The last three weeks have really been a roller coaster, and not in a good way. Besides the stress of moving and finding a new job, we had to add the stress of the renters that were in our house for the last eighteen months. We really did not think that this would be a stress at all. We had a property manager for our house for the last eighteen months. Before we hired him, we had a meeting with him and went over our expectations of the people we wanted to be living in our home. He assured us that they did background checks on potential tenants, and that they did do random walk throughs of the homes to make sure that things were being taken care of properly. This made us feel like our home would be taken care of while we were away.
I met with the property manager on a Monday to change the locks on the house and do a walk through. At that same time, we had also scheduled Daisy Maids to come in and do a light cleaning of the house. I am major OCD on cleaning, but I kind of have an issue with cleaning up other people's filth. I can only handle cleaning up my own. The property manager was late to our appointment, and Daisy Maids was waiting in the drive way. The property manager called me and gave me the code to get into the lock box where a key to the house was at. I got the key and let Daisy Maids in to start cleaning the house. As soon I opened the door I was sick to my stomach. There were holes in my once perfect walls. The baseboards had a layer of dust on him like you wouldn't believe. The carpet was just nasty. I've lived in quite a few places since I moved away from home, and I always thought it was common sense to clean a place before you moved out. Obviously whoever rented our house while we were away, did not have the same thinking I did. It was obvious that nothing had been wiped down, vacuumed, or cleaned before they left. Thank heavens I had already had the appointment set up for Daisy Maids. Then I went upstairs where I saw the bathrooms that they were just starting to clean. I think it's pretty safe to say that the toilets had never been cleaned in the last 18 months. Probably the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.
Daisy Maids did their cleaning for about two hours. When the property manager showed up we began changing the locks. I then saw that the outdoor lights on the house would not shut off using the light switches. The property manager took the light cover off and found that the renters had rewired the lights so that they could not be turned on or off. What the point of that is, I have no idea. As the property manager and I walked through out the house, I could not believe all of the holes in the walls. These weren't just small nail holes. These were huge holes and 5-6 right together in a row. When we bought the house three years ago, we had never hung anything on the walls. We had brand new carpet installed and the entire house painted right after we bought it. The property manager kept telling me that everything to him seemed like "normal wear and tear". He tried to convince me that the reason why I thought that things were so bad was because I had an emotional connection to the house. I tried to see his side of it, but I was having a hard time.
Later on that same day Josh and I came back over to the house. The house had been cleaned and still had a smell to it. So we scheduled Stanley Steamer to come in the next day and clean all of the carpets. On this same day we also found that there were several scratches in our stainless steel fridge. These scratches don't come out. We had also bought the appliances brand new when we bought the house. As I washed down the walls, I kept noticing that there was a lot of dog hair everywhere. One of the stipulations with having a pet in our home, is that the monthly rent would be increased to cover any damage the pet might do. At no time did the renters let the property manager know that they had a pet.
Stanley Steamer came the next day and steamed the carpets. We thought that everything should be good to go at this point. Boy were we wrong!! We moved all of our things into the house that following Saturday. By Saturday night, I was noticing that as I would walk through the living room, I would smell an animal pee smell. I kept trying to tell myself I was just imagining it. Then I kept smelling it more and more often over the next couple of days. It got so bad, that I wouldn't even go down into the living room. It was so strong! Because we had already had the carpets shampooed, we figured the only way to get rid of the smell was to replace the carpets. At this point I had been contacting the property manager about what we were experiencing. He talked to the renters, and the finally admitted to having a pet "occasionally". I'm not quite sure what that even means. We went and picked out carpet on that Wednesday. We had to move all of the furniture out of the rooms to have every room empty for the new carpet to be laid. This felt like moving all over again, minus the packing up boxes. We moved as much as we could into the bathrooms, kitchen, and then what was left into the garage and basement. On Thursday we began pulling the carpet up in the living room and the entry room. Boy were we shocked! There was pee stains everywhere on the back side of the carpet. It was shocking! I do have plenty of pictures of this as evidence! The smell once we pulled the carpet up was even worse! We did some research online and found that because it was so bad, we need to spray bleach on the entire base floor to kill the enzymes. Then after that was dry, we had to roll on a coat of Kilz that would kill the order for good. We found after pulling out all of the carpet in our entire house, that there was pee stains everywhere. We still couldn't believe how someone could live like this. They had to have known that their animal was not potty trained and was peeing all over the house. All I can figure is that this wasn't there house so they didn't care. Hopefully they learn to care when they get the $4000.00 bill for all of the damage they did to our home. We really did not expect any of this to happen.
It's been almost three weeks now since this nightmare began. We now have a house full of brand new carpet that doesn't smell like pee. Thank heavens! One of the questions our property manager asked us is that if we go to court, can we testify that we have never had an animal in our house. For those of you that really know me, you know that I'm not much of an animal person. The closest thing we have had to a pet, is a Beta fish, and last I checked, they don't pee everywhere. So through this experience we have a learned a couple of things. First thing is never rent your home out to someone, unless there's no chance of ever living there again. Second thing is that we must be some pretty good renters! We have always cleaned the apartment/house were were leaving, the best we could before we left.
This was the first weekend that we could truly enjoy Josh having weekends off. It has been so nice, and feels like a new life for both of us. I'm used to being alone on the weekends and having to find things to do myself. Yesterday we went to the movies, and then just relaxed. If it hadn't been such crappy weather, I'm sure we would of been doing more yard work, but hopefully that can happen next weekend!
