Credit Check for Tenants?


Hey small landlords. Do you do a credit check on your prospective tenants, and if so, what agency do you use (and what do you like/dislike about them?).

Categories: Renters
By saturdayrenogirl | 09/08/2009 9:45 AM | Comment

Advice for New Landlords


My husband and I are on the verge of renting out the top-floor of our two family row house. We’ve been renters before, but never landlords. Where do homeowners go to learn about being landlords in NYC? We know a lot of the rules just from here, and common sense, and from being tenants, but is there a book, website, other advice out there on our obligations? And where do you get those standard lease forms & applications, anyway.

Categories: Tenants
By saturdayrenogirl | 08/21/2009 2:59 PM | Comment

bathroom heating?


Heating in the bathroom: any opinions on what will heat the space best (there’s no radiator in there, and in any case the hot water system isn’t going to help in summer).

Radiant heating seems like it could work, but how long does it take to actually heat the room? Would electric work or does it have to be hydro? How expensive are such systems, anyway (the bathroom is 77 sq ft, but the bathroom and shower will take up a good third of that floorspace). If we’ve already put in the subfloor, is it too late?

Otherwise, any opinions on the merits, advantages and disadvantages of electric baseboard heating vs some kind of electric wall heater? Do such things exist that aren’t horrendously ugly?

(Aesthetically, we’d love the towel rack kind of heaters, but ones that aren’t tacky or cheap looking are way out of our budget. I’ve yet to see a heat lamp that doesn’t make me shudder out of ugliness).

Categories: Heating
By saturdayrenogirl | 09/25/2007 9:50 PM | Comment

mason recommendations?


We need a mason for two jobs on the same wall: rear ground floor brick of our 1902 brick/frame row house.

Project a) this room was at one point a kitchen, and the original windows were removed and replaced by windows of above-counter height, and the rest of the space for the window was bricked over. We’ve changed this back into a bedroom, and want to put in new windows, restoring them to original size. We also think the lintel or whatever it’s called above the window that supports the brick might need to be replaced, since it’s wood and the brick above doesn’t look so great.

project b) there is a bathroom on the interior of that floor that we’re venting to the outside. So we need a hole in the brick at the appropriate height for the duct.

Can anyone recommend someone to do this? I saw “Juan” recommended for some masonry work, but not sure if this is different stuff than what he does.

Categories: Masonry
By saturdayrenogirl | 09/15/2007 1:31 PM | Comment

bathroom exhaust fan installation?


Frequent lurker here coming out of the closet…

We are doing a gut reno of our brick/frame house, doing the work ourselves. We’re currently working on the ground floor (interior) bathroom. We got a Panasonic whisper fan, choosing a pretty powerful one not for the size of the bathroom, but because there’s a pretty long run to the outside (25 feet). We get to install the duct ourselves, and decided to go with flexible aluminum ducting, but we’re having a hard time installing the actual duct to the fan. It’s driving me (and really, my dear husband) nuts. The duct just seems to big to clamp on to the duct outlet on the fan.

Is there a secret that’s not in the manual that anyone can help out with?

Categories: Kitchen & Bath
By saturdayrenogirl | 08/25/2007 3:28 PM | Comment