Category: Rentals, Remodels, Relocations and Real Estate

We’ve been running around, running down our long to-do list. It’s amusing the things you find when moving.

This had to be from several moves ago. (sigh). One time recently I told you that I’d moved 25 times in my adult life and John was skeptical. One of these days I’m going to bore you with the entire litany. Just warning you. You can blame John’s skepticism when it happens.

And I found this. I guess it came from a game. It’s going to be my new talisman.

We are forever moving pick-up loads of random things to different houses. Anyone want an enormous, slightly dusty bean bag?

It doesn’t fit in our new house. I think my friend in Santa Fe is going to take it. I don’t know what we’d do without that pick-up (hire movers like normal people, probably).

And we’re buying things, and planting things…

We’ve been working on our rentals too. Rental #1 is getting a new roof. The whole city had hail damage awhile back, and ever since then roofers have been absolutely impossible to schedule. It took lots of calling, but I finally have someone lined up for this fall, which is the soonest they could schedule us. (Hey Robert, I don’t know if you still read this blog, but thanks for the roofer recommendation!)

Rental #2 is getting a bunch done. There were bad dog claw scratches in the sliding glass door, and the screen and glass company said they couldn’t just change out the glass and that we needed a whole new sliding glass door installed. (For mega $). Then the contractor, Calob, who is working on miscellaneous tasks at our new house (more on that later), went out there and scraped off the tint on the glass doors, and it’s as good as new. The scratches were only in the tinted film on the glass! He charged me $100 for carefully scraping the sticky stuff off with a blade, and saved me well over a thousand. I don’t even remember how much he saved me. Thousands! The screen and glass company’s quote was so ridiculous I didn’t even consider it.

Meanwhile at the same house, Sam, the brick and tile guy, is laying new tile (it was old carpet and peeling wood-look laminate).

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This is the tile we had original bought to match existing tile in the Placitas house, but when it arrived, it turned out to be a very different dye lot and didn’t match the existing tile well enough to use. So we stored it, knowing we had a rental with floors that were going to need redone. Remember how we had a horrible time trying to decide on tile at the Placitas house? In the end, we gave up on tile, took everything up, and had Sam install brick. Brick flooring is very traditional and appreciated in that part of New Mexico. But in Albuquerque, tile is standard.

You remember Sam? He’s super nice, reasonably affordable, and does careful work. He’s also very, very sloooooooow. Remember the months and months my backyard patio brick took last year? This is his third big job for us. He promised me it would go quickly because the longer it takes, the longer it’s sitting empty without generating rental income. A few months of lost rent would cost more than what the tile job cost.

The same rental also had a broken toilet tank lid. The tenants had glued it back together. It’s always something. This is an easy fix, just need to find the right thing to order.

Rental #3 just needed a bit of landscaping done. If you ever want something to cause nightmares, read up on bindweed. It is absolutely impossible to deal with. It puts roots down many, many feet, and will run linearly underground for many, many more feet, and can regrow from just a speck of root somewhere, anywhere buried in your yard. For those of you from the Pacific Northwest – IT IS WORSE THAN BLACKBERRY VINES! It’s absolutely impossible to get rid of. We had it growing through the front window frame inside the house this spring. My tenants were sending photos and I couldn’t even understand what they were saying! I’ve heard of ants getting into a house, but not weeds!

Anyway, we still have bindweed out there, but at least we now also have cute little rosemary plants. Here we are planting them:

And laying the drip system.

And ooops! The pressure blew the heads right off. It’s a fountain!

Haha, someone’s getting wet trying to turn it off! Turn it off, turn it off! It’s spraying higher than the house.

We also replaced a dead evergreen out at the Placitas house.

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We had originally dug the hole there for a different reason. Before giving up on the entire place, we had envisioned a tranquil pond with lilies and koi (ha. ha.) After giving up on that dream, John didn’t want to waste the effort (because if you have a hole you must fill it), so he bought two trees to plant there, one of which died, so then he bought a replacement tree. I’m reminded of the children’s song, “she swallowed the bird to catch the spider…she swallowed the spider to catch the fly…but I don’t know why, she swallowed the fly.”

While out there we noticed a neighbor’s house had burned!

I don’t know anything about it. Very sad. Except the last house that burned in that same neighborhood turned out to be owner arson. (Did John and I consider that? No…why would you think that? And did John or I ever consider using the grave-sized hole for our spouse’s body instead of evergreen trees? Now why would I even suggest that?) Just because that house has been a wee bit expensive and frustrating.

By the way, it failed its septic system inspection earlier this week. Did I tell you that? We weren’t surprised because of its age, but now we have to either get it fixed or a new one installed. Best case scenario it’s going to cost some money and delay closing. Hopefully our buyers won’t back out of the deal. If they do, it would be karma. Because we backed out of buying a house a couple of years ago for the exact same reason.

We have finally, finally, given up and hired help with moving. In general, John prefers we do stuff ourselves when we can, while I will more often want to hire help.

The advantages of the DIY approach is it’s cheaper, and John likes to be able to do it his way (the right way), on his timeframe. And he doesn’t like the process of hiring and overseeing help, and he definitely doesn’t like fixing it when someone else does it wrong.

On the other hand, I delegate as much as I can. I don’t mind the process of hiring and overseeing help. And I like to get things done faster than we can do them if we’re doing everything ourselves. And I believe in hiring local help and putting some money into the local economy. And I think it makes sense to hire people who are good at what they do, because we’re amateurs at everything except our own professions. I think it’s more effective and efficient to spend our time doing the things we’re good at, and let someone else do the things they specialize in. I also think John undervalues his time.

Plus, I just think we’re working way too hard. John has a lot more energy than I do, but even he has not been himself for a few months now. It’s like our first year in California when John was in a very difficult new job and we were doing a major remodel.

Finally over this weekend I hurt my back dragging around some new trees, trying to decide exactly how to place them.

They’re going on our back slope to screen the neighbor’s house.

My back is slowly getting better, but I could hardly walk on Sunday. So Monday morning I hired a moving company to do the rest because I’m not doing anymore lifting.

We have about half of the moving left to do. So far we have the boxes from Placitas moved in, the washer & dryer from Santa Fe moved in, and some furniture. And we’ve loaded the POD in Santa Fe and it’s up there waiting for the POD company to drive it down to Albuquerque.

What’s left to do is unload the POD, plus move all the furniture and decorations that are staging the house in Placitas. The POD doesn’t arrive until July 8 (because we didn’t know how long it would take us to load it, so we didn’t schedule soon enough and now they are booked and we have to wait).

We don’t want to remove the furniture from the Placitas house until it clears inspections (which should happen by the end of this week unless we need to redo the septic system). Once we’ve cleared inspections, we’ll be fairly certain that the sale will go through.

So in the end, I have movers scheduled for July 11. It will be nice to have everything in one place, and finally be done with moving. This is the longest and most drawn out moving process I’ve ever done. We started this project in April.

Meanwhile, as of yesterday, I am advertising the Santa Fe townhome for rent. I’ve had lots of inquiries, and will be going up there later this afternoon to show it to several interested parties.

We still have some give-away items in the garage up in Santa Fe, and I have some coworkers from my old job coming over at the same time to look through the stuff in the garage. So that’s all going to be way too many people and too much confusion for my comfort level, but hopefully it all goes well, and my coworkers find some stuff they like and I find a good tenant.

As of this morning, we are under contract with a buyer for the Placitas house. We are cautiously optimistic. We’ve got several hurdles yet.

First of all, the buyer has been very hesitant. It’s a huge move for her – she’s coming from the east coast – and she seems indecisive. Apparently she’s been off-and-on looking for a house in Placitas for 6 years. 6 years! So hmmm, maybe a looky-loo?

Secondly, she is an older, single woman. I don’t want to be ageist and sexist, but that’s a complicated house. It’s got a well and a pump house (dug into the ground, handy-like, right?) and septic system, and solar panels, and there’s always something to troubleshoot. The desert countryside has mice, packrats and bunnies, all of which love to eat wiring. It’s just a hard house to deal with. So maybe she’s more together than I am, but I would not want to deal with that house alone.

But she loves the house (it is a very attractive house) and maybe she will be blissfully happy there. Everything is in good shape – there’s no known issues.

It will need to pass a septic test. I’m only giving it about a 50% chance of passing. That’s just because of the age of it. It’s original to the house. It hasn’t been giving us any trouble, but to test it the inspectors will jet into it far more water than we would ever send it at once. So there’s no way to know how it’s going to perform under those conditions until they do the test.

If that the system fails, that means probably $5,000 – $8,000 to get a new one installed. Hopefully they can find a good spot for it. You can’t put a new septic in the same spot as the old one. There’s not a lot of room up there at the top of the hill, and we can’t put it downhill because it would be too close to the corner of the lot where the well is.

And some of you probably remember the septic installation nightmare at that Placitas house John and I almost bought a couple of years ago!

Anyway, it’s a beautiful house, and we’ll do what we need to, to make sure it’s got a good septic system. And hopefully she will complete the sale and be very happy there enjoying the stunning views for many years to come.

It’s been freezing cold; winter temperatures all the way into May. I’ve been very grumpy about that, by the way. I’m very much a hot weather person. And there was snow in Santa Fe in May!

Finally the temperature got suddenly hot. So a couple of days ago we turned on the cooler and phew, something stunk. Foul air was blowing into our house.

Sometimes evaporative coolers get funky while in disuse, so John checked it out and it looked ok. Although it’s not easy to get into the depth of them.

So today we spent over $430 getting all our ductwork professionally cleaned (they do that with a big suction truck, like carpet cleaners). When they left, we installed a new filter, turned on our evaporative cooler and…STENCH! So we’ve been running it all afternoon, in the hopes that the smell will “clear out” with fresh water running through the cooler.

It’s been a few hours and I can smell it all the way out on the patio. I’m not sure what it smells like. I don’t think it’s mold or mildew. More likely it’s a dead rodent.

I was also doing a little bit of indoor painting today, and I couldn’t even smell the paint over the cooler stink. It was that bad.

We’re not sure how long this house sat empty before we bought it. It wasn’t on the market very long, but the previous owners had moved out, and then they hired someone to do a fair amount of updating. There’s no telling how long that took.

Here’s Kira eyeing the cooler warily through the gate. She thinks the smelly problem is with the evaporative cooler. My nose says so too.

For a long time I thought I liked evaporative cooling. It delivers a cool moist air, which in the desert is nice. And it takes a lot less energy than a condenser, because it’s just a fan blowing over water. But it works by evaporating water, which is scarce in the desert.

And evaporative cooling is just a big nuisance. It needs set up and taken down twice a year because it shares venting with the furnace, and apparently can’t be hooked up at the same time as the furnace. Once it’s set up, you can’t go back to your furnace. Once it’s taken down, you can’t go back to cooling. Our weather is extremely variable, and it’s inevitable that during the spring and fall there are days when you have cooling when you really need heat, and vice versa.

Probably my biggest issue with evaporative cooling is that it only works with the windows cracked open. In a cool, moist, welcoming climate like coastal California, it can be heaven to open the windows to the fresh outdoor air. But that’s not the case in the desert.

I run humidifiers and vaporizers 24/7, year round, trying to keep the indoor humidity up to around 20%. The minute I open a window, all that hard-earned humidity is gone. The evaporative cooler adds humidity, but only while it’s actually running. So most of the time the windows are all cracked open, letting out all my humidified air.

The conventional wisdom with evaporative coolers is that it’s not good enough to have one window cracked open. People (like my dear hubby) crack open at least one window in every single darn room. So that can be a dozen windows to run around opening and closing – or just leave open regardless of the current actual conditions.

Also in New Mexico, we get sand storms. It’s miserable on the hot days when you need your windows cracked open for the evaporative cooler, but the wind is howling and blowing dirt inside.

Also I like to be able to have my windows closed to block out the noise of the neighborhood. The neighborhood dogs set my own dogs off, and then I’ve got a riot of barking in my own house. It’s just quieter and more secure with the windows closed. I don’t want to have to have the windows open all the time. I only want to open them when it’s particularly nice out and I feel like opening them.

I just want central air conditioning. And it’s cheaper than moving to San Diego.

I measured! It should fit!

I bought a brand new fancy refrigerator. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite slide into the spot where it’s supposed to go.

I’ve never had such a nice, fancy refrigerator. It has a new feature called “showcase”, which is a little hard to describe but basically it has a double door such that you can access the “door” items from both sides.

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I’m going to make this refrigerator fit. It’s not like it’s the wrong size. The refrigerator is 35 inches wide. I measured my space to be just over 36 inches wide.

I’ve got over an inch to spare, so why won’t it fit?!?

Turns out the cabinet was installed crooked. I had assumed the narrowest point was where the counter sticks out slightly from the cabinet. But the cabinet was installed so crooked that the widest point is actually down at the base of the cabinet. Here you can see the gap between the cabinet and the stove down toward the bottom. The stove is straight. The cabinet is not.

So it’s crazy, but I’ve got a guy coming tomorrow to remove the cabinet and straighten it out by an inch. An inch!

Update (two days later)

So the guy reinstalled the cabinet and now the refrigerator mostly fits.

Sort of. Turns out that the door hinge can’t be tight against the wall because the hinge edge of the door swings out slightly when the door is opened.

If you’re like, what the heck is that a picture of? It’s a birds-eye view of the top of the refrigerator in Santa Fe, which does the same thing.

Both refrigerators, the one in Santa Fe and the one in our new house, have a wall on one side, so the refrigerator has to stick out past the wall, by the depth of the door, to give the door maneuvering room.

Silly me, I bought counter-depth refrigerator so it wouldn’t stick out into the doorway, not realizing that it needed to stick out into the doorway in order for the refrigerator door to work. This means I currently can’t push my refrigerator all the way back.

At the Santa Fe house, the wall ends in a wide opening between the kitchen and dinning room, so you don’t notice that the refrigerator sticks out slightly into that opening.

But at our new house, it’s a doorway, not a wide opening. So it’s pretty obvious the refrigerator is sticking into the doorway.

The best solution would be to remove the door jam and open that whole space up. I didn’t want a door there anyway. It’s between the kitchen and laundry room, but the pantry is in the laundry room, so the door is just in the way. So I don’t mind taking the door and part of that wall out, but it’s going to be a biggish job.

After removing the door jam and redoing any framing & support that’s necessary, the drywall and texture will need redone. I will also have to have the floor tile patched. There’s no tile under the few inches of wall that I need to remove.

All that just to get a normal sized refrigerator in there! The previous owners must have had a really small one. It was gone before they put the house on the market so we didn’t realize.

Just a quick note to explain why I haven’t posted much of anything recently. It’s not that there’s nothing going on…

After I quit my job, I went to Boston for a week, then we staged the Placitas house for sale, then we were in California for a week, then the moment we were back from California I started showing one of our rentals to prospective tenants and getting the usual between-tenants maintenance done (a broken window, sprinklers not working, etc.) which took a week, then we moved some of our stuff into our new house (the boxes that came out of the Placitas house), then I flew to San Diego, then I was barely back for one day and we turned around and drove to Utah for John’s birthday (it’s our annual tradition), and now this week is booked solid with appointments like refrigerator delivery and meeting with contractors to get quotes for various things like electrical work.

Meanwhile John’s been assembling and installing and troubleshooting and moving heavy items in and out of our pickup truck and to and from Home Depot.

What hasn’t happened yet is I still haven’t packed up my stuff in Santa Fe. Augh! I’m really looking forward to getting my stuff moved from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. The pod has been out there waiting for a couple of weeks now, sitting in the driveway empty.

I’m thinking I might have time to go up there today and start packing, but first I have several errands to run (Home Depot, Lowe’s, groceries, etc.) and then I have a coaching client at noon (which is over the phone so I can do that in either Santa Fe or Albuquerque), and then I have to be back in Albuquerque to meet another contractor at 4:00. So maybe I should just wait and go up to Santa Fe tomorrow and get all my errands done today. Because I’m tired.

Anyway I have tons of stories for you, like why the refrigerator doesn’t fit even though I carefully measured, and my hunt for the dead thing in the air vents, and the 1950’s style old-guy salesman with a briefcase of samples who tried to get me to buy a $4,000 door – haha, seriously?

Bottom line is we’re fine. We’re working really hard and spending a disconcerting amount of money. I’ve got two rentals turning over this month and next, so I’m having work done in both of them as well as lots of things done in the new house. So in addition to traveling, plus packing and unpacking, my life is primarily scheduling and meeting with contractors. And buying things at Lowe’s.

Hopefully when I have time, I can tell you all about the various projects in subsequent posts. Plus our recent trips – I’ve got some beautiful photos of Utah.