Saturday, January 13, 2007

As soon as the holidays are over, the work schedule takes over. Cold weather is a good opportunity to get things done inside.

When the weather is warm, I want to be outside as much as possible, working in the garden, ruining my nails, getting a red burn on my nose and sweating. Such fun!

Living in an old house means continuous repairs and upgrades. My in laws, who died before I met their son, were of strong puritan stock. They didn't spend any money if they didn't have to. The consequences of that approach is the house, that I inherited, is in sad shape. It needs everything. The in laws patched instead of replaced. They painted over instead of repaired. They ran extension chords instead of rewiring. I've spent a decade on house repairs: attached sewer lines and collapsed the existing septic systems, upgraded wiring and plumbing, removed old wallpaper and dirt and repainted. The unsafe kitchen stairs were replaced . The walks from side door and front door were widened and paved with stone. Old bushes were cut down. The garden enlarged. Slowly, a new house emerges from the old one. It is worth it, as the basic house is well built. This is the Park Circle house.

In the next town, the grandparents house is completed. I love the way it was restored. All the utilities are upgraded but the original architectural interest remains untouched. The man who rents this house also loves it. He grew up in a historic house and is sensitive to the history of the house He rents. He inherited a sum of money when his grandmother died and it may become a down payment if He decided to buy this house. I agreed that he could have first refusal when the house goes on the market again, in the spring.

The current project is annual maintenance on three oil burners. There is one in the Park Circle house and one in each of my rentals. Arranging for 2 tenants to be home on the same day and getting the oil burner maintenance man from one place to the next on schedule should be easy. ..except that T. has to leave. She left her son home to open the door for the maintenance project. S. called. Where is the truck? He's a little late because my humidifier attached to my oil burner, isn't working. This complication takes a little longer than scheduled. At S.s house, the nice oil burner man helps my tenant unclog the kitchen faucet. He doesn't charge me for that. Work that should be done by noon, takes all day. Maintenance man is back at my house. He's lost a wrench. He wore a hole in his tool bag and the wrench fell out. He back tracks to find it. We never found it.

T's rent check bounces. She is embarrassed. T. works with the elderly. It seems that one of her senile clients wrote a check on an account that was closed. T. deposited in her own account and wrote her rent check. I deposited the rent check into my account. It was no one's fault. I thought T's check was good. T. thought her client's check was good and client thought so, too. The daughter of the client knew the checking account was closed, but did not destroy the old checks. T. got stuck with back charges for this error. I had to make another bank run to cover my own checking account. Such is life with tenants.

Time for me to write checks of my own. My accountant anticipated that I would have sold the grandparents house by now. So did I. He had me send in extra money to the IRS to cover the anticipated capital gains. Doing this four times a year without the house selling, is a financial strain. January is the last of these payments.

January is also property tax month. I don't like January. Property taxes on top of estimated income taxes are a lot of taxes. Don't argue with the tax man. I paid up.

At the Melba Street house, more planned maintenance projects. Last winter saw the heating system converted from all electric to gas with hot water baseboards. It is lovely. The electric bill went way down. All that is left is to patch where the thermostats were on the walls in each room and to paint where the old electric baseboards were. I hope to get this done before Chris moves in to take care of my beach house. This house has been closed up for a year. It smells of mildew. I need to air it out and to put bleach in the basement to kill the mildew spores. Extra furniture is moved to the Melba Street house to make order in the Park Circle house. In fact, I think I have enough extras to furnish Melba Street. Should I do this? It could be a vacation magnet for any of my family that wishes to vacation on the beach. Just an idea...hmmmmm...

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