The joys of living in rental properties

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m sick of living in rental properties. Especially rental properties where things like the kitchen are screwed up.

Let’s consider my sink. It’s a nice, single bay(?) stainless steel sink, with a decent, and working, no name uni-faucet. That’s dyslexic. That is, if you pull the faucet lever to the left, you get cold water, and if you pull it to the right, you get hot water. Which is fine, as long as I remember - and then remember when using any other uni-faucet in the country that mine is screwed up, and I have to go backwards, or I’m going to burn my hands washing them.

Or my stove and oven combination unit. It’s a nice name, actually. I used to think Hotpoint was a decent brand. I’m not so sure, now. First off, the morons who designed it put the usual four burners on the stove, but instead of the usual two large/two small, there’s three small, and one large. And, of course, the large one is in front. Which is fine, if you don’t ever cook more than one dish meals.

Of course if I’m trying to make some split pea soup for tomorrow, and eat something warm tonight, I have to lean over the steam coming from the soon to be soup to stir the other pot. Since there isn’t enough room to use the other front burner at the same time. Besides, since the drip trays don’t quite fit right, the left front burner is canted at about 15 degrees, not what I’d care to use while cooking if I can avoid it. Anyone who’s ever cooked should know that the only large burner on a stove shouldn’t be in front…

And the oven, while it can keep a constant temperature, I think, can’t actually be bothered to pay attention to the thermostat. The landlord’s handyman came in to check the thermostat, and it’s reading right… but the oven is still going as much as 100 degrees over the set temperature - which makes baking a pain. To say the least. I’m tired of having to throw out the first several pans of cookies since they’re black and smokey, no matter how low I set the temperature on the oven.

I am a bachelor, and I do live up to many of the bachelor stereotypes: Given a choice I will make only one dish for dinner. Glop*, for example, is good. meat, pasta, and veggies all with only one pan to clean. But, from time to time, I actually want to eat a real meal. And I enjoy cooking, it’s just the clean up that’s no fun if it’s only me eating.

I’m just tired of having to deal with all these bloody kitchens built, designed, or installed by people who don’t use the kitchen for anything but a place to get something to drink.

Not to mention white walls. I want to paint my walls blue. I want them to be electric blue, with canary yellow trim, because it won’t be white. But my lease, like most rental leases I’ve encountered, forbids painting the walls any color but white. sigh

2

I’ve been living alone for five months in an apartment I don’t particularly like so I can empathize, even down to the crappy kitchen. My biggest issue is with the stove that has a heating coil falling off the roof and the stove that doesn’t work because the eyes aren’t the right size and I’m too much of a coward to really push to have them replaced.

I miss the halcyon days of mommy and daddy doing everything for me.

3

The joy of living in a rental property is that you can pack up and leave anytime you want.

4

Once your lease is up. Unless you want to pay (usually IME) an extra month or two of rent for the privelege of leaving.

Both of the apartments I’ve lived in so far have had things wrong with the stove. One of the front burners is always busted. But then, both of them were built in the '70s and had their original kitchen equipment, so I guess I should just be happy the damn thirty-year-old Harvest Gold range works in the first place.

My last place had cross-eyed taps in the bathroom. Instead of both turning clockwise to turn on and counterclockwise to turn off, they both turned toward the faucet to turn on and away from the faucet to turn off. They turned in different directions. I’ve never heard of such a thing before. I could see this working if they had handles like this - a lever type deal - but no, they were your normal plastic knobs like this. Yet the ones in the kitchen were normal… So the entire time I lived there, I had to try twice to turn the water on and off to wash my hands.

5

What are stove eyes? :confused:

6

It’s a common synonym for heating coil or burner in Tennessee and, I assume, the South in general.

7

Gotcha. Thanks. Never heard it while I was in the South, but I never had a bad stove (mechanically/electrically, I mean.) while I was down there.

8

No problem. I’m in Oregon now and my boss looks at me weird every time I call it that so this isn’t the first time someone’s not known what I meant.

Where in the South were you? For how long?

9

If I only had one large burner on the stove, I would want it in front, as I use the large burner all the time for everything, and almost never need more than one. Why would I want to have to reach?

10

Seems to me you have two options:

1/ Move out, buy own place, pay mortgage
2/ Stay put

Can’t afford {1}? See {2} above: either way, quit moaning or I’ll post a thread pitting lousy tenants and the travails of being a landlord.

11

It sounds like you got a good house to me.

Asbestos roof? check
Blocked pipes? check
No smoke alarms? check
Unopenable bars on windows? check
No installed blinds that work? check
Door that leads to nowhere? check
Dodgy stove? check
No interior door that locks? check
6 layers of peeling paint on every wall? check

12

Otakuloki, if you do leave, make sure you first move the stove/oven out from the wall and clean well back there.

Otherwise, you might have an inventive landlord like one of my classics in the past, who’ll nail you for a good-sized chunk of the security deposit for not meeting lease obligations for cleaning the apartment. :rolleyes:

13

You have the exact same stove that’s in our apartment. It drives me nuts, especially when I’m trying to make fajitas or something similar. I need more than one large burner.

And our oven overcooks stuff easily. I tried to make a roast beef two weeks ago, and cook it VERY rare, but although I cooked it for even less than I was supposed to, it came out slightly pink instead of very pink like we wanted it. It drives me nuts.

We are looking for a house, though, and hope to be out in another two months or so. My only stipulation is a nice kitchen - big enough to cook in with lots and lots of counter space.

Ava

14

Must be a strange geographical oven thingy. Almost every stove top here has either 3 small, 1 large element, with the large at the front. Or 2 large, 2 small, still with a large at the front.

But then we have seperate hot and cold taps (though mixers are more common for new places) and seperate rooms for the loo and bathroom.

Oh how the others live. :smiley:

15

Every stovetop that I’ve ever had was set up like yours - with the large burner in front - except the one in my childhood home that had two large burners.

16

There’s always gotta be one, doesn’t there.

17

Hayulp, it’s a hanging asterisk… Where’s the footnote? My brain can’t handle hanging asterisks. I feel so incomplete!

And honestly, Middlecase, just because you’re a landlord doesn’t mean you have to get offended on behalf of all landlords who might not do as good a job as you. There are lousy apartments. There are lousy renters. There are great ones of each. The great ones who end up getting paired with the lousy ones certainly have a right to bitch and moan about it. Which means I, as a previous renter, would more than gladly read your pit thread about the travails of being a landlord, and not tell you that you have the option of either a) kicking them out, or b) shutting up about it.

18

Just FYI, this is very easy to correct. First, remember to turn off the water at the valve underneath the sink. You pop off the little plastic thing at the top of the knob that covers the screw. Unscrew the screw. Now you can remove the entire knob. Underneath is another plastic thingy held in place by a large nut. Unscrew the nut. Now you can use pliers to pull off the plastic thingy. Turn it 180 degrees from whatever position it was in. Put the plastic thingy back on, put the nut back on, put the knob back on, screw in the screw, and put the plastic covering back on. Turn on water at the valve underneath the sink. The knob will know turn in the other direction.

This whole process takes maybe 3 minutes to do.

If you don’t turn off the water at the valve, when you remove the nut underneath the faucet knob, water will start coming out of it. It doesn’t matter if you had turned the water off at the knob; you have to turn it off at the valve. I learned this experience in my plumbing adventures. :wink:

19

You have three choices:
[ol]
[li]Evict the bums.[/li][li]Sell the property.[/li][li]Shut the fuck up.[/li][/ol]

20

My apartment:

It was a garage that is now made into 4 apartments. I have one of these apartments.

My bathroom faucet is related to the OP’s faucet and you have to step up 1 foot to get in this bathroom and half the floor tiles are missing.

There is a hole in at least one wall of every room, some rooms have several.

There are 4 window panes completely missing and now adorn cardboard and duct tape

The floor was rotting in the kitchen so they put down an entirely new floor consisting of 3/4 inch plywood and some cheap buy 1 box get 4 free self stick tile that is already peeling off the plywood. On a side note: this actually was not a bad thing for me as I am now 3/4 inches taller in the kitchen and can now reach some objects on the higher shelves. This however was bad for my son as he has hit his head several times on the hanging light fixture.(remember this was a garage so the ceilings are already lower than normal) Light fixture has 4 sockets for light bulbs but only one works.

The furnace is very old. I think the service sticker says something about 1973 and it has duct tape on it holding the front cover on.

I did have a new smoke/heat alarm but it is now disabled as they decided to hang it in the laundry/furnace room that has no vent to the outside and the BLEEEEP BLEEEEP BLEEEP that was created every time I ran my dryer was driving me insane.

The frig/freezer has no usable side shelves as the bars fell off that would hold the condiments in the shelf. There was one that was there that was held on by duct tape but it fell off and is now sitting on the top of the frig.

My screen door is hanging on by I think 1 screw

I have wooden skids in front of my door due to the fact that if it rains to much the rain collects and forms a nice 5 foot wide by 5 inch deep lake right outside the door and with out said skids I can not leave the apartment without my hip boots. Yes, there have been times I felt I was living on a house boat. It did get bad enough one time that the skids were almost floating. This happens because there are no gutters on the front of this garage. There were some but they fell down and were removed by slum lord and never replaced.
The stove works fine but its MY stove.