Category Archives: Handy Dandy Landlord / Apartment Junk*

I’ve been meaning to write this story for a while, but I keep forgetting. The hubs reminded me again recently, so I thought I’d get it down before I forget again. We have a front door to our apartment (as most apartments do) and on this front door, I like to hang things. I think having something nice on your front door makes it all the more inviting, don’t you?

Anyway, as we were gathering things to move in together after the wedding, my mother-in-law threw us a wedding shower and gave us a ton of pretty basic things that one might need to start a home. Included among the gifts was a cute little little “Home Sweet Home” door hanger. It was one of the first things we put up when we got here, and it looks like this:

Nothing fancy, but it was cute and it did the job. However, the hubs and I came home one day and it was MISSING. Someone stole it off our door!! Seriously– who does that? We assumed it was some hooligan kids as there is a high school not far away (and I remembered a story my boyfriend in high school had once told me about when he had gone into an apartment building and stolen all the door hangers off the doors) and after a few days of being unimpressed, I got over it.

A few weeks later (that’s right, my door stood empty for a couple of weeks– how sad is that??) while visiting with my in-laws I found my replacement door hanger in a country craft store. I LOVE things that are toll painted, so really I think I love this one even more than the one we had before:

So. We had a new door hanger… and I was happy. We put it on the door (with extra strength double sided tape one the back haha) I almost put the tragedy of our stolen FIRST door hanger out of my mind when the hubs came home one day a couple of weeks later and announced that it he had found our door hanger… on someone else’s door. I went out to check, and sure enough, two doors down, was our little Home Sweet Home. I nearly grabbed it off and stole it back, but I wasn’t entirely sure that it was ours, and I didn’t want to stoop to that level. I’m pretty sure that it was just from the dollar store, so really, they could have bought their own… but it just seemed so peculiar that it appeared on that door, on our floor, a couple of weeks after we replaced ours. It’s fishy, I say. Verrrrrrrrry fishy.

So, that’s our story. I went out and snapped a picture of our hanger on someone else’s door (that’s right, that’s not our door on the background of “Home Sweet Home” hahaha) to document our loss. I’m still debating whether or not I should steal it back and put it on our door to see if anything would be said. haha I don’t know. I’ll keep you posted.

Shop Girl*

I’d almost forgotten how appreciative I am of what plumbers do. I don’t know if I’ve ever written about my toilet saga… it’s really an exciting story though, and it looks like it’s going to have a REALLY happy ending!!

The Hubster and I have pretty much had problems in our bathroom since we moved into our apartment. As you know, we recently had the faucet replaced to our shiny new one that I love! But that was only after we endured a tap that never shut off and a broken one for a little while when our landlord attempted to fix it.

Anyway. So, the toilet. It’s been giving us trouble for a long time now. My favourite period was when the chain inside was broken and it made that really loud WWSHHHHHHHHing noise all the time. It was really nice to sleep to. Our landlord was able to fix that one after a couple of days by replacing the chain, so that was that.

Then we noticed that the base was broken. If you look at the bottom of your toilet (at the back) you’ll see how the base narrows at the front and gets wider at the back where it is secured to the floor. That wider part at the back is completely cracked off on the left hand side of ours. It doesn’t really leak or anything, so when we let our landlord know he said not to worry about it because it wasn’t an immediate problem. That was a couple of months ago.

Also, we had this little pipe thing on the wall just in between that little space we have between the toilet and the tub. It’s kind of leaked on and off since we moved in, but it usually stops after a couple of hours so I never worried too much about it. About a week and a half ago it started leaking and wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t very much, just a little trickle down the wall, but it was constant, so the towel I would place at the bottom to soak up the water would be soaked through by the end of each day. Not fun. We called our handy dandy landlord to come and take a look at it and his wife came up (our landlords are easily in their 60s). She took a look at it, said “Oh yeah… oh yeah. I see what you’re saying here… it’s leaking. Gonna have to stop that” and we signed some forms. The landlord came up 3 days later and tried to tighten the plug on the end, which resulted in more leakage. WOO. So, that was fun.

We went to spend the weekend with D&D and when I got home there was a huge puddle on my bathroom floor. After spending a fair amount of time cleaning up the floor, the hubs and I called the landlord, again. This time, we got a prompt reply. We called him last night, and the PLUMBER (that’s right, the PLUMBER, not my handy dandy landlord) came up and fixed my toilet! WOO! And what is even MORE exciting, is that he took a look at our cracked base and said it needed to be replaced, and called the other fix-it guy to come in and look at it. Now I’m sure that plumbers and fix-it guys must have some pull so I’ve got my fingers crossed that they’ll tell my landlord that we need a new one. Because that would be great! New faucet and new toilet = new bathroom! I heart it!

So plumber man, today you are my hero. Bum crack and all.

Shop Girl*

The Hubster is taking a quick nap so I thought I’d take a minute to write in here. We’ve had a great weekend–we spent yesterday relaxing and my wannabe handy man Landlord came up to take a look at our bathroom faucet. The thing has been leaking almost since we moved in, and he’s already been up to fix it once. The first time he managed to get it to stop leaking for a few weeks, then it slowly increased once again. We live in an old apartment building so these things are sort of expected.

We had the same problem in our kitchen this summer– the kitchen tap would not stop leaking. [Bob] came up to fix it, and ended up breaking the tap even further to the point where we could not even use it. He assured us that he would be back later that day with the needed parts to repair it. So, we waited and waited and waited and finally around 8pm he called and said that we needed a while new tap and would be in the next morning to replace it. The prospect of getting a shiny new kitchen faucet was exciting, so I decided to let it slide that we wouldn’t have use of our kitchen sink until the next morning.

The next day came, and morning turned into afternoon, and still Bob had not come. I was slightly frustrated by this point as doing dishes in the bathroom is just not my thing, and it was a hassle all around. Finally he called to let us know that the apartment handy man had been busy all day and that he felt that it was a job for him. But he’d be there FIRST THING the next morning. Ugh. So we woke up bright and early to have him show up at noon. :)

Anyway. The point of this whole rant is that yesterday in our bathroom– Bob did it again. The faucet is now broken beyond repair and we have not had the use of the hot water in the sink for 2 days now. The handy man is supposed to be coming tomorrow, but we have no idea when, so I’m stuck here waiting around for him. If I wasn’t so excited to have another shiny new faucet I’d be very unimpressed. I’m tempted to tell him we’re having troubles with our stove next… maybe we can get a new one….

…kidding.

Shop Girl*