Apartment Manager Adventures

Hello everyone,

Enforcer here. I think I have mentioned that I pretty much do all of the maintenance of this building, which varies greatly. I am amazed at the things that can go wrong in an apartment or house. It keeps me busy, that is for sure. One benefit to all these problems I see and fix in peoples apartments is that I have become very familiar with the common problems and over time become proficient at solving them. (I often have tenants comment on how I know exactly where to go and what to do to solve various problems) There are also a lot of little tricks I pick up here and there over time.

Looking at the searches people are using to find this site it appears that some of you are interested in learning to repair common household things, or may be interested in little tips that help things run a little more smoothly, so I’ve decided to start a new category on the site called “Quick Tips”. Within this category, I will be sharing the secrets and little things that you can do to make things in your home work better, or things you can do when working on common problems in the home to make the job easier.

So, today, my Quick Tip is involving any kind of wooden furniture that has drawers without wheels or rails in them. (The common, wood on wood slide out drawers.)

These drawers can often become stubborn and refuse to slide open and closed smoothly…

Please click below to read on…

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Just a quick little story.

With winter creeping in on us here in Alaska, I’m reminded of something that happened last year about this time.

Our units are equipped with a switch inside the apartment that controls a power plug at the apartments corresponding parking space. This allows the tenant to flip a switch to power their vehicles block heater in the winter. Many tenants just flip the switch and leave it on all the time.

One day, my wife and I came home from running some errands, and we saw something that surprised us quite a bit…
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Being the man of the house, I do the majority of the maitenance in the building. I like to think that I’m pretty good at most common maintenance items. I have a decent knowledge of most of the buildings problems. I install dishwashers, do electrical repairs, patch holes in walls, fix tiles, install lighting fixtures, etc.

By far, my worst category of repair is plumbing. Most of the time I stumble through things just fine installing disposals, repairing pipes under the sink, replacing sink faucets and valves. But plumbing problems have certainly been what give me the most trouble and frustration.

Today, I’m going to tell you about what I consider the worst experience I have faced with plumbing. You see, there was an apartment that had a slight drip coming from the shower faucet.. It was an unusual drip. It would only drip if the knob was in a certain position. I have replaced this type of shower valve in the past in other apartments, but…

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