I cannot tell a lie. I got almost nothing done this week on The Maple House. Most of my week was spent taking care of medical appointments. I did submit earnest money for the new duplex we have under contract! I also scheduled our home inspection for next week! This is really happening! So exciting. The best part of this duplex is that one of the units is already occupied, so we will immediately begin generating enough income to cover the mortgage, insurance, property tax, utilities, plus a little extra. We’re about to be landlords!
This week, I did stain the new doors we bought for the house. When I first started staining, I was horrified at how beat up they were. There were dings everywhere that hadn’t been visible before the stain. But as I kept going, I started to love the look. I don’t think new looking doors would fit the house. Now I think they look great. Since these will be exterior doors, I’m going to have to go over them a few times with polyurethane. 
I took some time to work on the woodwork in the downstairs living room. It is awful. It has been stained so many times, so many different colors. It has runs and people have signed their names in pen on the wood (who does that?!). I had tried to clean the grime some time ago, but although it significantly brightened the wood, I wasn’t satisfied. I started sanding, but that exposed that there was some type of waxy finish that was not at all fun to sand off. It was taking forever, so I scraped it with a carbide scraper and that did the trick! It was almost down to bare wood! It looked awesome. Now I can give it a fresh stain, a light coat of poly and call it a day. 
I also was able to complete painting our soffit on the back entrance (the one I did myself), and the soffit on the front lower level of the porch. There is still some painting left to do, but it’s coming together.
As you know, I have spent countless hours scraping paint in the unit. As much as I know I will love the woodwork once it’s exposed, this was a misguided attempt. But, it’s too late to turn back now. I thought there has to be a better way and read about the Silent Paint Remover in an article from This Old House. After reading tens of reviews, articles, watching videos, etc, I decided to get one for myself. It’s spendy, but I got it and it is worth every penny!!! Removing paint is still a massive amount of work, but this saves so much time!
This week, I had a HVAC company come to do tune-ups on our furnaces. We have not been able to get the one for the upper unit (where we live) working as of yet and it has been getting pretty chilly at night. The news was not great. The furnace for the upper unit is newer but was never installed. There is aluminum foil connecting the furnace to the ducting and also a piece of plywood. This getup is held together by a hammer and wrench wedged against the basement wall. The installation will cost a little over $2,000. The lower unit is working but the furnace is incredibly old and is cracked, meaning there’s a very small gas leak. The new furnace and install will cost about $3,000. Well, great.
We decided that we will schedule the install for the furnace servicing the area where we live and get some heat. We’re going to wait on the downstairs unit, but it will have to be done before new tenants move in at the absolute latest. Maybe after we get our tax refund?
I had a guy come out to give me a quote on leveling some of our sidewalk from the house to the public sidewalk out front. There is one portion of the concrete that has sunk 4-6 inches into the ground on one side (thank you, rats, for taking all the dirt from under my sidewalk). Everytime I work outside (which is often), I trip on it. A couple people doing work at the house have tripped on it as well. We spent all this money having new railings on the decks and the stairs going to the sidewalk to ensure the safety of our future tenants, so this step is just unacceptable. The quote was $850!!! To level one chunk of concrete with some foam! You have to be kidding me. That’s almost the cost of our actual furnace. No way. In the photo below, you can see the unlevel action between the slabs on the left side.
Overall, this week has been slow-moving and a bit frustrating. The furnace news was overwhelming and the concrete quote was the icing on this shit cake. The good news is that once these furnaces are replaced, we shouldn’t have to worry about them for at least a decade.
