Estate Sales

Estate sales are a college students dream for findining hidden treasures. Once moving into an old fraternity house with seven bedrooms, my roommates and I entered a dilemia...how were we going to furnish the house. My roomates and I were all on limited budgets and had nothing besides a few old pieces of furniture our parents had passed down to us. At first we decided that we could furnish the house by going to thrift stores or the flee market. We expected to find cool mirrors and other knicknacks for the house that would be no more than thirty or forty dollars. We were highly dissapointed all the things we discovered at thirft stores were at least fifty dollars. We than went to the flee market even the items there were over priced. So after a defeating week of shopping I called my parents and they told me about going to an estate sales. I knew they had bought some of my bedroom furniture at estate sales, but the thought of buying a dead persons things grossed me out. However, I was in a tight squeeze and decided to give it a try. I used the website auctionzip.com to find estate sales that were in my area. Just a tip make sure the listing on the site says estate sale and not auctions. Auctions are typically more expesive and their prices are comparable to estate sales. 

SlumLords: How to Deal with Them

I had always heard stories of landlords in Raleigh who would never fix up their properties and overcharged students in rent.  I believed some of the stories to be true but for the most part thought that everyone was just over exaggerating. After moving into my house I know believe all the crazy stories of landlords because I am currently dealing with one. I now consider my landlord to be a slumlord. The house is not up to code and trying to have him fix anything in the house is nearly impossible. However you can’t change the landlord so you just have to learn how to deal with him. After six months dealing with my landlord I have gathered a list of tips to use when dealing with them.

1.  Try to call your landlord and reason with them: Most of the time they will be unreasonable. But on the slight chance you catch them on a good day they might agree to fix something in your house.

2. When in doubt call your parents: In general this is a good life lesson to learn. If your landlord will not listen to you, than most likely he will listen to your parents.

3. Try to fix as much on your own: If you give your landlord a to do list of things in the house that need to be fixed expect at least half of the list to not be completed. Place priority items that need to be fixed at the top of the list. The other items that your landlord does not fix try to complete on your own. If you work together with your roommates fixing up a house can actually be fun.

4. If there is a gas leak or any immediate danger do not call your landlord call the utility company: I quickly learned this when I began to smell gas in my house. I called my landlord who dismissed the issue. Gas leaks can be serious so I instead went on to call the gas company. It happened to be that there was a gas leak in my house that could have been dangerous if it was not handled in a timely manner.

8. Another man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Twenty Dollars

I always see pins on Pinterest of people who claim to have redone a piece of furniture for only ten dollars. Well seeing as I was on a budget I set out a plan to do the same thing. Since I was now an estate sale master , I found an estate sale for the upcoming weekend and decided to attend. I was running low on my loan amount and only had around twenty dollars to spend so I did not expect to take much home with me. After the bidding began I noticed the auctioneer trying to sell an old desk and vanity for a dollar each. Both of those items were pieces of furniture that I needed.  I had never seen an item go for so low and immediately gave my bid for a dollar for each piece. I barrowed my friends truck and picked up my new pieces of furniture. I was very proud of my new purchases. As I dropped the furniture off I began looking up ideas for how to redue pieces of furniture. The task suddenly seemed a lot larger than I expected. The furniture needed to sanded, primed twice, and then painted. Seeing as I had a full day of myself I quickly began. I went to a local hardwear store (always buy local it is typically cheaper and supports the community) and bought sandpaper for 4 dollars and the paint and primer for 15 dollars. I had some old brushes at home that I was going to use the paint everything. I began to sand the furniture. When sanding make sure to sand with force to take off and previous stains on the wood. After sanding I began priming the furniture. Most pieces of furniture will take at least two coats of prime. I let the primer dry and began painting the furniture. The furniture I required two coats of paint. I was very proud of my finished product. I wanted to give the vanity a more country sheek look similar to something I had scene in pottery barn so I used the extra sandpaper to rough the edges and side up which made the furniture look worn.  I spent approximately twenty dollars for a desk and vanity. Contrary to popular belief the furniture made on Pinterest is possible with time and patience. Give yourself at least two full days to complete the task.

Catching the Possum

My roommates had described seeing this animal before and this had to be the animal that was living in my house. After some research I learned that possums typically live in crawl spaces of houses and climb around in the walls at night.  I was now determined to move this possum it could no longer live in my house. I did not want to kill the possum like Fredrick (the mouse) so I decided to set up a trap. My “genius” neighbors has the idea of setting up a trap made out of peanut butter and hotdogs. This could definitely work the hotdog would attract the possum and the peanut butter would catch the possum but making it’s fur sticking.  The next night I set out the trap, when I returned in the morning I found all the peanut butter was licked away and the hotdog was gone. The possum was smarter than me. Instead of a normal possum roaming around my house I now have a sticky one.

The Beast

“Scratch, scratch, scratch,” this is the constant noise I hear in my house every night. At first I thought maybe it was my roommate doing something in her room or it was the air conditioning. After a while I started to notice the noise more and quickly found out that the noise was not coming from the air condition or my roommate. The noises I had been hearing was coming from some sort of beast that was living in my house.  The animal lived in our second floor crawl space. The creature had been cohabitating with us for a few months and was living off my roommate’s shoes and extra clothes that were stored in the crawl space. I could live with nats and cockroaches and mice but I could not adjust to living with an animal that weighed more than twenty pounds.  One night when I was on my back deck I noticed two little shiny objects staring at me. These objects happened to be two sets of eyes. I stood up to gain a better view of the animal. The animal appeared to weigh around forty pounds, had a grey furr coat, and a long pink tail. I googled the description of the animal and discovered that the animal was a possum.

Mice, Cockroaches, and nats

There are many cures on Pintrest for how to get rid of different types of animals that reside in our homes. Trust me I have tried them all…and they DO NOT WORK. For instance the oh so common tip that vinegar in a cup will attract nats and kill them. This is false, you will be left with the constant smell of vinegar and cups located all around the house. I can typically deal with most animals but for some reason my house has an over abundance of them. Everytime a light is turned on their will be the black spots that glide across the wall or floor. No worries it’s just a cockroach. At first this scared me how could I live with these disgusting bugs but after a while I grew to accept the fact that the cockroaches were around to stay. No matter how many types of bug spray or homemade contraptions I made on Pinterest the cockroaches just were not leaving. After finally adjusting to the cockroaches I began to notice little brown drops all over the kitchen and near certain holes in the wall. After a few more weeks I discovered that I was living with mice. I could deal with cockroaches but mice was just unacceptable. I quickly called my landlord who brought over mice traps one week later. In this one week span of waiting for the traps I began to accept the one mouse that would come out and chill on the ground near me as I was watching television. My roommate and I decided we would name the mouse Fredrick. This was our first issue naming an animal automatically makes you attached to them. The next week we set out all the mouse traps not thinking about how these traps could potentially kill our new friend, Fredrick. After returning home from work one day I noticed Fredrick was stuck the trap and was struggling to live. This immediately broke my heart. I had to save Fredrick. I tried scrapping him off the trap but was only making matters worse.  I decided to have my roommate run over with her car to end his suffering. We felt terrible for him and made a proper grave out of toothpick in the front yard.

Move-In Day

My excitement quickly turned into panic after entering the house. I am not really sure how to describe the condition of the house but just imagine a house that has been used by a fraternity for seven years and has never been cleaned up. There was broken furniture, old clothes/rags, beer can, and cigarette butts everywhere. The house had the lovely smell of urine and beer. This was not the house I remembered touring in April. As I held the key to my new home I thought to myself there is absolutely no way I can live here. I called my parents who were coming down the next day to move me in they did not believe me when I described how bad of shape the house was in. When my parents came in the next day they tried to be optimistic but realized that this task of cleaning up the house was going to be large of a task for them. We immediately called my landlord and pulled out the lease stating that the house needed to be in livable condition. We agreed that there was a large amount of work that needed to be done. Just to get things straight my landlord is a slumlord so maybe only half the items on the to do list were completed. After moving a few pieces of furniture in and painting over the red paint in my room. I began to see the potential in the house. After a few week I started to fall in love with the house. It wasn’t about the condition of the house it was all about the people that live in the house and the memories that are made their. Not to be sappy but this house is something I won’t forget from the hazement (it’s actually our basement) to Fredrick the mouse some of my favorite memories in college have taken place in this house.