Furnaces on the Fritz, Fixed Foundations, and Fun in Las Vegas

Apologies for the general radio silence in these here parts, but it has honestly been kind of nice taking a break from the joys and worries of real estate the last month or so. Well, that’s a half-lie, as I’m not sure you truly can escape either as a home owner or would-be flipper, but it’s been nice to bask in a relative measure of REI peace, with House #1 rented and House #2 finally sold.

We’ve started various renovations on the house we live in, which is coming with its own inevitable headaches and annoyances, but nothing too major. We’ve had the pier and beam foundation leveled and are in the process of having the carport converted into a honest-to-goodness two car garage, as well some cosmetic work on the front of the house to rebuild some pillars to add more curb appeal.

Contractor #2 has been tackling all of that and to give him credit he’s been pretty on the ball, and winning me over to possibly consider using him for another flip. I was happy enough with his work on House #2 but he kind of gave me the contractor shuffle there towards the end, juggling lots of jobs and doing enough when I’d get upset at his absence to satisfy me, only to disappear for a few days after that, etc. Which is part of that business, granted, but I wasn’t sure I’d use him for another flip where time was of the essence, and he’s managed to be responsive enough this time around to worry me less in that regard.

While all that work has gone smoothly, we’ve been having major issues with our furnace/AC, which is pretty major when you live in Texas and the high is regularly topping 100 degrees. It’s a pretty new unit (both inside and out, as well as the coils) but we’ve had problem after problem since buying the house, including Freon leaks, a motor burning out, the condenser randomly freezing up, and other crap. It’s increasingly hard, too, to get the guy who’s worked on it (and installed new furnaces in both the investment properties in the past) to come out and fix it. It’s a sucky situation as he and his wife are friends of ours and I want to keep using him, but it seems to take days and days to get anything fixed, he disappears with stuff half-finished, etc.

Last weekend was pretty much the breaking point, as he came out on Saturday to replace the copper linesets (after promising to do it on Monday the week before, then Tuesday, then on Thursday, then finally showing up on Saturday) an check the coils. Coils were fine, linesets were replaced, all was well. Until Sunday morning, when it was blowwing completely hot air. Blowing up both he and his wife’s phones didn’t result in a return call, and every HVAC company in the phone book that promised 24 hour service couldn’t come out to look at it until Tuesday.

With all of our furry kids (two pet rats and a dwarf rabbit) and a thermostat reading 92 degrees, we finally had to check into a Best Western here in town. Which is a pretty funny experience, as far as hauling cages through the lobby and finally getting our whole zoo situated comfortably. Eventually got the guy out who’d done the original work to get the AC back up and running, but it’s still struggling to cool the place down without running constantly and we’re $400 poorer, so the next step is getting additional insulation blown into the attic and wrapping some of the ductwork better, which needs to happen anyway but is yet more money flying out th window, or into the attic, or something like that.

I’m off tomorrow to Las Vegas for another gig covering the World Series of Poker, and won’t be back until July 16th. Boo, that. The money is good and the poker playing side of me really enjoys these trips, but it sucks to be away from home that long, and I had to burn pretty much all of my vacation time at the day job to make it work.

The day job is a whole other set of frustrations, and I’m definitely getting off my ass when I get back from Vegas and actively start looking for a new job. I’m still on the fence about going after any more flips in the short term, but if I do the income from a day job of some sort is pretty necessary, and the train has long ago left the station in regards to my current job. The only thing making it tolerable was the kick-ass boss I previously had, who got a new job about a month ago, and interim boss is just serving as a pretty harsh reminder of how screwed up where I work is when there’s no buffer of a good boss to use common-sense and try to shield you from the stupid as much as they can.

I’d love to simply quit and take a few months off to pursue all of my other schemings but I just don’t see that happening for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is I still haven’t thrown in the REI towel yet, current market be damned.