Mike and Music

Last night, in order to send Mike’s dad, Bruce, off on a fun note, we took him to the Turf Club.  Outside of the terrible service, which you expect when you go to that establishment, it was a really good time.  We grilled some steaks (and by we, I mean the men), chatted, and drank our faces off.  I stopped about halfway into my third Sneaky Tiki because I was driving and someone had to get us home safely (!), but the boys were off to the races.  Turf Club makes an Esquire Martini that comes with a bleu cheese stuffed olive, and I swear, Elree, Mike and Bruce must have had four or five of them each.  There was lots of laughing, lots of toasting (to the new house!  to good friends!  to dad!), and today, I suspect, lots of gin martini hangovers.

About four hours into what turned out to be a long day of enthusiastic (which in this case means messy) painting primer onto the walls of the middle unit, Mike’s dad told me that I should be careful because primer doesn’t come off like regular paint.  If only Bruce had thought to tell me that earlier!  It turns out primer does wash off with warm, soapy water– when it’s wet.  Once it’s dry, it doesn’t come off.  So if you have dried primer on your hands, arms, legs, feet, and even face, like I did, you find yourself in a tricky situation.

At about seven thirty this evening, I headed to my local Home Depot to see if the gents in the paint department could recommend a way to get the primer off.  When I walked in, the paint guy said, “let me guess.  You need paint!”  Close but no cigar.  He was very helpful, beginning with a mild treatment.  He gave me a couple of squirts of some sort of soap that has abrasive scrubbing grit in it and suggested I walk to the bathroom to rinse it off, scrubbing as hard as I could stand on the way.  So I wandered the aisles of Home Depot, rubbing the soap into my hands, hoping it would get the primer off.  Got to the bathroom, rinsed, and found that it hadn’t helped at all.  Back to the paint department.

This time, the guy called over a coworker.  We tried another, stronger cleaning liquid, but that didn’t work either.  The first guy was on the verge of trying the mineral spirits on me when the second guy suggested we skip it and go straight to the big guns.  And it was thus that I ended up standing the in the middle of the Home Depot paint department with two guys directing me to rub paint thinner onto my arms.

Stinky as it was, it worked, and I purchased a small container of the thinner.  They warned me that I’d need to shower immediately upon using it, so I headed home, rubbed paint thinner all over myself (it turns out that in addition to not coming off when dry, paint thinner also mysteriously gets into your clothes, ending up on your thighs, chest and stomach, too), and then hopped in the shower.

It’s been about an hour since I finished that little misadventure, and I haven’t broken out into a rash and I don’t feel any burning, so I’m assuming I’ll live.  The paint is gone, as is most of the moisture in my skin, but I guess that’s what lotion is for.

The moral of this story?  Paint in a calm, orderly manner, and if you get any primer on you…  wash it off immediately!

I promise to try not to write entires that are just boring recitations of things we did to the house.  That being said, here’s an update on what we did to the house.  Ha ha.

My dad came over and worked like a madman, cutting a hole in our fence so we could put a new deadbolt in, taking off all the ugly security bars that made our house look like a jail, taking concrete screws out of various spots in the living room of our unit, and then, to top it all off, climbing onto the roof to strip off ugly Christmas lights left by previous tenants.  The work he managed to accomplish in a few hours would have taken us days, and Mike and I are so appreciative that he gave up most of his Sunday to help us.

Another house angel was Elree, who came over just before my dad left.  After taking the grand tour, he set to work putting new electrical outlets in the rental units.  Not one to sit around, when he was done with that, he began peeling up the “stick on” tile a previous tenant had installed (does it count as installing when all one does is pull off the back and stick the tile onto the floor?).  The floors are a really pretty hardwood, redwood we think, and in pretty good shape with a few exceptions.  The tile is stuck onto the wood really well, so Elree certainly got a workout pulling it up.  Best of all, he said he’d come back after the termite fumigation is done.  Thanks, Elree!

We have a break for the next few days (well, we have to work our real jobs and I have to start thinking about wedding venues), but come Thursday, the work will begin again in earnest.  Mike’s dad will be here then and the cabinets are being delivered, so the kitchens will be the first thing we attack.  (Well, the first thing they attack.  I’ll be Spackle-ing holes and sanding the Spackle I laid today in preparation for painting the walls).

Pass the muscle rub, I’m worn out!

Our first full day of home renovation was focused on demolition. We are completely re-doing the kitchens in each of the rental units (new cabinets, counters, appliances, faucets, flooring, paint, etc.), so Mike spent yesterday using his trusty sledgehammer to knock out the existing cabinets. Our house was built in 1930, so it’s pretty solidly constructed, which is fabulous for the things that we’re keeping, but hard on the worker who is taking things out. There was a ton of noise and a ton of debris, which is currently piled in front of each unit. I was very impressed– Mike got almost everything out that needed to come out yesterday.

I spent the day removing screws and painting. The thing about having three units is that there’s three times more of everything. I took off all the switch plates and outlet covers, all the housings for blinds and curtains, and all the random screws and nails that have accumulated over the last 77 years. It’s a mind boggling number. My mom came over and helped (and kept me company, which was very nice) in the morning, and by the afternoon, when I’d moved on to painting ceilings in the rental units, my dad had come over, too. All signs point to him helping us with some metalwork issues today (like taking bars off windows and installing a new lock in the front gate).

All in all, it’s going very well. Our time line is very aggressive, but so far, so good. Of course, it’s only been one day! Today the plan is to finish removing the tile backsplashes from the kitchens, finish painting the ceilings, and begin taping stuff off to paint the walls. We’re both sore, but I’ve popped some ibuprofen and have a bottle of Gatorade ready to get me through the day. Let the fun begin!

In my previous post, I promised I’d post the story of how Mike proposed. Well, here it goes…

After, Mike went to pick up the keys to our new house from the escrow folks, we arranged to meet there. I showed up to find Mike sitting on the front steps. We’d agreed that we’d go in for the first time together, so I was very happy he was sticking to our plan.

We walked up to the front unit’s door and Mike said he wanted to carry me over the threshold. The keys were already in the door, so he picked me up, I turned the key, and he carried me in. Once in, I looked around for a minute, taking it all in. “Wow, this is our house,” I thought. Still holding me, Mike asked if I’d get something out of the front pocket on his shirt for him. I poked my fingers into the shirt and felt a ring. I knew immediately what it was and fished it out. Mind you, he’s still holding me at this point. We shared a kiss and he put me down and slipped the ring on my finger. I was shocked because I was so not expecting to be proposed to– so shocked Mike had to prompt me. “Well? What do you say,” he asked. I said yes and we kissed again, and the rest is history.

It’s amazing– a couple of days ago, I was 27 years old and buying a house with my boyfriend. Today I’m 28 and own a house with my fiance!

We spent the evening doing tasks around the house, joined by a few friends at different points in time. Mike began changing the locks (with three units each with three or four doors, there are a lot of locks) and I began taking off all the switch plates and outlet plates. Next on our list is to paint ceilings and demo the kitchens, taking out the existing cabinets and fixtures so we can put the new ones in next week after the fumigation for termites. There’s a ton of work to be done, and we’re on a really tight schedule, but I’m hopeful we can get on track and stay on track.

I’ll do my best to update this site frequently with stories about and details from our process. Stay tuned.

I’ll write the full story later, but the short story is that not only did Mike and I get our new house today, we got engaged!  Very exciting stuff, lots of happiness.  Details soon!

One of the downsides to buying a multi-unit property in which all units are occupied is having to decide what to do with the tenants. When Mike and I decided to buy our place, we knew at the very least the people living in the biggest unit would have to go, since that’s where we’ll live. We thought long and hard about the tenants in the two rental units, though. Do we want to keep them as tenants? Should we ask the seller to give them notice? One of the tenants in particular seems like a really nice guy who has had a hard life. We wanted to keep him because he seemed like he’s a good tenant, but he was paying well below market rate for his apartment and couldn’t afford to pay much more. In the end, we gave notice to all the tenants and we will close 48 hours after the last tenant vacates.

This weekend, Mike and I drove past the property, as we do on occasion (to get an idea of what the neighborhood is like at different hours of the day, and to look at what we’ve gotten ourselves into), and there was a sign tacked up to the fence in front. “Moving sale this weekend.” The tenant we really liked, who we anguished over, was selling what looked like all his furniture. It was, for me, heartbreaking. I feel so terrible about putting this guy out, about making his already difficult life a little more difficult. And here we go by and he’s divesting himself of all of his possessions. Is it because he needs the money to get a new place? Is it because wherever he’s going is small and he won’t have room to take his furniture? Is it because he can’t afford to rent a truck to move the stuff to a new place?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter. We’ve given him notice and he needs to move. He’s in his 40s probably and will surely regroup, moving on with his life. He’s faced tough times before and muddled through. Why should this be any different? In the end, it was the seller’s decision to sell, and this guy (actually, all the tenants) is just collateral damage from that decision.

Or so I keep telling myself…