Kuunari

So, I was smart enough to buy a one-bedroom condo right at the height of the housing bubble, which means I’ll be holding onto it for a while.  Since most of the owners at the place are absentee landlords themselves, there no problems with renting my unit for a while, at least until I have some hope of getting some money out of it.  It doesn’t hurt that we can rent out the condo for the amount we spend a month on the mortgage, association fees and taxes.

Before we could get to the point of renting it though, we had to do a bit of fixing it up.  These were mostly cosmetic fixes.

1.  Clear Coat on the Sun Room Windows:  About 5 years ago, when I moved into the condo, I spent the summer stripping the windows in the sun room of their paint.  I learned two things stripping the sun windows: first, never paint over wood.  You’ll never get it the same again.  Second, wood looks so much better than paint.  Some day, I’ll have to explain the steps I took to strip the windows, if only to warn others against doing so.   The windows look great, but after a couple of years, our dog had done a number to the window sills with her claws.

To fix it, I bought some clear coat, shiny finish to put over the wood.  It instantly brightened up the room, and gave the wood a nice glow.

2.  Paint and repair the closet: The front hall closet, which is actually in the dining room, needed some love.  Countless holes from nails that had been used as hooks dotted the walls, and a giant hole in the back where a curtain rod had been mounted gave the appearance of a squatters house.  A metal patch kit and some vinyl spackle and then a coat of paint was all it took to dramatically improve the appearance of the closet.  This was such an easy fix, but the closet looks so much better.

3.  Repaint: I’ll admit, I’m pretty lazy.  When I moved in, I left every color the same.  So, by the time we moved out, the paint was looking pretty spotty in places.  I got the paint matched, which of course meant it looked just off enough that it almost looked worse.  I solved that by just painting the walls that needed it, and leaving the walls that looked ok be, so that I didn’t need to single-handedly paint every wall in the place.  Sure, if you look closely, you can tell that the walls aren’t the same color, but you would only notice if I told you.

We got it rented out in a night after that, although we did use a service, ReUrban.  With the move and everything else going on, we just didn’t have the time to devote to everything that needs to be done to find a renter.   While expensive (they take a months rent), we feel really confident about our renter, and hopefully will be able to rent the place out ourselves the next time.