Rental House Horror Stories

[RobS]

Prompted by MossRoad's commentary on my current living conditions...

<font color=blue>Hey, honey. Since we're living in a rental unit during the middle of home construction I thought I'd add to the excitement and buy you a dog! WOOF!!! </font color=blue>

Yes, life for us is both fantastic and downright crummy, all at the same time.

Last night I'm trying to read TBN and I hear a scream from the kitchen of our rental house. My wife calls for my immediate attention to the matter. Seems an entire kitchen sink full of water is now on the (carpeted) kitchen floor /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif She's grabbing towels and I'm being as calm as I can while assessing the situation. It turns out the trap below the sink just fell off, yes fell off. Nothing but gravity at work here.

So we get it all blotted up and I grab the remains of the trap. Too late to hit Menards this evening so it comes with me for an after work outing. Sure, we could just call the landlord but who knows how long that may take and she’s doing us quite the favor by letting us rent without any time commitment. Besides, it can only be about $5 in hardware plus 15 minutes of my time to fix. Already fixed a leaky toilet valve and tended to a couple of other issues.

Really, the problems are nothing out of the ordinary for any homeowner. It’s just a bit different in a rental, knowing we won’t be here long. Lots of other things I would be fixing if it were ours but I keep resisting. I have no doubt the house will be in better shape when we leave but it’s just not worth tending to every little annoyance.

So how about it, any other rental stories out there? I’m sure I’ll stumble across another in the next couple of months /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[Golfgar4]

When we were building our second home back in '88, we rented a 2 bedroom apartment for the construction time. It was so small, that we had to put almost all of our furniture into storage! /w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif

We had done a walk through of a "similar" apartment because ours was being repainted. So based on the walk through, we agreed to the conditions and signed the papers.

About a week later we started moving in. At some point during the move in process, I was going to go out on the small deck to see what kind of view of we had. When I went to slide open the patio door, the whole door and frame fell right out of the wall!/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

Luckily, the apartment manager was available, so I got him up there to show him what happened. He said that he could have the problem taken care of in a day or two! /w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif WRONG!! It will be taken care of today, I tell him. Well, he's not so sure that he can get someone in to fix it that fast. I tell him, I'll fix it right now if he covers the cost of the materials and gives us our first months rent free. He says O.K. About 2 or 3 hours later, the door was back in, and if I do so say myself, installed much better than originally! /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

The only problem with it after that was the manager kept coming back to me and asking if I could help with this project or that project. I was already working 2 jobs, so I wasn't inclined to help him out. /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

 

[TimSullivan]

When Jane and I were first married, I was going to college and money was very tight. We rented the second floor of an old Victorian that had not been maintained well.

On the first night back from our honeymoon, Jane used the ‘antique’ oven to cook some chicken. The oven was so bad that the chicken in the front was raw and the in the back it was burned. We learned to rotate anything cooking there every ten minutes. There was smoke from the chicken so I went to open a window. It fell out of the frame and crashed onto the the driveway below. I closed up the window with some card board from our moving boxes. About that time the couple next store started a big fight and were screaming at each other. With just cardboard in the window and their open windows we got the whole story about each of them.

My bride was crying about the burned-raw chicken, the neighbors and the window. After a few minutes, she did see some of the humor. She decided that it really was not that bad after all and went to take a shower. After a few minutes there was a pounding at the door and the downstairs tenant was yelling to turn the water off. It seems that the owner had neglected to tell us that we could use the tub but that the marble around it leaked badly if one used the shower. At that point I thought that she was going to head out the door and back home. There were more tears but she didn’t leave.

When I could not reach the owner the next day, I fixed the window to some extent. It never did open again. We learned to rotate the food in the oven. I caulked the marble and fixed all the leaks. When I did finally talk to the owner, he allowed me to take the cost of the materials off the rent. I guess my labor was free.

Jane and I have been married for thirty-six years and we laugh about that day now but then it was a different story. She wanted our first day in our first home to be perfect. I have proved in our married years that I am not perfect either but like that old house I just need a little work.