Landlord Fiona: "Great! That's what we want too. We understand that you need that money for your next place. So as long as it's in the same condition as when we handed it over (allowing for normal wear and tear) there should be no problem"
Tenant: "Ha, ha, don't worry! I think it's in even better condition than before!"*
 |
| Because there's artwork on the walls in all the rooms... |
 |
| We've added 4 water features in the kitchen... |
 |
| We've enhanced the bathroom.... |
 |
| Cleaned the place from top to bottom... |
 |
| And added money-saving features... |
Landlord Fiona: ".... Really??? really??"
I may be a little quiet for a while. Not least because my head is about to explode from the number of square metres I've had to scrub over the past month, but also because I may be a little busy, you know, doing a few small repairs, cleaning, replacing, painting, moving, etc. And just to add a little drama, wouldn't you know Orla has a stomach bug and is off school. To give her her due, she did scrub the fireplace surround excellently, though I'd also like to take this moment to thank Apple for inventing the mighty iPad which managed to entertain her enough today to let me get one half of the kitchen cleaned.
Now I know why people in the UK buy instead of rent. The citizens are animals**. Either they let you move into their filthy wrecked houses and pay a premium for that pleasure, or they filthy up and wreck your house, leaving you to pay for the pleasure... ANIMALS!!!!!!!
I'm done with this 'being a landlord/tenant' business.
* His ACTUAL words!!!!
**Obviously, not all. Especially not the UK citizens that read my blog. I'm pretty sure you'd leave it sparkling like a wine glass from a Finish dishwasher tablet advert.
Oh how awful! It would seem that moving back to Blighty is tougher that previously thought. I hope things improve soon and you love being home again. I am having similar issues in my rented house now :( No hot water unless the heating is on, huge chunks of ivy falling off the wall so that my daughter can't play outside, an unswept chimney so I can't light a fire and appliances that don't work properly! Ahhhh!
ReplyDeleteGood luck
It's such great fun, isn't it? I hope things get fixed quickly for you. I rather strangely feel better about the 8 hours I have spent so far cleaning the kitchen as I know at least that I am scrubbing it to death, whereas even if we got a cleaning service in I probably wouldn't trust that it was thorough. You know where you are when you do it yourself. Anyway, good luck!
DeleteDid the guy really manage to say that with a straight face?!!! I presume he won't be getting his full deposit back?!!!
ReplyDeleteYes, and no, he didn't get his full deposit back but rather stupidly on our part he got quite a lot of it back. I've spent (as mentioned above, 8 hours on the kitchen so far and I still have the cooker and extractor fan and ovens to do, plus the utility room and the bathroom which are the main areas of filth. It is actually dirtier than the place we are in now which I was surprised to discover. And every time I find more of woman's hair tangled round my wet hands it makes me want to boak. There was even hair in the freezer. We could have kept the full deposit but we just needed to get him out ASAP so we could get out of this place.
DeleteYou should have kept enough to pay for a professional cleaning company to come in and do it all for you!
DeleteYes, I know and I thought I had, but I completely underestimated how much cleaning would be required. I thought I'd need 10 hours for the whole place, and most of that would be focused on the kitchen and bathroom. So far though I have spent the best part of 12 hours on the kitchen alone. The bathroom is probably quicker, hopefully a lot quicker, but I can see I need to scrub all the woodwork, clean a lot of walls downstairs, dust and clean the radiators, wash the windows inside and out, dust and clean the wooden blinds, re-blacken the coals in the fireplace (yes, that's not an immediate job!) and wash down the front door inside and out. Oh and clean all the floors. 10 hours, ha! I hate myself for my own stupidity. We rushed too quickly. Lesson learned.
DeleteNO DEPOSIT BACK! Jesus man, I'm surprised you didn't have a coronary!
ReplyDeleteI am past caring really. My anger has dissipated. PLUS, I had already prepared myself that it could be a total wreck and so it was better than I imagined. Anyway, we're selling it, so we just need to get it sorted out and move on with our lives. Anyway, they have only moved round the corner so I could always get some satisfaction by walking past their house and shouting "you people are filthy!". or alternatively, not single myself out as the new local looney. I don't know, I'll mull that one over. ;-)
DeleteThat is so uncool. I hope you take yourself for a good massage or spa day or something, whenever you're done with all of this cleaning/moving madness!
ReplyDeleteI am planning on going somewhere clean...
DeleteTake a look at what my last tenants left me: http://bigappletobigbear.blogspot.com/2010/08/vacation-not.html
ReplyDeleteThere are more pix, but the full potty left in the molded out, previously new, wood cabinet really epitomized it all.
My sympathies.
Yup, yours was worse than ours, but ours is not far off. I think I just don't understand other people's ways of living. They seem to have used the racks inside the pull out larder to put partially cooked food on so that it has baked on to the racks. They must not have been fond of hand washing as all the light switches/sockets etc are caked in food and dirt as is all the surrounding paintwork. Even the high (approx 5'10" off the ground) tv sockets were caked in filth even though they never had a tv! I can't work out what else you would use that socket for!!! I suspect that they didn't clean the entire time they were in the house. I'm hardly a clean freak, but it's made me gag the state it's in.
Delete