Dealing with landlords

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If only this were my place, I could take out the stupid carpet and put in the linoleum myself. I've done tile and carpet; linoleum can't be much different. I bet they just put in the carpet, glued it down, and didn't even remove the baseboards first, which would naturally make the carpet a pain to remove. Lazy remodeling annoys me.

I hate not being allowed to fix up this place properly.

Yeah, still waiting for the repairman.

I think bathroom carpets are so unsanitary, considering how often they are wet, and near toilets. If you have the right kind of landlord, and you have the tools, and some actual experience, offer to do the job for just the cost of materials. Could eventually work yourself into a bit of alternative income or reduced rent. But rememeber, jobs are often not as simple as they seem at first, and you have to be prepared to see it through.

Heh. Well, I figured I'd bump this and post what happened.

First, thankfully the landlord was nice about it, and fixed it. But when the workman came, I had to leave midway through; and I didn't notice until days later that the man had made hardly any attempt to remove the old caulk first. And, apparently, hadn't done much about the moisture and calcium deposits located under the old caulk, and now under the new.

Anybody who knows how this works, can predict that it wasn't even a week later when the new caulk started separating from the bathtub. I bet the man didn't even fill up the tub before he started; it wasn't full when he left, and the caulk couldn't have been set by then, since that takes a couple of days.

But before I'd left, the workman had also mentioned that the landlord wasn't happy about paying him for these renovations.

So, when I found out just how badly this had been botched, instead of bothering the landlord about it and having to go slightly nuts through another conversation about repairs, I went and bought myself some caulk, went at the old gunk with a scraper, dried it out, and put in the new. Total cost... maybe $5-$10, somewhere around there. I hope I did it right. I've used caulk before, I know how it behaves, and it looks good... but it hasn't set yet and I really hope there wasn't any extra moisture trapped in there or anything.

And I'm petrified that the landlord will drop by tomorrow, and see the bathtub filled with water and new caulk just applied to it. The workman seemed like a nice guy, just probably some random guy they hired who wasn't really a professional... Well, I'm not a professional either, but I know to cut out the old stuff before you put in the new...

Yeah. So there's that. I'll just have to hope my repairs hold and they never figure out the difference.

And somehow get through another two or three days without a shower. Sponge-bathing at the kitchen sink might not be as annoying as the first prickly spray from a shower head, but it really doesn't get you nearly as clean.

what type of caulk did you use (name brand etc.). hopefully bathroom silicone. if so, should be good to go in 12 hours.

Silicone, yeah. I forget the brand name; it's one of the ones that comes in those little single-use packages and sticks to your hands like nothing on Earth except possibly super glue.... I used a pretty thick bead because the original job of fitting the bathtub had been so poorly done, though. I'm going to play it safe with this, especially 'cause if my work turns out to be just as bad as the workman's, I can't blame him for it anymore.

repairman wouldn't know the difference, braindead. sounds like you did a good job. too bad you don't have a landlord that does his own repairs instead of farming it out. they can be better because they tend to respect tenants who are self-sufficient and help keep the property in a good state of repair, and you can develop a personal relationship. the hands off landlords only notice someone when the rent is late or there are problems: no news is good news.