As I mentioned yesterday, I had my Sunday pretty much planned out to be doing some laborious tasks on a rental that’s nearly ready to be posted for rent. My entire planned day was yet another example of how when forecasting amounts of time needed on a certain project, hours seem to get swallowed up by those little annoying things that just don’t want to give way to our wishes.
Without my knowledge, the previous tenants decided to paint without asking me. This assumption has run rampant all these years our office has been involved in property management. Even our leases speak of tenant improvements to where they must always be approved in writing by the landlord. So much for remembering lease terms.
The main reason I’m so dead set against tenants painting, is that they’re nearly never professional about it, nor are they color sensitive to what they believe a landlord would consider to be acceptable. I can assure you, I’ve seen some pretty scary colors in not only rentals, but also homes that have homeowners living in them. Another really big pet peeve of mine are those mindless stencils people place on their walls. The most annoying are those trite little sayings in bedrooms. Why don’t they have original wooden plaques carved with something more original to have hanging for all to see?
My boil-over anger today was finding how those naughty tenants had painted the ceilings and walls of three rooms without covering the wooden floors. Absolutely nobody knows what a pain in the posterior it is to get dried paint splats off natural woodwork and floors. I’m not even going to say how many hours I spent on just those two big rooms, but I’ll likely find myself falling asleep tonight counting paint splats. My knees and back will sure to be smarting tomorrow. There’s usually something about someone which causes us to remember them, and that tenant happened to have several quite visible warts. I’m forgetting the warts and remembering those thousand splats.
So it looks like I’ll be spending another free day finishing what I’d expected to be finished. On a positive note. Those hours spent on my hands and knees in the solitude of those empty rooms, gave me time to let my mind wander. Just as I was calling it quits for the day, I suddenly realized I’d thought about people that I’ve not seen hide nor hair of for likely 15 – 20 years, yet they were vivid in my mind. There were two people we’ll call Dean and Sara, whom I’ve not spoken or even thought about for years. They were famous at the time for their tossed salads. I’m wondering if there are some sort of trace memories of residents who’ve moved away years ago still hovering about our City.
After spending so much time in that rental today, I’ve decided that if I ever have a home built, I’ll certainly insist on having 9 – 10 ceilings and really tall and elegantly crafted baseboards. For whatever reason, I believe tall baseboards give rooms more definition.
