Epilogue
A House is Never Finished
Anonymous
During our eleven months of renovations, Winnie and I (along with some contractor help):
- Gutted and rebuilt the kitchen
- Gutted and rebuilt two bathrooms
- Replaced nearly all electrical wiring
- Replaced a significant amount of plumbing
- Repainted the entire house (two levels)
- Repaired and refinished the hardwood flooring
- Removed and replaced all baseboard trim
- Finished off a gutted basement
- Installed a basement barrier waterproofing system
- Removed and replaced 2×4 framing
- Drywalled and hung drop ceilings
- Tiled the entire floor
- Completed all finish carpentry
It took all this to get the house back to being decently habitable.
By the time we were finished we already had tenants waiting. Winnie’s friend Mali had recommended a family as tenants, and this family actually moved in just before we finished the basement work. We would be landlords for the next twelve years, and went through five sets of tenants before we had enough. Our adventures as landlords are worth another long – and mostly unpleasant – story.
During those twelve years we continued to work on this house. A lot was repair work fixing things our tenants broke. This work included refinishing the oak flooring and changing the natural wood to a walnut color, on account a tenant allowed their dogs to piss all over the floors (after that we would not allow pets). We replaced the microwave twice. The dishwasher was replaced twice. We replaced the clothes washer and sewage macerator pump. Winnie repainted several bedrooms after a tenant took it upon themselves to paint the rooms green and purple – in violation of the lease. We fixed multiple large holes in the drywall after tenants installed ugly shelving in places where shelving had no place being – in violation of the lease.
Other work was upgrades and general improvements. This included painting the exterior wood trim, installing gutter guards, and replacing a leaking roof over the back enclosed porch. We also installed a whole room heat pump/air conditioner in the basement, mounted on top of a cabinet (over the drain sump), to improve the house cooling system.
Major Upgrade
Our most significant upgrade was to the heating and air conditioning system. Although the original oil-fired hot water heating was efficient heating, heating oil is expensive and tenants were reporting using as much as 1000 gallons of oil in a heating season. The house also had a central air conditioner installed sometime around the 1980s that was about worn out.
In 2018 we replaced the old air conditioning unit with a heat pump for air conditioning, and to augment the oil-fired hot water system. We had the unit cross-connected to the oil burner so the heat pump was primary heating, using the oil burner only as backup. The tenants reported that with the new system, their air conditioning electrical bill dropped by one-third and over the first winter they used less than 200 gallons of heating oil, total. Overall, it was a successful upgrade although not without a few hiccups.
Our New Home
In October 2021 the latest set of tenants moved out, owing us several month’s back rent and leaving the house wrecked. The damage was so extensive our insurance adjuster told us we should have filed a police report for vandalism. We didn’t file a report, but Winnie and I also decided we were done being landlords. We made repairs, got the house back to livable condition, and decided we would make this our next home.
In December 2021, after many adventures in moving Winnie and I became the latest residents of this venerable old house. The house we had lived in since February 2007 was sold in mid-January 2022, and Winnie and I became single-property owners again for the first time in twelve years. I don’t know how long we’ll live here, but I’m sure there’s more home improvement projects in our future.
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Updated: March 29, 2022 for editing and additional photos.
Updated: March 10, 2024 to correct some numbers.