Thursday, August 2, 2007

adventures in renting part 1, sanding galore, dumb picture.

whew. it's been a busy week, here at home. some of us have been away on various trips, which left fewer people here to do the work. cindy has fully entered the role of Rental Manager, with a string of ads on craigslist, lots and lots of email inquiries, and a bunch of apartment showings over the weekend. things she's told me that she's learned from the process so far:

-if you like a prospective tenant, and they want the apartment, it's best to decide immediately whether to accept them or not. in nyc, the market is so tight that people just assume they didn't get the place and move on. bottom line, you can't be too choosy, especially if you find somebody you think will work.
-if a single person comes, and then arranges for their partner to come later to check out the apartment, they aren't going to take it.
-bringing loud and obnoxious friends along to look at an apartment basically assures that we won't rent to you.
-nobody seems to care that our common hallway is in a state of disrepair.
-more than one person offered to pay six months rent up front, that's how tight the market is here.

so, thanks to all of cindy's hard work (she went the extra mile with a bowl of candy, flowers, and music playing during the apartment showings), we now have a renter. who has paid us six months rent in advance.

and there was much rejoicing in the house. except for the fact that we now have to use the less than wonderful first floor bathroom, and give up the nice one on the third floor (which has been our main place of showering, etc.). we're trying to make it as pleasant as possible, but it's pretty nasty; holes in the walls, dirty tile, layers of grossness on the back of the door. it'll be another day of rejoicing when we knock that bathroom out and create a new, nice one. visions of sledgehammers dance in my head...

other work that's been happening has mainly included one form or another of sanding. we've purchased a belt sander and a palm sander, and both have been used hard already. i think they're two of the better tool purchases we've made, since renting these tools even one time basically costs the same as buying them. that little palm sander is the perfect thing to get into hard to reach corners and closets; all the spots that we can't get to with bigger sanders. the fourth floor is sooo close to being ready for stain, and thabo and melissa will probably put it down this coming weekend. i think we're all pretty excited to see the results; hardwood floors are one of the key components to making this place look better, i think.


here's a picture of me singing a song on my covered wagon. it's about sanding floors and killing roaches and gentrification.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

huzzah and greetings from sunny colorado! congrats on getting your first renter. wow - six months up front is a blessing in two ways: 1) it's highly doubtful that he/she is a crackhead with that kinda blow. 2) That's a nice chunk of change to throw into the money pit.

Anonymous said...

guess i can't get enough of your house...i just got home from there and now i'm reading your blog!!! you guys are addictive!! good to see you tonight...keep up the great work...things are really looking good!

amanda + daniel said...

the picture is by far the best part of this entry. will you sing this song to us sometime?