DIY Repair For Landlords on a Budget

We all fill vacant properties with the hopes that it will be returned to us in at least half decent condition. Unfotunately it doesn't always work out that way. You can screen tenants by reviewing their credit history, criminal background, and income verifications but wouldn't it be nice if we could pull an "Are You Going to Trash My House Report"? Yes, it would be nice but that doesn't exist.

Last fall we had to evict a tenant for the first time. They rarely paid rent on time and ultimatley stopped paying all together. So there we were with our largest rental (with the largest mortage payment) coming up vacant nine months before the lease should have run out. To add insult to injury there was quite a bit of damage to the home.  One of the things that would have been a very expensive problem to fix was the upstairs bath tub, which looked like this...

In this picture I was actually in the middle of attempting to clean it for the second time. In a perfect world (with unlimited resources) we would just call up the bath fitter folks and cover the whole thing with a shiny new tub/shower. But our resources are not unlimited so....here's a little DIY secret for you in case you run into an issue like this with a ceramic tub.

Ceramic tub and tile paint. Using this product was fairly simple and very inexpensive, I believe we paid around thirty dollars for it. My one suggestion is be sure to open the windows, it has very strong fumes! Here is the end result.