Starting the cleanup

7/17/04 10:00 AM

New dishwasher and range are being delivered today. Man, that old dishwasher is really foul.. The inside is covered with brown mold and the smell is horrendous! The new appliances are installed and briefly tested. They tell me they are working correctly. The guys were supposed to take the old appliances away. They take the range but refuse to take the dishwasher. I’m a bit pissed because nowhere in any paperwork I have does it say the appliances have to be in working order in order to be hauled away. I’m complaining to someone about this. They leave the moldy dishwasher in the garage.

The handyman showed up and went over list of items that need to be fixed. There’s a lot!

1. House inside needs to be repainted
2. Closets in the guest bedrooms need tracks for the doors so they don’t swing inwards.
3. Master shower floor is cracked. He doesn’t do fiberglass work, but knows someone who does. He’ll try to get the name and phone number for me.
4. Toilet in guest bath needs work – the toilet itself isn’t connected securely to the ground and the water line into the tank is leaking and spraying water. The shut off value doesn’t really work either, so I can’t completely turn it off. He tells me this isn’t uncommon and not a bit deal to fix.
5. Need a stopper installed in the bathroom sink – there’s a toothpaste cap down there now.
6. There is a drinking water filter unit under the sink with a dispenser above the sink. Need to remove that. No water comes out of it and if the dishwasher was that moldy, I hate to think what the filter parts look like.
7. He offers to straighten the cabinet floor under the sink, which has warped due to water.
8. Want to replace all switch plates in house. Just a general reselling tip and they cost less than a buck each.
9. Backyard is overgrown with waist-high weeds. Need to cut those down. No need to remove, but just cut down to ankle-height.
10. Baseboards need to be fixed. The tenant replaced all the tile, on his own, it appears. The new tile must have been lower than the old tile and the baseboards have not been put back on correctly. Corner pieces are missing and they pull away from the wall in several places. They need to be redone.

He leaves and will call with a quote later today. I head out to Home Depot to get new switch plates. When I return, I discover the dishwasher didn’t drain. There is also water dripping from the counter top across from the dishwasher. The water was from the water filter. Apparently, the previous owners ran a line from the filter, through the cabinets, to the refrigerator so the water there was filtered. The fridge is gone, but the dishwasher installers must have turned a value somewhere, so water is now flowing out the line. I find the value and shut it off. Thank goodness I came back. Having that run for days would have been a disaster.

But the dishwasher hasn’t drained. Damn. I try calling the installers, but I only have their office number and, being Saturday, no one answers. I leave a very pissed off message. I will be out of town Monday and Tuesday and want this fixed before I get back.

Handyman calls back and quotes me $1700 plus cost of paint for the painting and $200 for everything else. I agree, even though the painting price sounds a bit high, and he’s set to start Monday. Says it’ll take about a week.