Our relationship with our landlords turned sour after an incident with the ceiling. I wrote them to let them know that there was some sort of problem and the ceiling paint was cracking. When they saw the image, Mrs. Landlord accused it of having been there for a while and us of keeping it from them while the damage accumulated. Then, when they came over to expect it, Mrs. Landlord seemed very nonplussed about the number of pictures we had hanging on the wall.

We’d asked about hanging pictures on the wall and was never told that there was a problem. Maybe they were never actually okay with that (we asked the realtor who set everything up, though I can’t remember if we asked before or after it was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Landlord) or maybe they just thought we would put up one or two. Every time we’ve seen them or talked to them since, they’ve commented on the number of pictures we have hung up.

Last week we got a document outlining the cleaning requirements upon our exit. It is like no checklist I’ve seen before. Somehow, we have to get the fridge out of its cubby-hole to clean behind it. That’s just asking for us to do some damage to the ground. They want us to scrub the walls top to bottom. They want us to clean the garage top to bottom, even though they plan on tearing it down as soon as we leave (the week Lain was born, they wanted us to clear it so they could tear it down then, which they never actually seemed to do). The walls and such are also weird because they plan to do a remodel as soon as we leave. Indeed, the whole reason they demand us to move out early is that they are figuring on four months of remodeling.

The bad news for us is that we paid a whopping $4,000 deposit on the place. That actually related to the previous owners, who didn’t want a dog and wanted us to put down the money to recarpet the whole place if it was necessary. Anyway, there’s a lot of money they can keep if they work it right. But if that were their game, it doesn’t comport with what they’ve done so far. In fact, they gave us $2,000 of he money back already yesterday. (They thought the $4,000 deposit was ridiculous, but went ahead and took it since it was there. They also had the option of jacking up rent by $100 a month, but chose not to.)

So I don’t think it’s a money-grab. They just have weird expectations for a place that they’re about to do some serious work on. Or maybe this is their way of registering protest about the nails.