What do I do at work?
Mar. 25th, 2019 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI do lots of things. Lately here it's been taxes but mostly I do stuff in apartments. One of those things is tile.
I got back this apartment as "ready to rent except for the tile" which was a fucking bald-faced lie. But the tile needed work, that part was true.
The tile is fifty years old, mastic-adhesive stuck onto skimcoat plaster in a tub surround environment. Recipe for ick as the skimcoat plaster disconnects from the underneath plaster and/or the mastic adhesive gets brittle with age and turns loose.
After taking off everything that wiggled, this is what I had as a start...
So the first order of business was to square up the hole and make sure that the endings were on studs so that I could put in new cementboard backer where it was needed. (If the plaster underlayer is too soft or fucked up, I have to tear it out and put in cementboard because the tile cement won't stick to shitted-up, granular, wet, half-rotted [not organic "rotted" but "been wet and dry too many times" rotted] plaster.)
It also needs to be shimmed out to be the same level as the existing surface. In an ideal world, the 7/16 cementboard would be the right size but this is a far from ideal world. So, no. You have to shim that shit.
Not shown is Cleaning All The Crap Off The Tiles So That They Can Be Reset. It involves a utility knife, several blades, some sparks, and a certain amount of wrist pain.
Don't forget to clean off the edges where the tile has to go because if there's grout left on there, the tiles won't all fit when you go to stick them back on.
Take a razorblade scraper and scrape all the mastic adhesive off the sound skimcoat plaster, too.
Stick the tile back on the wall. Take care to match up to existing tile.
And grout after it's dried for 24 hours. Clean up grout. You will still need to caulk seam between tile and tub (normally this is grouted but tub shifts slightly and grout will die but silicone caulk will survive that shit. Removing enough tile to make tub not shift is beyond the scope of the current remodel), let that dry, and then clean all the tile that is visibly filthy.
I'll get an ALL DONE pic for you later and update this. But right now I'm to "silicone caulk, let dry, finish cleaning tile". So that's where the current pictures stop.
And here's ALL DONE.
The half-shower-curtain over the window keeps water from running down between the window and the wall. The blue more-or-less matches the blue tile trim in the bathroom. Also note the cleaning up of the blackened grout seams and the overall cleaning going on here.
Tenant complained that we didn't give her back her whole deposit. *sigh* She also did not remove the wheelchair ramp that she had installed for her husband. A bit of background here.
When they moved in, he was a tattoo artist and she was a wife. He'd run his own business for about twenty years. They were staunch Trump supporters and we'd discussed being self employed and running a business and the problems of healthcare expensiveness when they came to see the apartment.
At that time, and as gently as possible, I had allowed, in my redneckian drawl, that while it might seem "REALLY UNFAIR" for people to get help from the government like SNAP and TANF and WIC and LiHEAP and stuff, in reality, the whole thing about "welfare queens" was pretty much bullshit and that it wasn't an easy life if you were getting government aid. I said as how the benefits weren't all that beneficial, that the assistance office looked down their noses at you, that the entire world was pretty judge-y when you whipped out an Access card at the grocery store, and that the mountain of paperwork needed to keep the benefits was damn near a full-time job in and of itself. I suggested that the state of "Government Aid" was more "starve to death slowly and humiliatingly" than it was "Free iPads And Unlimited Cellphone Data". They did not seem convinced.
So a while later (still tenants of mine), husband has some sort of aortal tear. Usually these are fatal, but wife had previously worked as an EMT, they got him to the hospital while he wasn't yet dead, he had like two thousand seizures, was in a coma endlessly, and did, finally, manage to come home but it was in a motorized wheelchair that cost $70,000. While they were working on getting disability, the rent slid for like four months (which we allowed to happen because we are familiar with the speed of the government on these kinds of things -- it takes a while but you will eventually get your money) and she signed up for food stamps and stuff. Things were tight. She got some LiHEAP. A church or something built her husband a wheelchair ramp when he was ready to come home. (We permitted this because it's a "reasonable accomodation" for persons with disabilities even though it's fucking unsightly and screws up the appearance of the outside of my building and ruined the metal railing that matches all the other metal railings in the complex. The reason we permitted it is that there's a $20,000 fine from HUD for "failing to make reasonable accommodations" and you are not the one who gets to decide what reasonable accommodations are. HUD is, and they enjoy the hell out of swinging their Big Hammer Of Excessive Fucking Fines.) She promised to remove the ramp if it was ever not needed in the future but I knew that was a lie the moment she said it. We cut the ramp apart with a sawzall after her husband died and she (a year and a half later) moved out. Disability paid for home nursing to come in daily to help her care for her husband.
Shortly after the aortal tear thing but before the full disability package came through, Tenant came into my office, almost in tears, because she'd been at the grocery and pulled out her Access card (in PA this is "food stamps") which she'd just gotten to pay for their groceries and the person behind her in the store gave her a ration of shit about her having such a fancy ass cellphone while getting food stamps. She'd bought the phone before her husband had his health issues, which of course the person behind her in line at the grocery store couldn't possibly have known.
And these tenants still voted for Trump. MAGA. Or whatever. But the social safety net that she and her husband proudly stated they hadn't ever used a dime of, when they were able-bodied, that thing which they claimed was only for losers and whiners and lazy ass people who just weren't trying hard enough... they took full advantage of that when they needed it (which is WHAT IT IS FOR), received an amount that far exceeded anything they'd ever paid in over their working lifetimes, and still voted in strong opposition to strengthening the social safety net AFTER getting the chance to see what it was like to live with only the frayed fabric of that net between them and homelessness, starvation, lack of medical care, lack of services like a damn fancy motorized wheelchair...
I do not understand people.
I got back this apartment as "ready to rent except for the tile" which was a fucking bald-faced lie. But the tile needed work, that part was true.
The tile is fifty years old, mastic-adhesive stuck onto skimcoat plaster in a tub surround environment. Recipe for ick as the skimcoat plaster disconnects from the underneath plaster and/or the mastic adhesive gets brittle with age and turns loose.
After taking off everything that wiggled, this is what I had as a start...
So the first order of business was to square up the hole and make sure that the endings were on studs so that I could put in new cementboard backer where it was needed. (If the plaster underlayer is too soft or fucked up, I have to tear it out and put in cementboard because the tile cement won't stick to shitted-up, granular, wet, half-rotted [not organic "rotted" but "been wet and dry too many times" rotted] plaster.)
It also needs to be shimmed out to be the same level as the existing surface. In an ideal world, the 7/16 cementboard would be the right size but this is a far from ideal world. So, no. You have to shim that shit.
Not shown is Cleaning All The Crap Off The Tiles So That They Can Be Reset. It involves a utility knife, several blades, some sparks, and a certain amount of wrist pain.
Don't forget to clean off the edges where the tile has to go because if there's grout left on there, the tiles won't all fit when you go to stick them back on.
Take a razorblade scraper and scrape all the mastic adhesive off the sound skimcoat plaster, too.
Stick the tile back on the wall. Take care to match up to existing tile.
And grout after it's dried for 24 hours. Clean up grout. You will still need to caulk seam between tile and tub (normally this is grouted but tub shifts slightly and grout will die but silicone caulk will survive that shit. Removing enough tile to make tub not shift is beyond the scope of the current remodel), let that dry, and then clean all the tile that is visibly filthy.
I'll get an ALL DONE pic for you later and update this. But right now I'm to "silicone caulk, let dry, finish cleaning tile". So that's where the current pictures stop.
And here's ALL DONE.
The half-shower-curtain over the window keeps water from running down between the window and the wall. The blue more-or-less matches the blue tile trim in the bathroom. Also note the cleaning up of the blackened grout seams and the overall cleaning going on here.
Tenant complained that we didn't give her back her whole deposit. *sigh* She also did not remove the wheelchair ramp that she had installed for her husband. A bit of background here.
When they moved in, he was a tattoo artist and she was a wife. He'd run his own business for about twenty years. They were staunch Trump supporters and we'd discussed being self employed and running a business and the problems of healthcare expensiveness when they came to see the apartment.
At that time, and as gently as possible, I had allowed, in my redneckian drawl, that while it might seem "REALLY UNFAIR" for people to get help from the government like SNAP and TANF and WIC and LiHEAP and stuff, in reality, the whole thing about "welfare queens" was pretty much bullshit and that it wasn't an easy life if you were getting government aid. I said as how the benefits weren't all that beneficial, that the assistance office looked down their noses at you, that the entire world was pretty judge-y when you whipped out an Access card at the grocery store, and that the mountain of paperwork needed to keep the benefits was damn near a full-time job in and of itself. I suggested that the state of "Government Aid" was more "starve to death slowly and humiliatingly" than it was "Free iPads And Unlimited Cellphone Data". They did not seem convinced.
So a while later (still tenants of mine), husband has some sort of aortal tear. Usually these are fatal, but wife had previously worked as an EMT, they got him to the hospital while he wasn't yet dead, he had like two thousand seizures, was in a coma endlessly, and did, finally, manage to come home but it was in a motorized wheelchair that cost $70,000. While they were working on getting disability, the rent slid for like four months (which we allowed to happen because we are familiar with the speed of the government on these kinds of things -- it takes a while but you will eventually get your money) and she signed up for food stamps and stuff. Things were tight. She got some LiHEAP. A church or something built her husband a wheelchair ramp when he was ready to come home. (We permitted this because it's a "reasonable accomodation" for persons with disabilities even though it's fucking unsightly and screws up the appearance of the outside of my building and ruined the metal railing that matches all the other metal railings in the complex. The reason we permitted it is that there's a $20,000 fine from HUD for "failing to make reasonable accommodations" and you are not the one who gets to decide what reasonable accommodations are. HUD is, and they enjoy the hell out of swinging their Big Hammer Of Excessive Fucking Fines.) She promised to remove the ramp if it was ever not needed in the future but I knew that was a lie the moment she said it. We cut the ramp apart with a sawzall after her husband died and she (a year and a half later) moved out. Disability paid for home nursing to come in daily to help her care for her husband.
Shortly after the aortal tear thing but before the full disability package came through, Tenant came into my office, almost in tears, because she'd been at the grocery and pulled out her Access card (in PA this is "food stamps") which she'd just gotten to pay for their groceries and the person behind her in the store gave her a ration of shit about her having such a fancy ass cellphone while getting food stamps. She'd bought the phone before her husband had his health issues, which of course the person behind her in line at the grocery store couldn't possibly have known.
And these tenants still voted for Trump. MAGA. Or whatever. But the social safety net that she and her husband proudly stated they hadn't ever used a dime of, when they were able-bodied, that thing which they claimed was only for losers and whiners and lazy ass people who just weren't trying hard enough... they took full advantage of that when they needed it (which is WHAT IT IS FOR), received an amount that far exceeded anything they'd ever paid in over their working lifetimes, and still voted in strong opposition to strengthening the social safety net AFTER getting the chance to see what it was like to live with only the frayed fabric of that net between them and homelessness, starvation, lack of medical care, lack of services like a damn fancy motorized wheelchair...
I do not understand people.
