Take the money and run

Viewing the lies landlord/owner posted online about the great amenities of this house in order to sell it, it is clear he has learned nothing from his deceit and is still deluded by his own greed. If any of these things are actually true would be miraculous.

Overuse of the word “custom” throughout the description is indicative of the simple fact that he most likely did the hackjob work himself — as he did in “replumbing” the place — which is why there was never any hot water in winter nor cold water in summer.

The fact is that as tenants we arranged and withstood the installation of the new air conditioning unit during a week in August of 2010,  when landlord/owner refused to have it done, even in February 2010 upon our advice that it would be less expensive.

The fact is that the installers noted the fire hazards in the attic due to landlord/owner’s faulty wiring near his plumbing handiwork.

The fact is that the new bath tubs, particularly the one in the smaller bathroom, was replaced while we were tenants as the old one was scratched to the point of being unusable. That installation entailed replacement by owner’s cohort in crime, someone who was inept at doing such work but who would do it for a bottle of vodka. His first attempt was merely a smathering of glaze to cover the scratches. The chemical odors filled the house for two weeks. When that did not work, owner’s friend installed a new tub improperly which resulted in a complete flooding of the nearby bedroom, requiring replacement of the carpet.

Owner took credit for appliances that we purchased when he went AWOL that five years.

The fact remains that he cannot look into his own reflection to know the horrible things he perpetrated on us as we withstood five years upgrading his appliances, withstanding his lies about the pool pump destruction by his own hand, my husband trimming trees and scaling the roof to clean gutters, without remuneration, done only in accordance with his promise that the house would be ours someday. No consideration, no remuneration for us trying to keep his dung heap from stinking up the neighborhood after he abandoned it for those years. Just lies, abuse, assault and theft of security deposit.

Hopefully, at least, he did some true, actual repairs by a PROFESSIONAL to this money pit before trying to unload it on an unsuspecting, gullible buyer.

Did owner reveal the fire hazard in the attic, pointed out by professional air conditioning installers?

Did owner reveal the fact that by his own hand the “custom” electrical work he did is faulty, with many outlets and light switches not grounded properly, as any professional electrician had told us when we were forced to have electrical work done on the property.

Did owner reveal that there was no insulation?

Did owner reveal the crack in the slab that he had told my husband about?

These are crimes he can live with apparently, in his signature take-the-money-and-run mode of operation without remorse or restitution.

It is clear that more than one life lesson for him will be necessary and is inevitable.

Use Money, Love People – Not Love Money, Use People

If this web presence prevented landlord/owner from abusing another person, taking advantage of another family while he chased money, then it served its purpose.

To Landlord/Owner – We saw you at Chick-fil-a recently. The terrible feelings that were stirred as we stood and watched you go from your cheep into the store cannot be described. With your hauling lumber for another hackjob project, we could only imagine the house cringing again when you pulled into the driveway that day.

Please don’t do what you did to us to any other.

Finally, ask yourself at least, at last:

“Do I own this property, or does this property own me”?

97% of people lie 97% of the time

But 100% of landlords lie 100% of the time:

LIE: “That pipe isn’t leaking.”
TRUTH: It IS leaking but since landlord/owner doesn’t pay the water bill, landlord will lie about it to save his own penny or his five minutes of time to properly repair it. Not until pressed for months, costing me a lot of money on my water bill, would landlord admit that it was leaking and then made attempt to fix it.

LIE: “Somebody broke that.”
TRUTH: Landlord broke it but is too prideful and cowardly to admit it; plus, it’s easier just to blame tenant or a phantom repairman from six years ago. (Article forthcoming.)

LIE: “The refrigerator came with the house.”
TRUTH: See article: The Brotherhood of the Traveling Refrigerator

LIE: “I’ll replace the refrigerator with the same model.”
TRUTH: See article: The Brotherhood of the Traveling Refrigerator

LIE: “The washer’s only a few years old. It works great; you just have to jiggle it occasionally. It works best on permanent press cycle.”
TRUTH: The washer won’t spin or empty the water, even if you “jiggle” it constantly. And it only will wash occasionally on permanent press cycle, and not at all on any other cycle. Oh, and a “few years” translates from “lying-landlord-speak” to factual “discontinued about 15+ years ago.” (Article forthcoming.)

More to come — I can only withstand a rehash of all this negativity in small chunks. So why rehash it, you may ask? The next unsuspecting tenant, or heaven forbid, person looking to purchase this owner-created MONEY PIT needs to be aware of the lies and coverups from owner’s attempt to “FLIP THIS FLOP” because owner certainly will LIE about it before he opens his moth-infested coin purse to HIRE someone to fix it right.

And, apparently from all of the positive comments received regarding these articles, many people are well past being tired of the rampant lying that is considered normal operating practice in any level of business and personal relationship.

Too many people remain silent today, coerced by the tyrants to “just get along,” “don’t sweat the small stuff,” etc., while the tyrants take over.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. – Thomas Jefferson

“Tyranny comes in all forms. And it usually starts with a LIE.” – me

Hell’s Kitchen

When we moved in, the kitchen was filthy. Of course, the refrigerator was a disaster, as already posted in the article “The Brotherhood of the Traveling Refrigerator.” Sides of cabinets were unsightly, with warping and peeling. The “pantry” doors were missing a knob, and they did not close without falling off the track. Every wire shelf was so caked with grimy dirt that they had to be violently scrubbed or replaced, along with replacing all of the broken wall fasteners.

Moving on to the kitchen sink, the faucet handle was just placed on top, not fastened. The owner had attempted all kinds of “plumbing” in the house, which caused leaks everywhere — under the kitchen sink, behind the refrigerator, along the dishwasher. As can be seen, there was so much leaking over the years that the fiberboard countertops were warped and flaking. Two of the cabinets in the kitchen could not be used — the warping was so bad that my bowls would just slide from the left or right down to the middle of the cabinet, and the smell of mold and mildew was onerous.

The bottom of the cabinets had make-shift boards that were crudely cut, and thus they were uneven. It can be seen that merely a squirt of glue was drawn across in a failed attempt to cover an unfinished and unsightly cabinet base; they were constantly falling off as seen here.

And don’t go under the kitchen sink!

The Brotherhood of the Traveling Refrigerator

When we rented this house, owner told us, “The refrigerator came with the house when I bought it. It works great except the front water and ice dispenser don’t work but I’m going to replace the refrigerator before you move in.” My husband asked, “Well when you do, please replace it with a side-by-side like this one.” Owner agreed.

But, a week or two before we were to move in, owner said he had a hernia. Thus, many things were left undone. Owner left the house in a filthy mess, left us with rooms full of furniture he asked us to sell for him, and he had not replaced the refrigerator.

It wasn’t long before we noticed that food was not cold on the refrigerator side. The freezer side seemed okay. But food spoiled very fast, despite our turning the control to the coolest setting. At this point, the cost of spoiled food was shameful. My husband had to work with owner for well over a year to get him to finally replace the refrigerator. He did not replace it with the side-by-side model he promised. Owner, being somewhere up north, asked us to run around to Sears, Home Depot, Lowes and other stores to get him best price and select a model. We invested a great deal of time and gas in doing so and selected a low priced side-by-side. Shocked, delivery came by one day with  a model nowhere close to being a side-by-side. It was the least expensive refrigerator on the market, which had a freezer at the top and was so much smaller, that the food we did have in the old one couldn’t fit into the new one. All that waiting, and time and gas we wasted running around to do his property management to be slapped in the face with this.

Upon installation of the new refrigerator, installer tells us that there is an icemaker in the freezer that we will not be able to use because the line behind the refrigerator looks to have been rusted for years and is completely broken off! My husband tells owner, and, of course, it is never repaired because owner cannot come down to attempt repair himself and don’t even suggest having a repairman come because that would be out of the question.

Now, what to do with the old refrigerator?

Owner did not take care of the old refrigerator removal. And, of course, no charity wanted it because the icemaker did not work. Since the new one was too small for some of our freezer items, my husband and I decided to keep the old one in the garage temporarily and use the freezer side since that still seemed to work.  We were able to get a few months out of the freezer side until Hunters Creek had its community garage sale when we rolled it out onto the driveway and put a big “FREE” sign on it.

The guy next door comes over laughing, “I see you’re finally getting rid of my old refrigerator. That thing hasn’t worked for years, since I hauled it out to the curb and your landlord pushed it over here!”

With our jaws on the ground, the journey of the traveling refrigerator was unveiled to us. Years and years ago, the guy next door was getting rid of this refrigerator because it did not work. Our landlord pushed it from this guy’s house to his house, despite this guy telling him that the thing did not work.

Now, all the pieces of landlord’s lying puzzle fit. That’s why there were only a few condiment jars in it when landlord first showed us the refrigerator, and he had laughed it off as, “Well, you know how it is with single guys in the house.”

The wasted time, the wasted food and the wasted money we endured!

When I finally brought this incident up to landlord this year, his response was, “Okay! So I lied! So I’m a bad person. So what!”