Blogging
Thinking of Starting Another House Blog
Jul/10/08 11:48 PM
Kristin and I have another house in Rogers, Arkansas
that serves as a rental property. It has pretty much
been a carefree deal until recently. Our "neighbors"
in Rogers called us a few weeks back to let us know
that our renters were terrible and that they were
destroying the house. We knew that the neighbors
didn't get along with the renters, but we assumed
there was an agenda on their part as well. Kristin
and I discussed it and I told her that we should just
boot the renters and sell the house and dump our
earnings into the Williams House. Kristin agreed, so
we ordered up an appraisal from the great guys down
at Boston Mountain Appraisals.
Basically there was only one photo of the exterior and the appraiser didn't even go into the house. After I saw the exterior of the house in the photo, I knew why... I think he was scared. This house, that was a beautiful house, that Kristin and I fixed up and rented out was no longer so. First of all there were toys on the roof, a giant inflatable snowman thingy in the front yard that had been there for who-knows how long and a six foot rebel flag hanging from the front porch. Kristin and I gasped in horror as it had been about 4 months since the last time we had been up there. We followed up with the neighbors and apparently the husband had not one but FIVE pit-bulls chained up in the back yard (which has to be against some city code), and they also told us that the wife had been running a daycare out of the house. A DAYCARE (which also has to be against some city code)! As you can imagine grubby little hands touching EVERY single freshpainted wall in the house. My stomach churns thinking about it.
We evicted the renters almost immediately, which wasn't hard since they rarely paid rent every-other month or so. Then we went to survey the damage. Aside from the 5 billion flies in the house at first glance it didn't seem too bad, but as we looked closer it became apparent that the damage was extensive. They had put nails in almost every inch of the trim in the living room to hang baseball caps from, all the walls had handprints covering every inch up to about 4 feet, all of the door knobs had dented the walls even though there are doorstop springs, and for some reason had bubble gum stuffed in the holes like that was a suitable wall patch. I won't even go into bathroom detail, but trust me it'd make you sick. The back yard was destroyed and the dogs had ripped off the downspouts for the gutters, METAL GUTTERS mind you! I'll share this photo of the back yard with you because I find it strange, like a crop circle or a UFO landing site.
Anyway, we surveyed the damage and it appears to be in the thousands, luckily we can do most of the repair work ourselves. But it will take a lot of work, almost enough work to justify doing another blog, hence the topic of this post.
Do you want to hear the REALLY funny part about the whole thing? (Every time I think about this, I have to refrain from physically laughing out loud.) Get this: The renters called yesterday and ASKED FOR THEIR DEPOSIT BACK... Hah hah hah hah hah.
Basically there was only one photo of the exterior and the appraiser didn't even go into the house. After I saw the exterior of the house in the photo, I knew why... I think he was scared. This house, that was a beautiful house, that Kristin and I fixed up and rented out was no longer so. First of all there were toys on the roof, a giant inflatable snowman thingy in the front yard that had been there for who-knows how long and a six foot rebel flag hanging from the front porch. Kristin and I gasped in horror as it had been about 4 months since the last time we had been up there. We followed up with the neighbors and apparently the husband had not one but FIVE pit-bulls chained up in the back yard (which has to be against some city code), and they also told us that the wife had been running a daycare out of the house. A DAYCARE (which also has to be against some city code)! As you can imagine grubby little hands touching EVERY single freshpainted wall in the house. My stomach churns thinking about it.
We evicted the renters almost immediately, which wasn't hard since they rarely paid rent every-other month or so. Then we went to survey the damage. Aside from the 5 billion flies in the house at first glance it didn't seem too bad, but as we looked closer it became apparent that the damage was extensive. They had put nails in almost every inch of the trim in the living room to hang baseball caps from, all the walls had handprints covering every inch up to about 4 feet, all of the door knobs had dented the walls even though there are doorstop springs, and for some reason had bubble gum stuffed in the holes like that was a suitable wall patch. I won't even go into bathroom detail, but trust me it'd make you sick. The back yard was destroyed and the dogs had ripped off the downspouts for the gutters, METAL GUTTERS mind you! I'll share this photo of the back yard with you because I find it strange, like a crop circle or a UFO landing site.
Anyway, we surveyed the damage and it appears to be in the thousands, luckily we can do most of the repair work ourselves. But it will take a lot of work, almost enough work to justify doing another blog, hence the topic of this post.
Do you want to hear the REALLY funny part about the whole thing? (Every time I think about this, I have to refrain from physically laughing out loud.) Get this: The renters called yesterday and ASKED FOR THEIR DEPOSIT BACK... Hah hah hah hah hah.
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My Bungalow Blog Revamp
Jun/22/08 09:15 AM
This is the new and improved version of The Williams
House Bungalow Blog. After lots of complaints from my
regular readers I've decided to take the initiative,
to make a faster more streamlined version of our
website. I hope this solves the issues with load
times and display problems. Here is one entry where
your comments will greatly help me improve the
performance of our blog.
Thank You,
Brant Williams
Thank You,
Brant Williams
Technical Difficulties
Feb/20/08 08:11 AM
Houseblogging Rant
Feb/20/08 08:10 AM
've come to realize that houseblogging may, in fact, be as difficult as remodeling a house. I don't claim to be a wizard with the computer or anything, but I have designed a few websites. And that is enough to know that Blogs are a whole other can of worms. Pair the difficulty factor with a half-assed hosting service (By the way never pick your hosting service by googling the cheapest one) stir in the learning curve of blog upkeep, and just for kicks add a dash of "too damn busy" and the end result is a wonderful concoction I call a headache.
When I started houseblogging, I decided to tinker with the blog feature on iWeb (my first mistake), then I thought, "Hey I'll add a subdomain to my existing domain" (My second mistake) and TADA! The Williams House Blog was born. While using iWeb I found that I had to FTP the ENTIRE site every time I posted a new entry. At first this was no problem... Then 50 or so entries later it was starting to take the fun out of blogging, if you know what I mean. It was starting to take HOURS to upload the site and then if I had an error I had to start all over again. As it turns out, my web host was having difficulties with this set up and I was having more errors than not. So at this point making an entry was taking the better part of a day. F - that!
So now I have switched to a much faster hosting service, and let me say that was no easy feat. First of all Startlogic (my original host) has a tech support worthy of a lit bag of crap. The host main page has no interface to change the CNAME of your domain, which means if you want to switch hosting service, you have to contact TECH SUPPORT, arrrrrgh! My longest stretch, and probably worthy of some sort of world record, was FOUR hours on hold. Yeah pretty bad huh? Well get this, the first time I called I was on hold for two hours only to be told in extremely poor english that their system was down and that I needed to call back in an hour. So I furiously hung up and called back immediately assuming that I would be on hold for two hours and by that time surely their system would be back up. Two hours later I was correct. So they changed it, or so they said. They said to wait 48 hours for the change to occur. So for good measure I waited 144 hours. Still it wasn't changed. The next call was the four hour wait on hold. So let's add that up, eight hours on hold... That is enough time to fly to to whatever country (that is the tech support capital of the world) and kick the crap out of whoever it is that thinks it's OK to leave someone on hold for that long. And who knows, maybe have an enjoyable vacation too.
That said and off my chest, I hope the new service will afford me the time to upload lot's more posts, because I DO enjoy houseblogging.