Yesterday was Saturday and we started the day with a trip to the hardware store for a few things. $158 dollars later, we headed to the Flip House. Our plan for today was for me to mop the disgusting floors to see if they would be ok not to replace, to replace the kitchen outlet covers with white covers instead of beige, to replace the heating vent covers because the ones there have never been cleaned and are beyond repair.
When we were at the hardware store, we stopped by their granite counter area to get some idea of price on counters. If we want laminate, it will cost $26 a square foot installed. If we want granite, we will have to pay $80 for a plumber to unhook the sink, $50 a square foot for the granite, $250 and up for a new sink, $125 for a basic faucet and $250 for a plumber to put the plumbing all back together. I am just not sure a sink is worth $750....at the same time, I don't want to cheap out. This hardware store will not let us unhook the sink ourselves, which we are perfectly capable of doing. They claim there is too much risk of us flooding our sink, that they are only trying to protect us. Did you hear the sarcasm when I typed that? I decided I like these two choices:
We are trying to save the laminate in the main room because our estimate came back for carpet and laminate and it was around $5000. We are trying to save some money by putting in only carpet for right around $1500 and keeping the laminate that is there.
The paint job came in at $3000 including trim and ceilings, but the painter wants $1100 to paint the kitchen cabinets. At this point, we need to focus on one thing to spend money on and let some others go. I think we will have to pick either floors, painted cabinets or a granite counter top. I know the kitchen would look fabulous with painted cabinets and new counters, but at this point I think it's just too expensive to do both. This isn't a high end house, so I feel that it is ok to pick something and to let the buyer do some other things. I feel like I could put $30,000 into this house easily, but I would not make any additional money from it, so I am cutting back.
I called a carpenter in to fix the damage the renter has done to some parts of the house. She broke a door beyond repair and it has to be replaced, and she broke the laundry room doors beyond repair. I do not yet have an estimate from him though.
We arrived at the rental house and I started mopping the laminate. I learned that when someone does not properly mop that the dirt gets really hard to clean up. I started with a big flat head mop with a terry cloth head. I took one swipe and the mop head was too full of dirt to continue, so I started swiping, removing it and wringing it out. After a while, it lost it's stretch, kept falling off the mop and I had to figure something else out. I tried the wet jet, but it was not removing enough dirt from the floor per mop head. I drove to the store and bought a sponge mop, but it was not taking dirt off either. I got on my hands and knees with a sponge and the floor finally started to come clean. The problem is that I am not young and this is back breaking work without knee pads. I finished about 1/4th of the floor. I also filled some small holes with wood putty while I was on my hands and knees.
I was mopping and went to clean up a stain on the floor and realized that the renter had put a hole in the laminate flooring so deep that it went through the product and a red color was showing. There were four of these areas. Note to self, next time I have a renter, require that they put rugs over laminate floors. I realize that I am a little hard on our renter, but we replaced our carpets in our own house and they look good five years later. She trashed carpets and laminate in three years, she broke doors, she didn't leave the place clean and there were things I cannot believe she broke. I realize that things break and that there is a certain amount of upkeep everyone has to do on a property each year, but I really feel that she could have taken a little more care of the place, or at least mopped the floor on her way out.
When I felt that if I did not stop mopping, I would not be able to get out of bed the next day, I took a break and sprayed poison ivy in the yard. I found a few patches of it along the fence and under a tree. I was swarmed by mosquitoes and my arms were bit multiple times, even with me swatting at them.
I went back into the house to find that hubby had finished all the ceiling vent replacements and was working on the outlets in the kitchen. He said some of his outlets were not working so he would need to go back to the store. It was getting late and I was very sore. I had expected to get a layer of primer on the bathroom cabinet today, but I realized that this wasn't going to happen.
I washed the cabinet with tsp cleaner and removed hardware and doors. I was not strong enough to remove the drawer pulls, and as I was trying to get the screw to loosen, my hand started hurting very badly and I realized that I had reached my limit for the day. I put some wood filler into the holes where we removed the toilet paper and called it a day.
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