Daley Ponderings

Heather and I spent several days over the last week at our old house, cleaning and fixing various things that our previous tenants broke.

It is pretty annoying to have people totally not care about your property, and live in pretty disgusting conditions, presumably to get back at me for asking them to leave.  They hadn't cleaned in a month or two, and it is hard to believe that they were actually eating food off the counters and table, etc.

They also busted in the frames of the exterior doors (one of the tenants had a boyfriend who she didn't get along with all that well, so continual fights and police being called, etc.)

The frames are now fixed, a window replaced, and most of the cleaning done, and so the house is more liveable now.  I am not sure how they got a landlord to take them into a new place, without checking their references.

We are now in the process of looking for new tenants, and have a couple possibilities, one of which would be really great - I just need to convince them to move in.

We also took this opportunity of an empty house to have the furnace repaired, which ended up being a pretty easy fix - I was afraid it was going to be more involved than just replacing the burners.  It turns out that the burners haven't ever been working properly since we moved into the house seven years ago, as the flames have never looked as nice as they do now.  They have been leaking gas to the outside of the house for the last year or so, and recently it got a lot worse.  I didn't have a furnace guy (besides the one who came before and charged us to fix everything except the furnace that he was supposed to) to call, so hadn't gotten around to it until a neighbor recommended Caruso Heating. They turned out to be great!  They found the part for $100 less than I could find it online (as opposed to the last furnace company, who charged hundreds of dollars more than I could find with a quick search online), and so their materials cost plus labor was equal to what I would have paid online for just the part. He showed up at the time he said he would, and had the furnace fixed in a couple hours or so.