So fresh and so clean!

Hey, I forgot to post the after shot from my horrible bathroom!

Remember this super scary bathroom? Yeah, neither do I. That's why I took a picture of it, so I'd remember how terrible it was.

But here's what it looks like now!

You could actually get cleaner than you used to be in this room! Amazing what a couple hours and a couple hundred dollars will do for a space. No picture of the shower, because it looks like it used to look....but I covered it up with a new shower curtain, so that helps. 

Moral of the story: paint all the things! Second moral: don't be afraid of ugly! It can be fixed. Usually.

Crash!

First of all, everyone is fine.

Second, this was not a mess I pictured having to clean up when I started being a landlady.

"What the heck?", you say. "A drunken night of carousing by your young, hip, tattooed tenants?"

Nope. A minivan. With kids in the back seat. That tried to pass a bus and didn't see the oncoming traffic, so it swerved up into our yards (plural) to avoid a head-on collision.

We recently added two charming craftsman bungalows to our empire; they happen to be on a busy corner. Usually busy means that you hear sirens on their way to deal with someone else's disaster, not that you have a minivan in your yard. Here you can see the path of the van, with the trail of van debris. You can also see both of our houses; aren't they adorable? A little paint, a little landscaping, and they'll be the cutest houses on the block!

We're lucky, though. No one was hurt; none of the dogs were in the front yards; the houses also escaped. Going to need some new railings, though. That pole you see under the back of the van used to be a metal railing.

 And those steps didn't used to look like that.

Moral of the story: don't drive like you're in Fast and the Furious, Northside Edition. Other moral of the story: don't put in fancy, expensive railings if you live on a busy corner. And maybe skip the expensive retaining wall too...