom sink. Rena had walked into the bathroom and gotten a foot full of cold water. We call and wake his smarmenian ass up and tell him that he had better be here first thing in the morning to clean the mess up.
A little background on the landlord and his "plumber". He uses the same homeless guy to fix anything that goes wrong with the place; electrical, structural, plumbing, roofing, windows, etc.. He absolutely refuses to use anyone else.
We go to bed, and wait for his call on Sunday morning. He of course calls 2 hours after he was supposed to be there, and when he finally does call, he says the plumber is sick and he won't be coming at all. I think he just doesn't want to pay the guy (or any guy) to work on Sunday. I and Rena tell him to call another plumber like a sane person would, since our bathroom is currently unusable and we would really like to take showers and not step out into a cesspool. He eventually comes over (Rena had to wait for him, I had to meet Kyrie and Nader at the new place) to clean up the mess himself with paper towels. He gives Rena the song and dance about the plumber being sick and how he doesn't trust anyone else to work on it, because other plumbers he has hired have caused more damage than what they fixed. "Like your plumber did to our bathroom," says everyone in unison.
Anyway, I get on the phone with him as he is cleaning around our toilet and berate him for being a bad landlord, a bad person, and generally being annoying. After arguing with him for 20 minutes I finally tell him to just clean up the mess (to my satisfaction) and do what he needs to do to get the sink fixed. At this point, I just felt like being an ass to him to get back at him for being so evasive and borderline retarded.
He wouldn't listen to the reasons why we were upset (being delayed for 3 hours because of his F-up). He thought we were upset because we couldn't use the damn sink. Here is a typical snippet from that phone call and maybe you can see why I was such a dick to him:
Tony: Look Vic, we just wanted the sink fixed this morning at the time you said it would be fixed.
Vic the Dick: You know in the olden times, people got along with only one sink and they didn't complain.
Tony: Ok...I'm not paying 1300 bucks a month to live in the "olden times" in a place with one sink. I'm paying that much to live in the here and now, in a place with 2 damn sinks.
Vic the Dick: I do you favor by not raising your rent as much as everybody else. You I raise 25, others I raise 50 dollars a year. You get a good rate.
Tony: You are changing the subject, I am talking about how I pay for a service and expect what I pay for. I don't give a shit how much you raise the rent for other people....and, by the way, we would have been out of here after a year if you tried to pull that 50 dollar shit with us. The rent of the place next door (a different owner) which is a mirror image to our place is 200 bucks cheaper a month.
Vic the Dick: Why all the anger Tony, we have a good relationship, you just need to be patient.
Tony: No, I am upset because you run a bad dishonest business. You said you were going to take care of this 3 hours ago, and now you say it won't be until tomorrow. You are wasting Rena's time. I need her over here. I am really upset because you don't answer simple questions.
Vic the Dick: We have a good relationship...blah blah blah.
He never really got the point of why I was mad. He wasted 3 hours of our Sunday with this B.S. instead of being honest with us from the getgo. He still thinks I am mad because we couldn't use the sink for two days. The plumber eventually showed up half an hour late on Monday.
I guess this is supposed to be about Townhouse remodels and not slackjawed landlords.
So Kyrie and Nader show up at around 11, and we get to work on leveling the base cabinets. Kyrie worked on vacuuming the mess upstairs and putting together the shelves for the tall kitchen cabinet. Sunday was kind of a slow day, the work we were doing wasn't glamorous and was slow going. Rena picked up the lamps we had ordered from Lamps Plus on the way over so we've got that going for us. The highlight of the day was the trip to the old school Ace Hardware. We all went for the ride just to get warm. We got some more wall anchors and an electrical box so I can move the box that is for the fridge (it is in the way of the cabinets) My and Rena's head cold seem to be getting worse. After we get the last cabinet level, Kyrie and Nader leave. Rena and I stick around for a bit to clean up. She had been sanding the upstairs ceilings all afternoon, so she cleaned up that mess. I moved the electrical outlet and patched up the hole where the old one was.
As we were getting ready to go, we decided to take some measurements to admire our new kitchen. The last 12 inch cabinet sticks out an inch longer than it is supposed to. The Fridge won't fit. Shit.
We decide to leave the last cabinet off (which was never installed due to the outlet needing to be moved) and to deal with it on Monday.
We head home to change, head to Home Depot to buy a sink. Then over to Joyce and Paul's for dinner.
This just in from the Norwegian Contingent: Kai says:
"Indiana viewers might laugh at a 46 degree day??" Us Norwegian viewers feel neglected!!!
To tell you the truth, I didn't think my Norwegian fan base was that big. But now that I know he is reading I will account for his sensibilities: So, the temperature was cold to us, but was probably 156Niner° in metric which would have confused some of our less worldly readers.
# posted by Tony Starr @ 12:26 AM 
