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Our terrible renter neighbors are GONE!

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I’m very pleased to say that our awful renter neighbors moved out last week! Yeah! I think it was Friday the 19th of March when I woke up to see a big moving van outside of the house.

They were about to be evicted on the 23rd so I guess they took the hint and moved out on their own.

I can’t believe how much stress both my husband and I were living under while they were in the house beside us. The guy was a known criminal who’d robbed his own dad and sister and had just gotten out of jail before moving in beside us. We were living with our doors locked all the time and didn’t feel comfortable leaving the house without anyone being home.

It was terrible!

You know what .. when they moved out they must have stolen the two glass chandeliers that was made the 89 year old home owner when she used to work in a glass factory. They were nice chandeliers too. Disgusting that they were stolen … but of course after the first renters broke park of one of them you’d have thought the family would have removed the chandeliers before renting the house out again (to even worse people as it turned out).

When the home owners gained entry into the house (they had to wait for the sheriff to officially turn the house back over to them so that didn’t happen until last Friday) they found a mess.

They say they’re going to sell the house, but for now they’re looking for free insurance quotes just to cover things while the house stands empty.

I’m so happy that they aren’t going to rent again. We’ve had two bad renter neighbors in a row because the home owners didn’t check out their prospective renters properly. I could only imagine how bad a third renter would be! Thankfully we don’t have to go through that again!

Have you lived next door to bad neighbors? Ones that made you scared to leave your house?

I hate it when scammers come to the door!

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I think – no I know – we just had a scammer come to our door.

My husband and I were sitting in the living room watching TV (darn House rerun!) and we heard a knock at the door. Of course this got our dog barking and Chaos erupted (as it does just about every time someone comes to the door).

We opened the door and found a guy standing on the porch with a clip board. He said he had a good look at the brick work on our house and that we were in serious need of his companies services. He said we had some cracks between the bricks that looked serious and that they needed to be taken care of soon or we’d have draught problems in the house.

The problem is … it’s dark outside and he didn’t appear t have a flash light, nor did our outdoor security lights turn on when he check out the side of the house (as he said he did) … so we know he didn’t really look at the brick work on our house and we also know that while we do have a few cracks in the brickwork none of them are in the places he said we had them. On top of that the guy had acne so bad that he should be at home applying accutane rather than bothering us!

I hate it when people try to scam home owners. You know, like those companies that try to sell you a gas or oil home heating contract, locking you in at set prices for five years and then the price of gas goes down? Argh

I think we’re just going to stop answering the door when it looks like the person knocking is some kind of salesperson.

We’re going to have to do some exterior maintenance on the house this year

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I think this is the year that we’re going to do some work on the outside of the house. There’s some areas that have needed work for a few years and I don’t think we can ignore them much longer.

Our house is triple brick. Actually it’s an older home, built in 1927 which of course means that it’s all lathe and plaster and of course that triple brick. Outside of the house there’s about three feet of foundation? that’s parged and the parging or cement is starting to crumble in some areas. So I think we’re going to have to re-parge part of the exterior.

While we’re at it we might spruce up the look of the house too. I’ve always thought house with exterior shutters looked quite nice … even just cosmetic ones that doesn’t actually close. Perhaps we’ll price some exterior shutters and see if they fit our budget.

I’ve also toyed with the idea of moving some of the plants around in the garden. I created our raised garden beds back in 2002 so many of the plants are now quite mature and they are crowding out some of the smaller plants. I think if I move a few plants around the garden will look quite nice. That will be a big job that will have to be done mainly by me … so we’ll see if I’m feeling up to it in about a month or so.

Are you planning on doing some work on the exterior of your house this year too? Perhaps some maintenance work like the parging I discussed above or possibly putting in a garden or deck?

March Break is here and it’s like Spring in Toronto!

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Well March Break is in full swing here in Toronto!

I’m home most of the day usually I only see young kids and teenagers early in the morning and between three thirty and four thirty in the afternoon. Well at least in large numbers!

The weather’s been so nice here this week that the kids are out ALL of the time! Parading around in their new urban clothing, skateboard, rollar blading, and bicycling.

I guess if we were having our typical winter I’d barely see all the kids … I mean, usually we have a foot or two of snow and there’s usually one or two snow and ice storms! This year however it’s like Spring in Toronto. It got up to 16 Celsius today (60 F) and it’s supposed to be warm all week!

Oh and my plants in my garden are coming back to life! My chives and several other plants (maybe early irises?) are bursting out of the ground and many of my roses have tiny leaf buds! This doesn’t normally happen until April.

I’ve even seen quite a few people walking around in shorts!

Yes we Canadians are optimistic! LOL I think it’s still a little cool for shorts, but when you think about it, it’s usually well below zero at this time of year so hitting 16 C (60 F) really is like early summer.

So … is it march Break in your area too? Did you make any plans? Holidays? Or are you home with the kids trying to keep them busy?

Fingers crossed that the awful renter neighbors next door will be gone

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I’m just waiting for the house next door to ours to be empty! We got word from the home owners that they are kicking out or rather having the awful renters next door evicted!

It was supposed to happen yesterday according to the home owners but it doesn’t look like the sheriff showed up to evict them. I’m not sure what happened there … but I know the home owners won their case, so the scummy neighbors should be gone very soon!

I just hope that they don’t cause trouble when they get kicked out. These people are really bad – I would not be surprised if they have a gun in the house … yeah so if I do see the sheriff and or any police outside when they are being evicted I think I’m going to either go upstairs or to the basement and hang out there until it’s over. Hmm maybe I should check on our life insurance before all this goes down? LOL

Have you ever had terrible neighbors that you just wanted to be gone? Seriously, if these people found a way to stay or delay their eviction we might just put our house up for sale … yes, they’re that bad.

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