Category: August 2019

Our Eagle Crest tenants left mid-June, so we took advantage of it being vacant and had new floor tile installed.

The previous laminate was in poor shape. Sam did a great job, although it took him over a month. You all remember Sam the brick guy, right? He did the brick floors out in Placitas, and the brick patio in Santa Fe, and he does tile too. Talented, kind, and veeeeery sloooow. Of course the house had to sit empty without rent during that time.

This floor tile was originally purchased for the Placitas house – it was supposed to match the original tile, but it was a different dye lot and wasn’t anything close to the same color. Remember that? It was probably about the only time I’ve used the F-word in a blog post. We were stuck with a couple thousand dollars worth of tile. We put it in a storage unit for two years and were finally now able to use it in this rental.

Then while on our way back from Boise, I was texting my old friends from work and I got lucky. A former coworker decided he would like to rent it, so I didn’t even need to advertise. Advertising is a lot of work – I get inundated with responses when I advertise. It’s a lot of phone calls, emails and texts, and sorting through applications and showings. My coworker rented it sight unseen and hasn’t moved in yet, so I sure hope he likes it!

I spent some time this weekend doing some cleaning & touch-up painting to make sure it’s ready. John went to fix yet another leak in the irrigation system, and each time he had one fixed, another started. It was like wack-a-mole. (I don’t even know what wack-a-mole is, but I’ve heard the expression and can well imagine.) So he finally gave up trying to fix individual leaks, and re-ran a lot of the line. It was a big job; trenching in the rock-hard New Mexico soil in the summer heat is not fun. We’re grateful for a friend of ours, Gerald, for helping us out.

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All of our rentals have irrigation systems, even though they are minimally landscaped – mostly rock. It’s really hard to grow much in the desert without at least some water in the springtime. And tenants don’t tend to hand-water. Keeping the irrigation systems working is a big nuisance. I’ve never been able to find affordable landscaping help.

I had paid (too much) to have the yard trimmed up last month in preparation for advertising, and it’s still not in very good shape. So I’m hoping to get over there within the next couple of days and do some more weeding and such myself, before our new tenant arrives.

I hope our new tenant (and ex-coworker) has a safe trip back to New Mexico. Like a lot of us who have left and come back, I know he is going to be happy to get here.

Ok, yes, I used it, the “r” word – remodel. We bought a house that was “already updated and didn’t need a thing”, but nonetheless we always like to “do a few little custom touches” ourselves and…I admit it. When there’s a cement truck in your driveway, you’re probably getting some serious work done.

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Which is exactly why one of our neighbors called the city and reported us. We got a surprise visit from an inspector followed by a notice of violation in the mail.

Ooops. I was once a city planner, I should know better than failing to pull a permit, right? Yeah, but we trusted our contractor who didn’t think we needed a permit. And he was partially right; our project was completely within code. There were no wavers or variances needed (and nothing any neighbors could do about it; it was completely within our rights) but the city still wanted some paperwork.

It wasn’t a big deal. John went down to the planning department with some measurements and sketches and the required $35 to get our stamp of approval. However, their computers were down. So I went back the next day and got it done. The only really weird thing was we were required to email the city’s list of HOA’s ourselves, out of our own personal email. Public notification is very common for projects of all sorts, but in my experience it’s always the government agency (i.e. the City of Albuquerque), not the private party, doing the notification.

The purpose of this project is to slightly extend (toward the street) the two side yards. The left side of the house is where we park the boat and van, and we wanted to replace the gate with one further out, in order to accommodate the length of the van and boat. That required extending the wall by a few feet.

The right-hand side yard is off the bedrooms, where we are creating a courtyard. The new courtyard will be accessed from a new door in the master bedroom.

When we’re done, will will have three yard spaces: the main backyard, a southern exposure side yard where the dogs play, and a courtyard off the master bedroom.

I like to have a separate space for the dogs because we like to eat our meals outside in the summer, and I don’t like to eat where the dogs do their business – phew! Kai in particular is ill mannered and will pee on my patio when he thinks I’m not looking. So the dogs aren’t allowed in the main backyard that’s off the kitchen.

Plus, most of the year in New Mexico is quite cool, so we wanted a usable south facing yard. The sunny south yard will be much more pleasant than the shaded backyard during the fall, winter, and spring.

We added a cement pad for furniture so we can sit with the dogs outside and throw Kira’s ball.

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And we’re creating planting areas. So far we’ve planted one shade tree and I have a small fig tree waiting to go in.

We now have the south yard set up with a hammock and umbrella, and next year we’re going to build a pergola there. Meanwhile, we play ball with Kira every night. It’s the lazy ball game – we lay in the hammock while tossing her the ball!

Whatcha doing mom? Aren’t we gonna play ball?

On the other side of the south yard fence we’re creating a courtyard off the master bedroom. Not only will it be a sweet little quiet spot, it will provide privacy from inside the master bedroom. Where we once had a window looking out at the neighbor’s garbage cans and the street, we now look at the inside of our new courtyard.

Old view from the bedroom:

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Here’s the outline of the new wall for the master bedroom courtyard (we took the low wall down).

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Here it is again, with the low dividing wall removed.

New view from the bedroom: right now the new corner is just a boring block wall, but by next year I’ll have flowering vines and things, just you wait and see.

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The new door from the bedroom into the courtyard is going where the low wall was.

I bought the wrong door (for 4″ jamb rather than 6″ jamb), so here we’re returning it.

We go to the hardware stores so often, I feel like I could just grab an employee smock and start helping customers.

Here’s John planting trees in the main backyard. Here he’s frantically trying to get them in the ground and on a drip system before our recent trip to Boise.

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We’re also doing indoor work. This is an interior door where there was just an open doorway. It will add some privacy to the living room that we are making into an office.

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Here it is with the plastic removed. We’re still missing door handles (on order) and don’t look at all those bins and boxes piled in the middle of the office, lol.

Here we’re installing overhead light/fans in the bedrooms. There were no lights at all in the bedrooms, so we had to add the wiring, which required cutting into the drywall.

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Now there are overhead lights/fans in all three bedrooms.

There was no storage in the master bathroom (no drawers, no shelves, no towel racks, no nothing except two hooks and the wasteland under the sink), so we added two big beautiful medicine cabinets.

The picture doesn’t do them justice. Mirrors are hard to photograph (I wasn’t into doing selfies this morning).

Those two little robe hooks you see reflected in the mirror are the only “storage” the bathroom came with. I’m going to remove those and add both shelving and towel racks.

And so the list goes on.

I haven’t been posting much because we were in Idaho for over a week (more on that soon). And then when we got back, it was discouraging coming home to a house that’s a construction zone. Plus I’ve only managed to do about half of the unpacking from our move. The house is for the most part functioning, but it’s not a very relaxing place to be yet.

This is the scene that greeted us when we got home and opened the front door.

And it wouldn’t have helped any if we had come in the back door instead. Here’s what that looks like:

Plus, both bathrooms were in middle of getting work done.

The hall bath was the most useable. Just covered in drywall debris with a gaping hole in the ceiling where a fan was being installed. So the first thing John did before even unloading the van was clean up the drywall mess so we would at least have one bathroom we could use.

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While I’m amusing you with pictures of my chaotic house, here’s what my office looks like.

The dining room without any pictures on the walls is peaceful, almost Zen-like…

…until you notice the huge pile of camping equipment on top of moving boxes in the corner.

Shortly after getting home from Boise, I got a big migraine for a couple of days. I think it was the barometric pressure drop due to the elevation change. I get migraines due to pressure drops when the weather gets stormy or when going up in elevation. The elevation in Boise is 2,730′ and in Albuquerque it’s about 5,500′ in the part of town where we live.

I also got a migraine when we went backpacking at 7,000′ during our Idaho trip, but that one didn’t last very long. It was preceded by an aura, which I don’t usually get, but when I do it’s useful because it gives me early warning and I can take the medicine quickly.

Anyway, I’m all better now, except I’m still limping around due to a fall while backpacking (more on that later). My house is still chaos, but I am hoping to take some time today to get a few blog posts up. In between the chaos, lots of good stuff has been going on!