The bed that BF built December 9, 2008

Back before BF and I moved in together, I was living with my grandmother. This had originally been intended to be a temporary thing, but I ended up staying for close to 3 years. When I first moved in, I was staying in her guest room, on the ancient and increasingly uncomfortable double bed. About a year and a half ago, when it didn’t seem like I was leaving anytime soon, I decided to purchase myself a new mattress and box spring, and ditch the bed frame in favor of one of those bare minimum frames, to make a little more room. Everything went well, except….the minimal frame was on wheels. On a hardwood floor.

It was a constant adventure about the moving bed. Things would fall down behind it and get seemingly lost forever. Blankets constantly needed to be re-adjusted. When we made plans to move, one of the things that BF and I both agreed on was that we needed a real bedframe, and quickly.

It was a pleasant surprise, then, when we moved into our new place and realize two things – 1. That our new bedroom was carpeted and 2. That the wheels on the bed frame locked into place. If I had known this, I might have saved myself a lot of irritation over the past year. But, regardless – I was now content to not spend any more money and just deal with the bed frame as it was, particularly since we’ve been tentatively planning to purchase a larger, Queen sized mattress in the semi-near future – in a year or 2, perhaps. I figured that we could just get a bed frame that would make up both happy then.

Oh no, says BF. Sometime in September, he decided that he wanted a project. He is an engineer by trade (and by nature), and quickly got to work sketching out plans to create a bed. He bought the wood, and the screws, and borrowed some tools from his father, and spent the better part of a weekend working on it. After a few weeks, he had the pieces mainly done, and went to put them together, and realized….that he had measured incorrectly. So, then, the bed frame pieces sat in our hallway for the better part of 2 months. He finally, finally finished bed construction last weekend, and, while I certainly do not love the bare, scratched wood monstrosity he has created, I’m trying to be supportive because I know how much he enjoyed doing something like this.

The thing I am less supportive about? Total cost. All told, after buying wood, and replacement wood, and screws, and replacement screws, and who knows what else, the bed frame alone has cost us almost $200. BF promises that when spring comes, we can drag the thing outside and sand it a little bit and put some stain on it, in an attempt to make it a little better looking, which will only be an additional expense.

Not happy about all of this, particularly when I know I could have gotten something that I wanted at IKEA for a whole lot less money and time, but trying my best to bite my tongue and be supportive, since it was a project, and he did put a lot of effort into it.

The House we almost Rented September 17, 2008

BF and I didn’t end up taking the place we looked at back in June – the price was pretty decent, but it wasn’t blow-us-away perfect, and the landlord wanted a move-in date of July 1st – we just weren’t ready for that. So, we kept looking.

In mid-July, right before BF started his new job, we took a long weekend to look at houses, condos and apartments. We looked at about 8 places in total. Some were great, others decidely less so. In particular, the “townhouse” that was essentially the bottom half of a raised ranch, complete with 3 dogs, broken car parts on the lawn, and really, really sketchy people, for $1200 a month, was a dissapointment, and an eye-opener. We did see a few places that we liked, and one – a small house in a nice town on a lake – instantly became the front runner.

The house was small – somewhere around 650 square feet. But it was a house, and it was on a lake, which was increadibly attractive to us. It had a large kitchen with fairly new, all-black appliances, cathederal ceilings in the kitchen and living room, a decent sized deck on the back and beautiful picture windows in the master bedroom. It also had fleas, millions of holes in the walls from a hang-enthusiastic former tenant, only 1 tiny closet in the bedroom and a really slap-dash paint job that left the walls multi-colored in places. It was also increadibly dirty – it seemed that the last tenants left in sort of a hurry, and never did any sort of rudimentary cleaning while they did live there. The rent was listed as $1325 a month, no utilities included, but we talked them down to $1275, which was still at the high end of what we had wanted to pay.

We submitted the application at the end of July, and shortly thereafter were approved, and signed a lease with a September 1st move-in date. September 1st was a Monday, and we asked if it would be possible to move in a few days before that, seeing as the place was empty, and the landlord agreed. We also submitted $1000 as a security deposit. Before signing the lease, we asked if they planned to patch and repaint the walls, and they indicated that they were not planning to do so, but that if we would like to, they would reimburse us for all supplies used. They also let us know that there was a spare key on the back porch, and that we could feel free to use it to get in and measure and – I thought – clean and paint, before the big move.

One weekend in mid-August, we had a free weekend, so we decided to go over and make use of the key. This was when we discoverd the fleas, and really took a hard look at the walls and the rest of the house. We ended up with a whole list of things that needed to be repaired or replaced, including a window, multiple screens, cracked light fixtures, etc. We had the time, so we measured and started cleaning – washed the walls, cleaned all the windows, and the filthy window sills and screens, cleaned out the cabinets. BF is a bit of a perfectionist, and his father is a contractor, so he was adamant that, if we were going to paint, we were going to do it the right way, so we unscrewed all the faceplates, and took down curtain rods and such. We left on Sunday, after having put in a good 12-14 hours of work on the place over the weekend, with it in paint- ready condition. Thats when the trouble started.

The landlord apparently stopped by, and saw all the prep work we had done, and all of the cleaning supplies strewn about the counters, and freaked out. Called up BF and screamed at him that we “trashed” his house, and that he didn’t want to rent to us anymore. That we didn’t have permission at all to be in there, and that what we had done was completly unacceptable. We felt terrible – we honestly didn’t think we had done anything bad to the place, and we knew our intentions were just to make it clean and newly painted – but we emailed and apologized. The next day, the landlord responded that they were still willing to rent it to us, but that they were uncomfortable with the 1 year lease, and would like to change it to a 6-month lease, with the option to renew it at the end of 6 months, provided everything went well. We agreed, and they said they would send the new lease off to us.

A week later we got the new lease. Whereas the first lease had been 2 pages, the new lease was 13 pages. It laid out, in extreme detail, all the things we were not to do, and basically gave the landlords the right to evict us for very, very minor infractions. It also stated that after the 6-months was up, there would be no renewal of a lease, it would be month-to-month, and we would be obligated to pay $1350 a month for that privilege. And, they would let us in a week early to paint, but they wanted to charge us a 1-month prorated rent for that, of $325.It included lovely clauses such as, 3 days late on the rent would cost us an extra $500, and any damage to the tigerlilys in the front yard would be grounds for eviction.

BF and I were livid – this new lease was an insult, and seemed like a blatant attempt to get us to pay way more than the place was worth. We decided that we would not sign the new lease, and we informed the landlord of this, and requested our security deposit back, as well as the ability to retrieve the $100 worth of cleaning supplies we had left in the house. We also offered to un-do all the prep work we had done. They didn’t take us up on that last offer, but did send us back our $1000, and emailed us at 4pm on a Monday to let us know that we had until 730pm that night to retrieve our stuff, which was outside the house.

In the end, we feel like we dodged a bullet. The house was really really cute, but it had a lot of issues, and was definitely going to require us to put a lot of sweat equity into it to make it liveable. The landlord, who seemed nice at first, definitely had a bit of an anger problem, and flat out stated to us that the last tenants never called him for anything, and that was the way he liked it. Clearly, this was not going to be a good situation in terms of repairs or maintenance. We realize that we made mistakes, too. BF was a little over-zealous with calling and emailing with questions that we had about the place, and we overstepped our bounds by not specifically asking if cleaning before we moved in was ok. It was a good lesson learned, and also really confirmed for us that we do want to own our own home, and that we would be willing to put the work into it – but that if you are renting, you should be paying for the privilege of NOT having to do all that work.

Shortly after the security deposit was returned, we were happened upon a condo right down the road from where the house was. Not on a lake, but surrounded by them, which was good for our kayaking plans. Not a house, but a condo – and it was bigger than the house, with more storage space. It was also clean, and didn’t need paint, or have broken windows. The owner showed us his energy bills for the last year, and the worst was in february – $140/month, whereas the house regularly had $300+ bills for the winter months. And the condo was cheaper – $1200 a month. We are still unpacking and organizing, but, so far, everything has been great.

Oh, and the house on the lake? They re-posted it on Craigslist again yesterday, and the price is down to $1250/month.