Bed Bugs

Our vacation ended on a bit of an unnerving note.

A voice mail from one of our tenants (our good friend Mr. Luke Hotchkiss), alerted us to his discovery of bed bugs in his room.

There is a bit of history involved. A couple of months ago, another tenant came down and told us he was throwing his bed out because he found bed bugs. He said he was doing this along with 'bombing' his room. I asked if he needed anything from me, to which he responded, "no, I got it handled".

So, I let it go.

Then, came Luke's report.

I have decided that, based on all of the information I have gathered through research, we need to 'clean the slate'. What I mean by that is remodel the upstairs rentals such that they are 'pest resistant'.

The only way to do this effectively is to evict everyone and do some dramatic work. I told everyone about this on Sunday evening. The eviction papers will be delivered tomorrow.

I'm going to take out all of the carpet and replace it all with laminate flooring. We got all 1400 square feet of it today at Costco with the help of an $8 per box coupon. I'm also going to retrim the entire place, taking extra care to caulk shut all cracks! This is where the little suckers like to hide. When I have everything stripped out, I'm going to have a professional exterminator come in and spray the strongest stuff possible. I'm going to remove all of the switchplate covers and spray there as well, them replace them with sealing gaskets.

A couple of the guys asked me last night if they could come back. I said, "I don't see why not!" I don't want to eliminate yet more affordable housing in NoPo, I simply want to ensure the quality of the housing available. However small my part is.

On top of it all, the last thing we want is the vermin migrating down to our part of the house!

Moral Outrage?

If you don't know moral outrage, watch this.



If you don't have time to watch the whole thing, at least watch the first 12 minutes. You will learn how close to home this is.

Out Of Dormancy?

Ouch! It has been a long time since I blogged!

I suppose I have not been inspired to write anything in this venue that I wouldn't have already shared elsewhere.

I just got back from a great vacation! I think I will blog about that on my 'Ketah Adventures' blog (which has also been dormant for a long time).

I just read this:

Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense. - Proverbs 12:11

It fits well with something that emerged in my rest: I need to set aside the extraneous and unnecessary things in my life in order to embrace things of value.

More to come.