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Yeah, don't let cats out in-transit, you will lose them. Large crate, small litterbox (you can use an aluminum roasting pan or something), and a bowl that clips to the side for water. If you know they don't do well in the car or stress easily you can talk to your vet prior to moving about some options to keep them calm. We had to dope up our old cat on ACE every time we had to take her somewhere.
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Feb 5, 2012 09:03
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I am all for making the bathroom as awkward as possible. I will forever remember my first visit to a friend-of-a-friend's house. I asked about the restroom and they directed me to it, and told me to "say hi to Lord Farquaad!" Uh, okay? When I sat down on the toilet I was greeted with a giant poster of this:  Just...staring. One day I hope to make my own bathroom a place of such discomfort.
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Jul 31, 2012 16:10
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Diatomaceous earth is supposed to have a similar effect, but I'm not sure it's any cheaper than Borax. Without a good food source they should die out fairly quickly. If you're moving any soft furniture like a sofa or mattress, I would also borax/vacuum those as best you can.
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Aug 1, 2012 16:27
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I thought it was longer than that? I can't remember how old mine is...it's at least seven years old and seems to be in good shape. I was thinking of getting a new one and upgrading to a queen size bed when I move next year, but it seemed silly to get rid of a perfectly good mattress.
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Aug 5, 2012 06:39
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And so my hunt begins. Me+two roommates and our assorted pets are going to officially start looking for rentals at the start of next month. It's a small college town without much in the way of apartments, so we're mostly looking at three bedroom homes. What are some important things to consider or watch for when renting a house vs. renting an apartment? Yard care is the main one I can think of, but what else? How can we increase our chances of getting accepted for a place? I'm especially worried about finding a place to take us and our pets without being gouged too hard on a deposit/pet rent. A lot of pet friendly places I've investigated consider "pet friendly" to be allowing one cat or five pound dog. Between us we have three cats and a small dog. I think we all have fairly limited rental history and we're all students, although two of us are older than the usual student body, 28 and 24. Will that work in our favor? The climate up there is cool and wet. Is there a good way to check for mold or water damage without prying things open?
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Jun 18, 2013 00:06
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Another newbie question: how far in advance should I be calling rental companies to make appointments? Looks like we're heading up to house hunt on July 6th and staying for a few days. That's far enough out that I figure some places we want to see might be rented by then, and new things might come available, but I also don't want things to be too last minute and not be able to see anything. Is there a good rule of thumb?
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Jun 20, 2013 22:52
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So I'm filling out my very first rental application and co-signer agreement, and we have some...concerns. On the co-signer application, they're asking for quite a lot of information. They want driver's license numbers, the name and address of employers, all the typical info...plus the name and address of our bank as well as the account number. Is that normal? On the rental application, they're asking for both my driver's license and social security number. My dad's under the impression that there's some law about not requiring me to provide both. This is in the great state of California. They also want the name and address of my bank, but generously allow me to simply write in the balance. I just want to be sure everything's on the up and up. I didn't realize the process would be quite so invasive.
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Jul 4, 2013 09:17
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Alrighty, just wanted to double check. Parents haven't rented in decades, and I've rented from a real landlord in never. It's a college town and it makes sense to be on guard for these sorts of things, since the landlords up there seem a bit predatory. Small, competitive market with a lot of renters who don't know any better, slinging around their parent's money and financial aid checks. We're going to spend Sunday afternoon/evening checking local papers and scoping out neighborhoods for rental signs, and we already have three showings set up on Monday with this one property management company. Here's hoping!
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Jul 4, 2013 20:04
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I found my soon-to-be roommates on Craigslist well in advance of the school year starting. We've been talking for months, I've met up with one of them several times before now. We just got back from a four-day house hunting trip and it was awesome, we all have a great dynamic together and get along well (at least so far). As an aside, househunting in a small, old college town where the rental market has students by the balls is an interesting experience. I've never seen so many places with weird bathrooms and oddly sloping floors. But we found a few gems and applications are how. Now, we wait. Edit: got our first choice house! RabbitMage fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jul 12, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 21:51
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One place we looked at had a really strange bathroom set up. Off of the kitchen, there was one room with a door that housed a sink and some cabinets. Next to it, still off the kitchen, there was another room that housed a bathtub. Down the hall on what was clearly an enclosed porch, there was a room with a sloping floor that housed a single toilet that was probably at least 60 years old. "Interesting" is a kind way to put it. The house we got is very nice, if a bit on the smaller size. Includes a working washer and dryer and a massive backyard, and the landlord's pretty chill. And it's purdy and yellow outside. 
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Jul 13, 2013 01:47
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Speaking of energy usage (I'm pretending that's what we were talking about, anyway), I just got off the phone with PG&E about what the new place will cost us. They only give a high and a low monthly cost based on the past 12 months. The lowest month was $70, which was about what I was expecting, but the highest month was $250 which seems...high. But I've never had to pay utilities before. It's a single story house, probably around 1300 sq feet, not terribly big. It's year-round cool so there's no need for any cooling in the summer. In the winter the lows are generally in the low 40s. Unfortunately I don't remember any specifics about the appliances, and of course we have no way of knowing what the current tenant is doing...for all we know she's keeping it at a steamy 82 degrees in there all winter. Is it reasonable to think that three conscientious renters could keep the power bill consistently closer to that $70 figure?
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Jul 17, 2013 19:34
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Those temps sound find to me. I know when my family moved into the house we're in now my bedroom had no insulation and no vent into the room, and I managed through colder winters with that simply using a space heater...maybe that's a more economical option, too?
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Jul 17, 2013 20:03
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:Edit: And what's with all these stupid floorplans? FIVE bedrooms and ONE bathroom? Really? A closet you can only access via the bathroom? Good luck getting dressed if your SO is taking a poo poo I guess. My roommates and I looked at an old Victorian. The bath tub and sink were in separate but adjacent rooms, right off the kitchen. The sole toilet was down a hallway, on a small former porch with a sloped floor.
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Oct 13, 2013 19:33
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That looks like a speaker underneath, so my guess is it's an old intercom sort of thing. It may have let you buzz guests in, once upon a time.
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May 5, 2014 01:53
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Nevermind. Roommate issue avoided...for now. Clean houses make happy roommates. RabbitMage fucked around with this message at 07:15 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 23:39
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I am going to be in need of a desk that is big enough for side-by-side dual monitors, but still fits into my small bedroom. I'm looking at the FREDDE desk from Ikea: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50219044/ but wondering if anyone knows of something similar in that price range? I don't need anything really pricey, just something that's going to last 2-3 years and not look like total crap.
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Oct 7, 2014 04:47
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Moatman posted:I have more or less this http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S79022792/#/S19022790 (mine's a Galant, which is the old version that's pretty much the same), and there's plenty of room on it. If I cleaned off my school stuff and moved my tower to the floor, it could probably even fit 2 27"+ monitors. I have a pretty small bedroom and the desk takes up most of a wall, but it's not too intrusive. Galants have been a go-to computer desk for a while. That's going to be too long, unfortunately. I like the idea of having some shelving or something, too. Vertical storage space is handy. Edit: Just realized I think I was reading the vertical measurement on the other desk as the horizontal and vice versa, in which case it's also way too big. Crap.
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Oct 7, 2014 05:37
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It looks like I can go up to 64". I still prefer something with a hutch/shelves/drawers for added storage. And if it's Ikea, it needs to be available online, since the nearest Ikea is over 200 miles away.
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Oct 7, 2014 19:21
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I'm thinking about getting my own fridge/freezer combo, so I can reliably store/find my own food. Are there any considerations I should be making as far as how much power it will take or what kind of outlet I can plug it into?
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Oct 12, 2014 20:59
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On the topic of mattresses: My current bed is 11 years old and on its way out, but still functional. New problem: my roommate's cat has peed on it, repeatedly, and even after several cleanings it still smells faintly of cat piss, which is not really a thing I want. Further, I'm finishing up college and should be moving in a year and a half. The original plan was to ditch this thing after that and buy a new bed after a move. So: Would a waterproof protector/pad help to mask the smell well enough (it isn't super strong), or am I looking at a new mattress? Can I drop $300 on a full-sized mattress and call that a good investment, even if I end up getting rid of it after a year and a half? And yes, either way, it's getting a protector put on it. 
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Jul 26, 2015 10:31
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The mattress has been cleaned multiple times by just about every method I can think of--and this includes with Nature's Miracle and Anti-Icky-Poo. Still, the smell persists.
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Jul 26, 2015 18:34
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Speaking of snowchat...we're planning to move my fiancee from Wisconsin to NorCal in October in a hilariously Frankenstein'd PT Cruiser. I will be doing most of the driving, and I've never driven in snow. How hosed are we?
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Jul 29, 2016 03:35
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Excellent. I feel more at ease, thank you. The only reason I mentioned the car is because it's a PT Cruiser that was literally put together with parts of two totaled ones. My faith in that car making it to California is low, but by gosh we're gonna try.
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Jul 30, 2016 05:31
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Renegret posted:I really, really, really loving hate apartment hunting. I thought my hometown having a bigger market of apartments would make it easier to find a place when we moved back for the summer, but this has not turned out to be true. Lots of places without openings until July/August and at the top of our budget, which doesn't help us much since we may only be here for the summer (and after that, who knows?). We found one place with openings now. As we found out due to an argument the office person had with someone on our tour, they're no longer accepting Section 8, and so all those tenants are moving out. But for $675 a month we can have 500 sq feet of baked-in cigarette smoke, painted-shut cabinetry, melted countertops, and an unnaturally green-blue lake stocked with catfish if you get a hankerin' for dinner. I think we're just going to see if we can stay with my dad and stepmom a little longer than planned.
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Jun 5, 2017 04:30
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It looks like we're going to be living in my aunt's house for the summer, and I have some questions about security. Things have been stolen from the property (recycling, gas siphoned from her car) and the house has been broken into twice. She started keeping her car and recycling in the garage and got an alarm system for the house and there have been no issues for the last few years, but I've never lived somewhere with theft issues like that. Are there additional, reasonable things I should do for safety?
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Jun 11, 2017 20:52
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What's the usual procedure for someone parking in your reserved spot? I feel like a petty as whole but I'm being charged for a parking pass, and the dude's been parked there since Thursday afternoon.
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Oct 21, 2017 15:37
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We have a large window in our bedroom that we'd like to get a stained/frosted glass effect on, so we can have the benefit of sunlight but also the benefit of nudity. We haven't found any of the vinyl cling options we like, and actual glass panels feel unsafe with our cats. Any other apartment-friendly options?
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Apr 8, 2018 01:42
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I meant aesthetically, we haven't found one we've really loved. I keep checking online every so often. I know conceptually they work great, I just haven't found the perfect color/pattern.
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Apr 8, 2018 02:46
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I use Out! Orange Oxy pet stain and odor remover and I've had it work a few miracles.
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Apr 22, 2018 19:36
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It's late and I'm grumpy, but help me determine how upset I should be. I've never lived somewhere with a carbon monoxide alarm (which is super illegal in CA, I found out), so this is my first place with one. It went off tonight, we evacuated, and had the utility company out, the beeping we had was the "end of life" beeping, not "you're gonna die" beeping. The tech told me CO detectors need to be replaced every 5-7 years. Ours was manufactured in 2011. Should our complex be keeping track and replacing these? This feels negligent, but also 100% in line with how they operate.
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Apr 26, 2019 07:35
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Tl;dr: I feel I need to talk to management about some extreme behavior from a neighbor, but other neighbors already think I'm a narc and I worry about retaliation, and I'm not sure what to do. We've had a lot of issues with our upstairs neighbor making noise at night, but there are two young kids up there and we assumed that was why, and we didn't want to be jerks about kids. However, the kids disappeared at the end of the school year and it's become apparent that the late night running, thumping, throwing/dropping things are the adult who lives there. And now she's having screaming matches over the phone sometime between the hours of 11 PM and 2 AM, and whatever else she's doing during these arguments rattles the windows. It can't be tuned out. I like to mind my business, but it was bad enough I put my ear to the wall to listen in and make sure she wasn't being beaten to death (she wasn't). This kind of stuff is a HUGE anxiety/PTSD issue for me, and beyond that no one should have to listen to screaming matches at 2 AM. I have to bring this to management. EXCEPT: I seriously worry about retaliation from neighbors. A few weeks ago a cop came to her apartment with some papers. I was on my way to my car to go to work, and he stopped me on my porch to ask if anyone was living in the upstairs apartment, because there was no answer (interesting, because I heard yelling and scrambling up there ten minutes before--someone in the complex sounded a siren). Later that morning, the neighbor knocked on our door, wanted to know what I told the cop--meaning someone in another apartment and by extension, me, because they told her some white guy talked to the cop, and I'm the k ly white guy in our row. Moving isn't an option for us right now, or we would. But I also can't keep losing full nights of sleep to this.
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Jul 8, 2019 08:40
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More fun from our apartment. Right after we moved in (October 2017), we had a dripping leak coming in through the vent in the bathroom. Maintenance claimed it was from a toilet leak in the apartment above ours, which was fixed. November of last year, more leaking from the vent, plus bubbling paint on ceiling. Maintenance (different guy from before) said it was due to poor drainage during heavy rain, peeled back some paint, sprayed some Kilz in ther, and left it. Early this morning...a new leak. Spouse went and reported it to the office, and the manager reassured us it's just condensation from the air conditioner and nothing to worry about. My spouse, who knows more about construction and plumbing than I do, says that's actually A Problem. Management said they would send someone to look at it, along with some electrical issues we're having in the kitchen, but gosh, no one got to us today. The leak has stopped for now, but the vent is right over the toilet, which means it's unusable when leaking, unless you don't mind a damp toilet seat and drips of cold mystery water. How much of a problem is this actually and what do I need to push for, because right now it seems like their chosen course of action is "do nothing".
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Jul 20, 2019 01:12
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So, good news: new maintenance guy came out, looked at it, and said due to the way they built the apartments that's just a thing that happens, it happens in other apartments, and can't/won't be fixed. So sometimes we're just going to end up with our bathroom soaked and be unable to use our only toilet. Also saw the apartment manager posting some anti-gay comments on a Facebook article, and her racist and transphobic comments weren't far behind (my spouse and I are queer and the majority of our complex is not white).
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Jul 25, 2019 14:27
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Gulliotines for the ruling class, yes. It appears the water is just condensation and the ducts aren't designed in such a way that it doesn't drain anywhere else. This isn't a consistent problem, but had happened about a dozen times in the year and a half we've been here, so I don't know how much legal weight it carries. And I don't want to be a prissy little bitch, but I do prefer not to have water dripping on me while I poo poo, so finding out we might just have to put up with that is disappointing.
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Jul 25, 2019 20:48
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We are moving mid-month and have a written agreement from the complex that we're paying a prorated amount for rent. However, the online portal we pay rent through has the full amount listed. The guy in the office said they would try and have it updated before rent was due, but it still shows the full month's rent amount. I've been assured that if that happened, I could just pay the full amount and they'd refund me later. 1. I don't trust that 2. I want to have some wiggle room to make a important/dumb purchase, but also moving costs Going to try and call the actual manager today and want to know what I can reasonably ask for so I'm not paying double what I was told I'd be paying. In California, if that makes a difference.
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Jan 30, 2020 17:51
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Right. Office Bro made it sound like online was the only way to pay (and is the only way we've ever paid), but I checked our lease and they do accept personal checks, so I'll try that.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:34
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Smart, I'll do that instead. In the event they refuse to accept it because the payment portal shows a different amount or something, what do I do? I just don't trust that this is going to go smoothly, though there's no reason it shouldn't.
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Jan 30, 2020 23:21
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RabbitMage posted:We are moving mid-month and have a written agreement from the complex that we're paying a prorated amount for rent. However, the online portal we pay rent through has the full amount listed. The guy in the office said they would try and have it updated before rent was due, but it still shows the full month's rent amount. We paid a check for the amount quoted and was well. But it is now 22 days since we moved out and we haven't heard anything re: our deposit. In California, landlords have 21 days to return it or send an itemized bill, to my understanding. So, now what?
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Mar 12, 2020 04:30
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Well, we got a letter today dated March 10th, billing us $366 over our deposits. Our last month's water/garbage, $1000 for replacing the floor due to pet urine, and $240 for "cleaning of apartment". The pet urine is probably true but also they're remodeling the apartments and removing the carpets anyway, as far as I know. We did clean before we left, though not perfectly.
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Mar 12, 2020 19:12
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Spikes32 posted:Remember that they can only charge you a percentage of the life of the carpet and flooring. Which per California law have a lifespan of 7 years. So if they haven't replaced the carpet in 7 years legally they can't charge you for any of it. If they installed it six years ago they can only charge you 1/7th of the replacement cost. The carpet was (supposedly) newly installed when we moved in October 2017. We did take some general pics when we moved to show the condition of the apartment. And the letter wasn't sent certified mail. ETA: We asked for a walkthrough prior to moving out and the office dude said he'd call to schedule it within 2 weeks before out move out date. He never did and we were dealing with enough moving parts that we never touched base about it again, so the walkthrough never happened. Don't know if that changes anything. RabbitMage fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Mar 12, 2020 |
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Mar 12, 2020 23:06
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