Our current project / disaster in progress (non pond)

[addy1]

Our tenants (3 years in Baltimore) moved out. Finally! We have been having issues with late payments, multiple families moved in. A four bedroom row house in Greektown area of Baltimore. 100 year old house.
There was a person / family in each bedroom. Played it gently, ow they might have become squatters. They always paid eventually but always late.

Long story short they are gone. Broom swept the place, seemed to be cleaning all of the time BUT !

We went to meet and do a final walk through they did not show up. They do owe us some funds, not worth going after.

We went into the place, didn't look to bad until we looked a bit more. The new flooring, 3 yrs ago, warped from to much water when washing. All floors sticky with grease? or who knows. Cabinets worn, broken, fire detectors (10 year variety) wires cut so they did not alarm. And the worse (to me) ROACHES! everywhere crawling the walls, the floors the cabinets so gross!
They covered the top of the cabinets the live ones ran when I grabbed my camera.
We do not wear our coats into the house, refuse to have a roach hitch a ride back to our house.

this is one pile of dead after the first bombing. The drop covers covered with dead bodies

We have bombed , fumigated, sprayed still see a few crawlers. But a lot less.
I never realized that roach poo stunk, the kitchen stunk from them. We bleached the walls, sprayed soap on them, finally put new dry wall up after soaking the old with insecticide, bait etc.

This is the kitchen when they moved in. The kitchen is 12x12

This is the kitchen cabinets being removed the brown on the wall to the left is roach poo. We are making the window smaller so we can wrap cabinets across that wall, towards the door. Going to removed it this weekend when the temps are close to 50ish instead of 20ish.

Current kitchen look

The exterior walls are brick and mortar.

We have gone there around 8 days now, a hour drive from home, refuse to sleep there.
It is three stories, I have painted the upper floor, three bedrooms, one bath.
We also painted the living room, part of the kitchen.
Still have the basement to paint.
Colors in the house, were yellow, orange, blue, pink, turquoise, 5 gallons of prime, on our second 5 gallons of white. 1/2 way through 5 gallons of ceiling paint.
Bath cabinet has been trashed, shower shot, still a ton of work to do. Glad the bees are asleep and the pond is frozen, no time for anything else right now.
We are replacing the living room floor, base board, the kitchen cabinets, the bath cabinet, painting painting painting. The stair rails are a mess, 100 years old spindle broken and gone, so replacing them, they are worn chipped look bad. Picture out of focus.

Some sort of yellow stuff sprayed on the walls a real pita to cover.

Current thought..............when done SELL!

 

[addy1]

Close up of stinky roach poo.

drop cloth

 

[Tula]

Oh wow....totally disgusting !!!! I wouldn't sleep there either.....how could those people live like that?!

it looked so nice before they moved it and now........yes, sell...........

 

[addy1]

We learned the hard way. You rent to one family next thing you know they move in xx others. Every bedroom door had locks with keys, each room had a different family, person living there. We did drop by trips, but you need to warn them 24 hours in advance, so whenever we went over all doors open, only the "real" tenants there. Always mopping, but that is not a indicator of being clean. Language barrier.

The neighbors told us they watched them pack their boxes, saw roaches crawling out. So they took roaches with them. We are just glad they are gone. In MD it is very hard to evict, takes many many months.

 

[Lisak1]

Oh my gosh. That is DISGUSTING. How do people live like that?? The apartment we rented when we first got married had roaches - the landlord called them "water bugs"... yeah, right. We sprayed constantly to keep them out of our apartment, but unless everyone in the building is vigilant, there's no stopping them. We once caught one and put it in a jar - with a lid - no food, no water, no air. Six weeks later it was still alive. They are survivors. But we would see maybe two or three a week and I was grossed out... your situation is a billion times worse!

 

[JamieB]

You need to bomb every room, including basement and attic if you have them. Cover all windows and doors leading outside with plastic, then set off the bombs. If possible, turn all utilities off before a big freeze, winterize the place first, and let it freeze while it’s soaking in the bomb. Give it a week of being sealed up freezing, you’ll see few or none left. A roach can live a full week off of just one greasy finger print. And they’ll cannibalize the dead. But the cold will kill the ones that the poison doesn’t get.

 

[addy1]

The guy next to us has a contract with a pesticide company, he said he has seen more activity since we have been working on the house, calling the company to come and spray, the lady on the other side has not seen any.

I have some really good spray that we bought and treated for bedbugs when the tenants managed to bring them in. We had the unit certified bed bug free before they moved in. Baltimore had a horrible issue with them a few years back. The stuff is also rated for roaches. The few we have found alive are very slow moving.

We leave our coats in the car, the one time we brought them in we left them in the car in 2 f weather to kill any ride alongs.

You need to bomb every room, including basement and attic if you have them.

We sprayed at first, then used the bombs, then the repair person that came to fix the gas furnace (the roach poo killed the thermostat and a relay so it was not working well) he told us to use Raid fumigators. Three per box, I put one in every room, you have two minutes to put them into the water and run out of the house. I move darn fast.
The first treatment I used 9 then we don't go back for a few days. I just set off 12 doubled up in the kitchen, more in the basement and some on the stairs. We set them off two days ago, stayed home yesterday, our fake snow storm, well we got a dusting.
Today back to the house, hope to see none moving. But we need to treat again, the eggs hatch in like 45 days or something like that. Some of the stuff I have sprayed is supposed to take care of the hatchlings.

I also put a bunch of bait in any openings we were covering up. Good sweet eat me stuff................
If we don't sell and are dumb enough to rent it again, we will hire a company to spray as needed.

Every electric outlet is full of poo, it is so gross................

 

[sissy]

So sad I see it around here all the time .I rented my condo to a doctor and a nurse relocating here and they seem to never be there but the place is spotless and well taken care of so far .I had to go there the other day to do my 3 month check and it looks like no one lives there but guessing they are always at the hospital .Fridge had milk and coffee in it and that was all .They asked about shutting the fridge off and only using the mini fridge in the master bedroom .I have no problem with that since if a fridge ,freezer combo is empty it is not good for it .Boy addy have you got lots of work to do .Next time post on the board at a hospital ,you get better people .The doctors are always looking for a nice place to rent during their residency .

 

[j.w]

Oh yikes that is one roachy horror movie story! Good you are taking precautions on them trying to hitch a ride back home to your own place. I would sell, sell, sell! I would not want to have to deal w/that again. You just never know about renters. They can look so clean and be so nice and have the best credit checks, references and background checks and then whamo the truth comes out in the end when they leave. Oh yes I know! Never had to deal w/bugs tho just damage and lots of garbage and no pays. You guys do such nice work when you fix a place up that it would be a shame to let someone mess it all up again. Hope you can sell or you find great renters.

 

[JamieB]

Since you are dealing with rental property , a trick if you get nicotine on the walls from smokers; mix hot water, white vinegar, and fabric softener in a bucket, and use a rag on a swiffer sweeper thing to wash the walls. Great on smooth texture walls, and if your ceiling is smooth. For textured, it’s easier to just spray the mix on, then wipe off by hand. And that’s why most rentals have semi gloss or gloss paint!

 

[gliebig]

WTF is wrong with people.

 

[addy1]

WTF is wrong with people.

That we would like to know!

Thanks Jamieb we have not had a smoker in any of our places in a long time. But will keep that filed away if we do. We usually make it a condition, only rent to non smokers.
This group did not smoke, cooked a lot of fried food. Too many people in the house, like having renters for 15 years in the house not 3. Things broke, they did damage, never called us to repair anything, except one light.
They did clean, did leave the house sort of clean, but all the floors are sticky, your feet stick to them The house is really worn out. And of course the roaches.
They did remove everything of theirs, even left the small yard empty.

 

[Angel]

WTF is wrong with people.

Simple. " Not My place not My problem" + "This is how we live:"

((disclaimer we don't know if there was issues with tenants mental or otherwise))

I am in the IT field and I have seen some "farmers insurance crap" ( we know a thing or two cause we have seen a thing or 2" type thing.

People are raised not right or not at all or differently. Unfortunately and fortunately this makes us all different.

Albeit I am one of those who was raised wrong imho (in my humble opinion) but I understood this ain't mine i will return it same or better. Because that's what I want with my items.

Unfortunately we are not the little house on the prairie lifestyle where your name etc had weight etc.

@addy1 I mean no disrespect but being a landlord you kinda knew what you signed up for and your rant and pics is one of them.....

@addy1 I do hope you can get things back up and running soon and recoup

 

[JamieB]

Mineral oil will help remove dust on oily appliances, just a few drops on a rag, wipe the range hood or stove or back splash, then wipe any remaining excess oil off with a dry rag.

 

[addy1]

I mean no disrespect but being a landlord you kinda knew what you signed up for and your rant and pics is one of them.....

Not ranting just sharing. Sort of like a pond build thread..............sort of lol.
This is not the worse issue we have run into being landlords. We are slowly selling.
We enjoy doing remodel fix up, but the roaches were disgusting. This row house was a foreclosure my honey bought before we met.

We had a nice older guy in Florida we rented to, his rent just paid the fees. He died in the condo, his family drove down from MD and emptied the condo of all of our furniture, tools. They knew everything was ours. We had rented it furnished to help the guy out. When we got there it was stripped. The neighbors called to tell us he had died. They left the bloody mattress. The cops said can't help, not going after out of state thieves that just took furniture and stuff.

Mineral oil will help remove dust on oily appliances, just a few drops on a rag, wipe the range hood or stove or back splash, then wipe any remaining excess oil off with a dry rag.

The stove may or may not be savable, gas and pilot issues. The fridge, need to get new door seal it is ripped bad, the fridge is 2 years old. We are adding a dishwasher, dumping the cabinets, adding a over the stove microwave.