Architecture Hoedown! Done!

So, I had to go out of town during the work on the bathroom. Beth took over as foreperson and I think the job came out lovely.




Beautiful brand new tile on the shower wall. The wall the tenants all but destroyed through negligence. Could've been avoided with, I dunno, a shower curtain maybe?



Holes in walls spackled (sp?) and painted. New toilet, caulked and ready to go.




Hey, instead of just glazing an old beat up sink, howzabout a new one? With a cabinet?

Of course, they found something to complain about. The most egregious thing that upset them? That the workers used their bucket for cleaning.
A bucket.
A two dollar bucket.

This from people who keep their office looking like THIS:



A little perspective, guys, yes?

Architecture Hoedown! Day 1

Remember this cute little house we have?




It's behind our house. It's small. Cozy. And the people who rent it have been there for 14 years. Fully 9 years before we bought the place.
And because of them the bathroom now looks like this:



You can see the damage. Most of it is because the bathroom was never retrofitted for a shower, having been built in 1923. A LOT of this damage has come from these tenants who basically treat this house like a hovel.













Here are some shots of the damage they have done in the kitchen.








So. The workers came today. Started the process. In about 5 days this will be a gorgeous and livable bathroom. Hopefully the city will think so, too.

Architecture Hoedown!

The city came by last week to "check out' the guest house. They found stuff wrong with it. I don't disagree. It needs work. It needs the tenants to move out so I can redo it correctly and make more money on it, but that's a different story.
The city also decided that we need to do something about our carport.



It's not really a carport as much as its a dilapidated shed that really should be torn down and put out of our misery.

Trouble is, figuring out what to do:

We could just roof it, but that's a waste of time and money.


Or we could tear it down and put up a new carport. Which is what we want to do. Except that we would want it to be an enclosed carport. And we would want it to have a door. Which would make it a garage.

I went to Building & Safety today to find out the specs of what I would need to do. They told me to draw the plans and they would approve them. So, let me get this straight: You DON'T want to give me specs so I know what the parameters are for what I want to build. You just want me to draw the plans and have you approve or not. That's stupid.
Bureaucracy. Just as you imagine it.

Here's what we are looking at. Hopefully in a few weeks it will be much nicer.