Pictures of Walnut Creek House

The steps to the left are to the laundry room to the patio.  I didn't take the picture until after I started to clean them up.  The other steps are from the sliding door.  Not only dirt but gummy black stuff.  Can't imagine what it is.  There's stuff on the patio too.  Bruce spent 4 days cutting down the over grown honeysuckle and grapes from the neighbors fence and clearing out all the dead "grass" and weeds from the yard.  Plus trimming our trees up the driveway.  He filled 32 50 gallon bags.  They're dotted all over the yard.  Leaves from the tree and oleanders on the patio had not been raked in 2 years.  They had tied a rope swing outside the patio gate on our back neighbor's tree (on the property line).  Poor Mrs. Allen (80+ years old) was so afraid the kids would get hurt and sue her.  Wish we had known.   The boy and his friends actually walked up to her house a peaked in her window.

The hard wood floors are worn 

down through the finish except where the couch was.  I can't understand how they could do that in 2 years when we lived there for 34 and never wore through the finish.  It's hard to see in the one picture but there are gauges in the wood in the living room.   The drapes make me sick, mostly because it took me 6 weeks to make them; just 5 years ago.  Again we had drapes on the same rods for over 30 years and never worn them this way, they were just sun bleached.  There are rivets on the drapes that snap into the pull part of the traverse rod which are totally torn off the drapes.  These two pictures are the living room drapes.  There's a huge reddish stain on the lining of the drapes. The screen to that window was bend and thrown under the porch.  The traverse part of the rod over the patio door is broken in half, so the drapes can't be closed by the pull cord.  So they did it by hand which total "pilled" the fabric on the edge.  We're hoping that we still have the rod we had taken down from the bedroom and can steal the part.  I know Kirsch doesn't make these anymore because I had wanted to put the same type in down in Ventura.  The bracket that holds the pull cord to the floor on the other side of the patio door is busted in half.  The only drapes and rods still in tack are the ones on the front porch windows.

This is the patch job her ex-husband did on the wall in the master bedroom.  Said the movers put a hole in the wall.  They must of done the hole in the wood door too, (on the bedroom door front).  The picture here is of the hole in the back of the hall bathroom door.   You can see how high it is from the door knob.  What was in the bathroom that could have done that?  Oh the mysteries of it all.  There is candle wax on the wall in the master bedroom too.  Not to mention on the built in shelves in the living room.  The more I think on it, it's probably wax that I was scrapping off the hard wood floors too.  There were black spots that felt soft and looked like tar.   But I bet it was wax that was just walked on so much that it turned black.

When we had put in the blue carpet in the bedrooms and hall we didn't change the back bedroom because we were going to put hardwood back there since we used it as an office.  Before we rented we pulled out the original green carpet and had new carpet put it.  We knew we were going to have to put in new carpet before selling, but I was hoping to use the same as what was in the back bedroom and not redo that room.  But as you can see there are huge stains in it.   From the look of all the carpet, I doubt if they ever wiped their feet coming into the house.  And if the candle wax all over everything wasn't bad enough, there's finger nail polish everywhere: walls, carpets and hardwood floors.  Yes, I said walls....well just the master bath wall.  I didn't take a picture of the master bath shower, it was just too gross.  Let me just say that the floor of the shower is now green again not black.

The kitchen.  It's hard not to speculate on how people live.  The oven is spotless.  The broiler pan is exactly where I had left it.  The microwave was in it's cubbyhole, but not plugged in.  It was in the same shape as we left it.  I'm guessing that she had her own microwave and had stored ours and that she never used the oven.  Maybe she had a toaster oven. The glass top is another story.  You can see the 10" crack down the left side.  Again, using my own imagination, I'm thinking she picked up a large full pot that was very hot and dropped it.  I've dropped pots on it and never had it crack.  Again she said the movers must of done it.  It's it the back corner and what was there to move out of the kitchen besides dishes?

My sewing room:  The metal levours on the windows were mangled.  I asked the manager if they had a dog because one looked like it had been chewed on; but no dog.  There's a half circle dent in the new flooring like a 3" pipe was dropped on it's end.  The wall obviously was where they had a flat screen TV.  There are huge holes in it.  Oh yea, they had a dish installed on the roof.  Which means there's holes in our new roof.  And a black wire running from the roof down the outside of the house.

The tenant must not believe she did anything wrong because she wanted to bring a knew garage door opener to us (she lost one of them) and thank us for renting her the house.  If she thought she had "gotten away" with damages, she wouldn't want to meet us.  Bruce told the manager to have her give the opener to him, we did not want to meet her.  Oh, the other thing that was done was she took out the door knobs to the door on the patio and replaced them with her on deadbolts.  Mind you she left our deadbolts in these doors.  You can't open these doors from the inside because there are no knobs to pull them open.  You have to unlock them, go outside and push them open.  She did leave our door knobs in a baggie in the garage.  She said her ex-husband would come and replace them.  Again Bruce said NO.

Orinda:

Just had the furnace people out and can not be fixed.  They had never seen such an old furnace.  There are just no parts for it.  A second guy came out that new more about older furnaces and said the same thing.  A new furnace would not fit in the space of this 1950s furnace.  We're going to have to move the hot water heater in order to make room for a new furnace. 

This morning during our daily planning session we had decided that we needed to move into the Walnut Creek house and get the Orinda house sold first.  Just the opposite of what we had intended.   But now that we probably won't have any heat in this house, I think the decision is probably the right one.  Looks like tomorrow is moving day.  And we had just brought the microwave from WC to here and got some Ikea chairs "built".  Oh well.  The WC house will be more comfortable.  It has two bathrooms and is more centrally located.  And it won't creak all night long when we're trying to sleep. :)