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Calling all homeowners - have some questions

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delalluvia:
OK, as many of you know, I moved into my mother's house.

I've very little knowledge of how stuff works when it comes to houses, in regards to repair, city services, etc.

e.g. I've lived in apartments all of my adult life.  If I had trash or a bunch of trash, I took it to the dumpster and that was that.  If a window broke, I called the manager and it was fixed before I was home from work.

Now I have window screens with holes in them, broken individual panes of window glass and a trash can given to me by the city.

Can you just buy window screens?  Or do they have to be custom made?  

Who fixes broken panes of glass?  Is it a window repair person or a glass repair person?

I've just moved all of my stuff into my mother's home and am trashing a lot of her stuff that couldn't be sold or given away or kept as a memento.

The trashcan is long since filled and I have bags and bags and boxes and boxes of stuff piled around it.

Will the trash collectors take it like that?  

Mandy21:
{{Del}}  Bless your heart for being so brave.  I don't have the courage to move from my little home that I love so much, 7 blocks over into my family home that's been vacant for so long.  Makes me cry every time I go over there and try to clean out stuff, even 2 years after her passing.  Thankfully, both homes are long-since paid for, so there's no time constraints on just letting it sit there as long as my brother keeps paying the maintenance and utility bills from our folks' account.

To answer your questions,

1.  At your local hardware store, they sell window screening in a roll.  If you're handy at all, you can do this job yourself.  You'll also need to buy a screen roller, which is a funny-looking thing that resembles a pizza cutter, and some spline.  You have to yank out the old, then cut the new screening to size, lay it in place on the floor, take the spline and press it into place in the seams.  Then put the screen back in place in the window.  Failing that, you CAN just buy some screening, and patch the particular holes, but in my experience, it's easier and more satisfying to do the whole job rather than just part of it.  Plus it looks so much better.

2.  Broken windows would need to be replaced by a window repair person.  I'm sure you can find them in your phonebook.  They'll come to your house and size up the job and how best to fix it.  Some charge by the hour, some charge by the job, but they ALL give free estimates, so give them a call and let them come out and take a look at it.

3.  Long as you keep paying your mom's trash bill, they'll take almost anything, regardless of volume, in terms of bags.  You will have to deal separately with extremely large items, or appliances, or any hazardous materials like paint or turpentine, etc.  But your trash company can tell you exactly who to call in your area to deal with those things.

4.  Best advice I can give you, if you've got the money to afford it, is to look in your phone book under "Handyman Services", and have them come out and price up ALL of the jobs that need to be done.  If you find a good handyman that you trust, you're set for life.

I really know how difficult this must be for you -- such a gigantic change in your own lifestyle, as well as dealing with your grief.

I'm glad you came on here to ask questions cause that means you really want to do a good job at this.  And I'm sure there's others who will chime in with their advice as well, so keep asking those homeowner questions.  It's a tough job to do by yourself, that's for sure.  But hopefully, in the end, it will be worth it for you to have both the good memories of your mom, as well as a beautiful place to lay your hat.

Shakesthecoffecan:
Del, my belated sympathies to you and best wishes on this new adventure.

I think most of your maintenance issues can be handled by a handiperson, friend or neighbors may be a good place to start, or try other sources. You may run into a dud or two, that can be expected. They may also see things that may or may not need attention, be wary and get a second opinion if you feel unsure.

I would call the trash collection service where you live and find out about pick up days and what they may or may not take, like hazardous waste, batteries, old tires, etc.

You may also want to check with the tax office and the insurance agency to make sure all the taxes are up to date and you have full coverage if you have a loss.

delalluvia:
Thank you for your kind thoughts.

And also, thank you for the info.  How the heck do you get a hole in a window screen?  A bird flying into it?   ???

I'm also trying to unload about 2 gallons of used syringes and half a dozen boxes of unused syringes, lancets and about 50 bottles of partially used pills.

There's next to no info online about how to legally dispose of these - it's all per state regulations apparently.

Guess I'll have to call my local pharmacy.

As far as handymen...well, let's just say I prefer professional contractors.  That way, I'm just a customer they know little about as opposed to a handyman who will eventually find out I'm living all alone in a house with windows that don't lock and a front door that's pretty much decorative and not much in the way of security and the fact that I'm not home most all of the day.

I know how you feel Mandy,  I wouldn't want to be doing what I'm doing if I had a choice, but I don't.

Within a month of moving in with my mom, my friend who graciously let me use her garage for storage (rather than me pay for a storage unit for all my stuff) decided to move 500 miles away.  In July.  So I was already on short notice on storage.  Then about six weeks ago she let me know that her plans had accelerated and she was now moving at the end of May.  So being completely unready to tear my mom's house apart and get rid of her stuff, I was forced to have a garage sale and try to sell most of my mother's stuff, have charity orgs and junk men come and haul away the rest and now have the movers move my stuff into her home, all within 6 weeks of her passing away.

So now I'm trying to rearrange things to fit - and completely remove her presence from the house.

In a way, all the last minute scrambling has been a blessing in disguise.  On the one hand, I'm secretly seething, sure that my inability to grieve undisturbed is going to come back to bite me and on the other hand, all the work that needs to be done so that the house is in good enough shape to support my daily routine keeps me from spending hours haunted and sad among my mother's things.

I'm unused to living in a house.  I'm used to being a single woman, living alone in an apartment where my privacy is sacrosanct and my friends and family NEVER drop by announced.

But because my mother made friends and had a support system among her neighbors, they continue to drop by - unannounced - to shoot the shit, see how I'm doing and other such things.  Which is nice, but disturbing, because I need my downtime and the freedom to lay around in next to nothing, without the fear of unplanned visitors.

If they continue, it will prove interesting.  My mother was a kinda-Christian woman, a Last Supper print on the wall, quotes from the bible framed that kinda thing.  Not sure what the neighbors and family members are going to make of my nude prints, Ancient Roman/Medieval Japanese Sexuality coffee table books and pagan shrines.

serious crayons:
A few general ideas:

1) Pick a good local hardware store close to you whose employees offer good, cheerful, patient, friendly service (many hardware stores are really good about this, but not all). Go to that one for most of your hardware needs and get to know the people there. You'll find you can walk in and say, for example, "I've got holes in the screen on my front door, how difficult would it be for me to replace the screen? What do I use to do it?" They'll give you an honest assessment, then show you exactly what you need to purchase if you decide to do it, explaining the pros and cons of various methods. I just did this at my own local hardware store for a wallpaper-removal project. Don't try this at a Home Depot -- they're too vast and confusing and understaffed for someone who doesn't really know what they're doing (I include myself in this category).

2a) Hardware stores are also really good about making recommendations. Need a window repairer? Call the hardware store and ask for names. Yes, they probably are honoring business relationships but they wouldn't keep giving out names of people who repeatedly drew complaints, because their relationship with customers is more important.

2) The vast majority of handymen are trustworthy, and MUCH cheaper than their alternatives. I hire handymen pretty frequently, even for jobs I could probably do myself, because things that would take them five minutes would take me all afternoon (including a trip to the hardware store) and my time is really limited. The way I found mine was on Angie's List. This would be a really good time for you to join Angie's List, Del. It's a website that costs about $50 a year to join. As a member, you can look up "handyman" or "window repair" or even "dentist," and it gives you a list of people near you, along with other members' ratings and comments about that provider. It's great for two reasons: you can tell a lot from the ratings, and announcing to someone you are thinking about hiring that you are on AL puts him on notice that you'll be rating his services publicly. Some providers even give discounts to AL members. Membership is kind of pricey, but you don't necessarily need to belong for more than a year or so, once you have lined up people you trust.

3) Different handymen have different strengths. In Chicago, I had one who could do only the most minor carpentry jobs, but he was a former plumber. Handyman gold! He charged $45 an hour for plumbing projects as opposed to the $200 or so a regular plumber would charge. I hired a different guy for my more complicated carpentry-related projects. I hated to leave those guys. But now I've found a couple of guys -- one who is pretty good at a lot of different basic things, and yet another one (!) who used to be a plumber. I'm guessing the latter guy had some personal problems, and he's not always really reliable about showing up when he says he's going to. But he's nice enough, and for the amount he charges me for plumbing jobs he could be a werewolf for all I care. I used to hire regular plumbers pretty frequently and now will do anything I can to avoid it.

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