A Pilgrim’s Digression

The cable guy is coming today to turn on our cable at our new house, but we aren’t actually moving until next Tuesday. Thus, since he will also turn off our cable at our old house, I will be out of touch with my blog after about three o’clock today. We aren’t moving into the new house until Tuesday, so I am expecting a long, painful Internet detox over the next few days.

Like Robinson Crusoe, it’s primitive as can be…

Everything is coming together very quickly now. In addition to having the cable and other utilities turned on, we are also having some furniture delivered today. Back in February (maybe even as long ago as January), we bought a new kitchen table with chairs, an oak computer armoire for my office, and a couple matching oak bookshelves. We kept postponing delivery because we knew we would be buying a home within the next month or two.

In the end, it has taken longer to buy a home than we imagined at the time, but I’m glad we held off on the furniture delivery. Our current house is in full-blown “move” mode, meaning the place is rapidly beginning to look like a warehouse. Having more furniture in this place would have cluttered things up even more.

In other news, we are starting to worry that our current landlord is looking for an excuse to keep some or all of our security deposit.

Yesterday, when Lynn came home from work, the landlord and his wife were at our house, standing in our yard and examining the outside of our windows. They were at the house on Tuesday as well, taking measurements for what we thought were replacement windows.

Yesterday, when Lynn got out of the car and approached our landlord, he immediately chastised Lynn because we had not put our storm windows down all winter. He said he told us when we moved in that we had to put our storm windows down every winter. Then he pointed out the way paint is peeling off the outer window frame.

Lynn said, “Aren’t you replacing the windows anyway?”

“Only the storm windows,” he said.

Now, these windows are so old, they stick terribly and are hard to open in the first place. When you do get them open, you have to prop them up with a dow rod or else they fall closed.

Anyway, the landlord also commented on nails in the upper window frame, where a previous tenant had apparently nailed christmas lights. We denied that we had put the nails there, but he didn’t seem convinced.

Lynn has no idea what the landlord was at the house for, yesterday. Maybe he just wanted to nose around for problems he could charge us for. As he left, Lynn asked him straight up, “We are going to get our full security deposit back, right?”

He laughed and said, “Well, I’ll have to think about that.”

The whole event reminds me of my run-in with the landlord last summer, when he told me we would not be able to use our air conditioners this summer because the water drainage from these window units were staining the brick under the windows. From what Lynn told me, he talked to her in the same chastising way that he talked to me.

Our landlord is a major reason why we decided to buy a home instead of continuing to rent. He is an elderly man, crippled and sick, so we have always felt sorry for him, but I notice no matter how crippled he always manages to drive himself over on a regular basis to criticize the way we’re living in his house.

Now for the embarrassing part…embarrassing for us, because perhaps we should not have spent any money fixing up this old man’s property. But the fact that we have spent money fixing up this townhouse is a prime reason why we are now royally pissed at the prospect that he might keep our security deposit.

When we signed the lease on this place three years ago, we were only paying $475.00 in rent, while people living in the other duplexes owned by this landlord were all paying at least $600.00. We were paying less because the windows had not been replaced, unlike the other houses, and the carpet and linoleum had not been replaced; the carpet dated from at least the early eighties and was thoroughly dry-rotted.

We told the landlord that if he would agree not to raise our rent during the time we lived there, we would replace the carpet, replace linoleum, paint the walls, and upgrade the toilet and fixtures in the up-stairs bathroom.

Within the first year we lived here, we did what we said we would do. Lynn saved the Lowe’s receipts, and we spent about $2000.00 total on this townhouse. We were not reimbursed, but our rent was low and we now had a nice place to live in. We could not have lived in this house with a small child without at least replacing the dry-rotted carpet. When the Lowe’s installer ripped up the old carpet, the padding underneath had completely turned to dust and he had to bring in a shop-vac to get it all up.

So we’ve put a sizable chunk of money in this property that doesn’t belong to us. Maybe it sounds foolish not to at least ask for reimbursement, but we thought if we could live here and pay such a low rent, the money spent was worth it.

Well, the landlord raised our rent anyway by twenty-five dollars, excusing his action by claiming that property taxes had gone through the roof. Actually, he raised the rent on the same day last summer when he told me we would not be able to use our air conditioners!

The landlord has given us other indicators he isn’t happy with our tenancy. When we painted inside the house, we painted the window trim and baseboards a kind of light, grassy green, and bought curtains to match. Upon seeing our paint job, the landlord commented that he didn’t like the green. Lynn pointed out that she had asked him about colors and he said it didn’t matter to him what colors we painted it.

He said if he’d known we were going to paint the baseboards and windows green, he never would have approved that color.

Arrrgh, do you know how frustrating this is to deal with? I am so fucking glad that after this is over, I will never have to deal with a landlord, ever again.

So here we are. In order to get out of our lease early, we agreed to leave our washer and drier. Our new house has newer models. We also agreed to sell the landlord the two air conditioners for a hundred and fifty dollars. Our new house has central air.

Would the landlord agree to buy the air conditioners, but then keep a portion or all of our security deposit? It seems ridiculous, but I wouldn’t put anything past him, at this point. I feel like we are over a barrel because we are breaking our lease. The landlord already has someone lined up who has paid a security deposit on our house, but I’m not sure that matters, legally.

I feel like the landlord holds all the cards…not to mention our security deposit.