Are you saying that a high percentage of landlords are in the business only in order to get a tax shelter for other income?
No. Not at all.
But a person owning a duplex or a house or two to rent is much, much different than a corporation owning a large complex. The corporation can do the computation of expenses versus income. The little guy is bound by whatever the market will permit for rent. Yes, you can charge a higher rent, but then some people get a sense of entitlement and destroy the place. Eviction is not easy, and until you get the marshal by your side to throw the bums out, it’s a process I would not wish on anyone.
Anyone have a Xanax?
~VOW
I hate my house. It’s been nothing but a money pit since we bought it in 1987, when it was just 11 years old. The previous owners were drunks who never maintained the place but put in a lot of ugly, complicated landscaping. At the time our son was 3 years old and we had to dig out about a dozen rose bushes with inch-long thorns, conveniently placed where a toddler could fall face first into them.
We’ve gone through 2 roofs, 2 water heaters, two furnaces, and I know we’re overdue for most of our appliances to poop out, just when we can afford it least. Our original furnace was so old that when we had to replace it, they took pictures of it because they’d never seen a heater that old.
We’ve left this house to our son when we die, and I told him I have no sentimental value attached to it and he can burn it to the ground and collect the insurance, for all I care.
Ugh, first week in our new house and I turn on the kitchen lights…flicker…fizzle…poof! Half of the pot lights in the kitchen and dining room no longer work, and the breaker is fine, which means a wiring connection somewhere in the walls or ceiling died. Time to sledgehammer some holes…
I think I’d get one ofthose non-contact voltage testers and clamber around in the attic and see more or less where your problem lies, before starting to put holes in the walls.
And maybe start witha plug-in circuit tester- they can tell you a lot about what’s going on without even having to do anything but plug it in.
A few weeks ago, I was out on an evening bike ride when I get a call from the wife. She’s freaking out because the microwave oven is smoking. She wasn’t using it, she was in the living room and smelled the smoke. She couldn’t reach the cord to unplug it, so I told her to go the the electrical panel in the garage, turn off all the power to the house, and go outside and if needed, call the fire department. I rushed to get home, which was an adventure in itself which involved two car rides and an accident which totaled a friend’s truck. But I digress. Anyway, I get home (fire department was not called) and unplug the microwave, and the turn the power back on while turning off the breaker for the microwave. Notice that the refrigerator, right next to the microwave, is also not working, so I turn off that breaker too.
Tore into the outlet wiring the next day and see nothing wrong with the wiring, but notice that these two circuits share a nuetral, and sure enough the little outlet tester indicated an open nuetral. Ah ha, so I remove the main breaker panel cover, and see two burned wires on the nuetral bus. Problem discovered. The fire was in the panel. Luckily, not much damage was done, and I was able to fix the problem. Apparently the setscrew loosened up, creating a hotspot. I checked all the other setscrews and found two more setscrews that while not exactly loose, still needed about a quarter to half turn to snug up.
I have been meaning to replace this panel as it is a bit undersized and thus has two more tandem breakers than it should have. So the electrician is scheduled, and this 24 space panel builders grade panel will be replaced with a 40 space Square D QO panel, and the service upgraded from 125 amps to 200 amps.
So I’m grateful that my house didn’t burn down, grateful that no one was hurt, and happy that I will upgrade the panel. But beyond the cost of the electrical work, the microwave and the refrigerator are toast. We have a spare microwave, but still looking at about a $5K bill here.
Just hoping the wife doesn’t realize that the upgraded service will support a hot tub. Don’t really want to get into that expense and hassle.
Before this happened, I was looking at replacing my 15 year old gas grill with a nice $700 Weber. But 3 hours of cleaning the old grill and $40 worth of parts from Amazon and the old grill is back in fine form. So there’s that.
I’ll discuss it with Beckdawrek, but it sounds like you are indeed a member of our “Murphy’s Law” club.
~VOW
Raising this zombie to mention sometimes home ownership DOES smile on you. I bit the bullet and spent $6300 on a new 3 ton ac system and combined with the insulation, things are way better now on that front. Also, my backed up drain line for the laundry seems to have cleared up on it’s own. And from out of nowhere, FPL has decided to move all the power lines in my neighborhood underground. This is great because not only will I get the storm resilience, but I won’t have to worry about trimming my Mulberry tree again and removing the rubber tree will become much less hazardous since the existing lines go right through both of them.
So, nice to get some good rolls on the dice on occasion.
I had one of those “Wish I was still renting so I could just call the landlord to fix this!” moments a couple weeks ago when my shower drain went glup-glup and I was soon ankle deep in graywater. Figured it was just a hair clog, so I poured in some Drano, then half an hour later, flushed it with hot water. All seemed OK. Later that day, doing laundry and the washer hits a drain cycle. Shower goes GLOOP! and mucky water rises. Eww! Eeew! EEEWW! Figuring I just managed to move a hair glob down the pipe a bit, I get my snake. 25 feet of snaking later, no joy.
Hmph! I had to go do an errand, so did that, and when I came home, I noticed water squirting out from behind the bushes. It’s coming from a cleanout plug. Hmmm… Unscrew it, and water pours out. I go inside and the shower is now empty. I try snaking at that cleanout, and again, no joy. Call the plumber and five minutes and 90 bucks later, they get the happy <skloosh!> sound as the blockage is cleared and the house drains out.
While chatting with the guy, I find my neighbor must be putting a lot of grease and who knows what that they shouldn’t down the drain as he said he’s at my neighbor’s house about once a year. This was my first plumbing crisis in two and a half years, so I must be doing something right.
Aside from that, I’ve had a lotta laffs with wiring:
Ceiling fan wobbling away on a light wiring box that wasn’t attached to ANYTHING other than spiderwebs.
Light fixtures in hallway installed with no wiring boxes whatsoever. Just another Drunk Uncle job with romex and wire nuts.
Bad “back stab” connection at an outlet burned and dropped two bedrooms into darkness.
Is there such a thing as a good back-stab connection? As far as I have seen, they fall into two categories: ones that have failed, and ones that haven’t failed YET.
You guys need to cheer yourselves up with Dave Barry’sHomes and Other Black Holes! 
The real fun is that with all that I’ve been doing, I haven’t gotten any storm shutters yet. And now Dorian will be making a near miss on my town, at best. A solid hit at worst. So who knows how much I’ll be spending and fixing starting next week.
I’m sorry I didn’t read this earlier, because I really want to know how it’s possible for a toilet to whistle.
A 1940s house with interior doorways too narrow to fit modern appliances or furniture? We literally could not get a new washer and dryer into the “laundry” room in the basement and had to resort to cutting a hole in the upstairs hallway floor, install a hinged trap door, and winch them down into the basement. For the master bedroom, a simple desk that fit easily through the house entry could not make it through the bedroom door.
I had to remove the door and hinges on my outdoor access to the laundry/electrical room in order to replace the old machines with the newer ones. And even then, I had to hammer down the exhaust port of the dryer I was removing.
I have a huge antique armoire that used to be my bedroom wardrobe in my apartment but is now a supply closet in my family room because it wouldn’t fit into any of my bedrooms. Just couldn’t make the turn into any of the rooms because of the narrow hallway. My smaller old TV armoire is a freestanding closet in my dining room for the same reason.
Similar…
(I might have mentioned this up-thread)
My basement is finished on one side, with a 27.5" door separating the “utility side” from the nice side. That dimension is not wide enough to get a modern washer or dryer through.
I have replaced both machines twice over the past 20 years, and each time I had to remove the door frame from the rough opening.
It’s not enough of a pain for me to widen the rough opening, and I’m getting pretty good at removing and reinstalling this frame.
I wonder why your mattress is so heavy. I have a queen size foam mattress (this one), and the ship weight was only 94lbs. It didn’t stink, even the first day, either. But I agree, they’re very comfortable.