Moving Day

We watch a lot of HGTV around here. I like Love it or List it, The Property Brothers, and Income Property. One thing I always find amusing is that on these shows, when they are remodeling the homes of the people, they always find a problem that screws things up. "I am so sorry to tell you this but we've found a body stuffed inside the walls of your house. This will probably set our schedule back a bit." Of course in the next scene you see the distraught home owners standing amid the demolition of their home while the show's host tells them, "Not to worry though, it'll be done on time. Now go off somewhere and don't come back until the unveiling of our handiwork." By the next segment in the show the totally screwed up house has been slapped back together in less than half a day, and it looks beautiful. I have never believed that they actually do the remodels in the time they say they do. It's called editing.

            On Tuesday, April 1st, I was standing in our rental apartment with discarded track lighting strewn about the living room floor, paint cans everywhere, the kitchen in a disheveled mess, and the place a general trash dump. The phone rang, it was my new tenant. The new tenant who said she planned on moving in on April 6th. "Hi Alan. I'd like to come by this evening to pick up my keys. The movers will be here early tomorrow, and I'll have to be able to let them into the apartment over there by eleven in the morning."  I looked around the place and my heart sank. I swallowed hard, "Sure, come on by and get the keys. The place will be ready for you first thing tomorrow."

In the span of one hour I managed to paint the ceiling where the ripped out track lighting had been, haul all of the garbage out of the house, put my tools away, and push all the appliances back to where they belonged. Luckily she came after sunset. With the proper lighting I was able to make it look like I was almost done with getting the apartment ready for human habitation. By eleven the next morning I had washed the windows, scrubbed the bathroom, cleaned the oven, scrubbed the kitchen, removed all the rat shit and dead palmetto bug carcasses, and mopped the floors from front to back. I know it doesn't sound like a lot of work, unless you know me. I'm sitting here now with a sharp pain in my back from swinging that mop back and forth, but I'm happy. I have a high quality tenant. She drives a nice new car, has a good job, and best of all she hired professional movers to move her nice furniture into my building. For the first time in many years I have a tenant who didn't move in the middle of the night with the help of a bunch of drunken friends.