What happens if the tenant does not vacate on the due date?

Mr Angel and I are project managing a renovation for someone else and the tenant was given notice back in May to vacate yesterday. She asked for an extension of two weeks, the owner and PM have agreed to allow one more week. I have rebooked all the trades for the following week. So far it's doable, but Mr Angel and I can only be on leave from our employment for a set time which expires after two weeks in July. We have to do a lot of the handyman type work ourselves between tradies.

What happens if Ms Recalcitrant Tenant is still there when we turn up to start ripping up the old floor tiles and carpets, removing the old stove and demolishing the kitchen and bathroom and repainting? The PM and owner both believe that it will be unrentable in its current condition, (except to potheads) leaving the owner seriously out of pocket.

Even if QCat awards vacant possession after a potential future court hearing, it will be too late to do the renovation as all the tradesmen will have to move on to their other booked jobs and we will have to go back to our regular day jobs.

Mr Angel will happily go fishing this week instead of demolishing everything, but this fails the owner.

We could drop to a one week shorter version reno if we need a Plan B, but then that will be dependant upon available tradesmen who have not been booked for that week. In the mean time, I cant purchase any materials because we don't yet know whether we will be doing Plan A or Plan B and they are not the same.

 

Tenant would still have possession until they move out. Without a court order you would probably be trespassing.

 

Tough situation. Unfortunately there is nearly no guarantee of when you will get possession back from a tenant before they hand back the keys and possession.

Court order or consent are pretty much the two options.

 

Thanks Gentlemen, that's what I thought. Too bad for the owner, hey.

 

Nice fish dinner though.

 

If they let you in, just do what you have too, if they are playing games......tell them you are not.....

 

Hey @datto, I was thinking of you this time yesterday morning. Your charm and charisma might work on them. Strathpine is so classy.

 

We had a ripping good time today. Boris, the Beastly gas stove sits silently in the back yard waiting his funeral procession to the local tip in the morning, where he will join all his friends from the kitchen cabinets and bench tops who went there earlier today.

Mr Angel was whinging yesterday about not being able to access the house for a week and a half. He was bored. I reminded him that he could have gone fishing whenever he liked, he reminded me that it rained all last week. I had the best time of my life throwing bits of soggy chipboard and torn plasterboard into the big pit at our tip. I swear I only puked twice, each time it was the smell of yesterday's curry sauce curdling on one of the the cabinet doors.

Tomorrow we tackle the old carpet. Gosh I love this......

 

My tip for carpet is to cut it into smaller pieces while it is still in place. I removed whole rooms on my last reno and it was a PITA. I should have cut it first but then I sold it on gumtree so kind of glad I didn't cut it

 

No one would want this carpet

 

Eep! Mine was a bit dirty and a dog had puppies on it but it wasn't as gross as that!

 

Just confirming: It's NOT my property.

We are giving it the Cherie Barber type treatment. All those free CB and Nathan B Utube videos come to mind.

 

Once we finished the main two-week job as required in Plan A, we tackled the bathroom.
We traced the water damage from the shower, under the living room wall and all the way across the living room, wicked through the carpet and underlay.

The carpet came up easily but the underlay was difficult to remove. The tile removers who tackled the old tiles in the kitchen ran their machine over all the rubber that we couldn't shift the day before. We let the timbers dry for a week.

Mr Angel was thinking with his povo mindset and wanted to redo the bathroom himself "on the weekend" . I asked my tile layer if he could replace the shower walls and waterproof them after the plumber was done. Yep - it took another two or three days while we were at work.

The PM arranged two quotes from building companies to do what we did except with a total bathroom replacement. The owner will save around $40,ooo as the toilet was recently replaced so we kept it, and we haven't replaced the linen closet in the bathroom (yet). The quote shown to me for a new kitchen was $19800 and I bought one from Ikea for $3000 including oven and hotplate. Double that to allow for painting, tiling, plumber and electrician, and add a few more K$$ for assembly and installation - I cant get over that $19800 for a kitchen that is less than 7m2 with only 5m of walls and the rest is doorways.

 

Are you charging the owner? Big job to do for someone else...

 

O yeah. We had no idea how much to charge.It is enough to buy some nice goodies though.

This is also an experiment to see if we are up to making a business out of similar when we retire from our day jobs. It would have been a piece of cake if we could blast through unimpeded in three weeks straight, even easier if we live onsite.

 

Do you or Mr Angel have a builders licence? This is something my partner and I have thought about doing but the licencing side of things is an issue

 

We looked into it when talking to the owner several months ago and it didn't look like we needed one at that stage. The project did grow over time though from what we were originally asked to do, which was arrange the tradies for "a couple of jobs", like replace the carpet and get it all repainted. The owner was quoted around $25k and Mr Angel said: I can do that for ten. It snowballed from there.

We would take it seriously if we decide to make a business of it . At the moment the plan is to buy a few sad old houses and renovate them while we live there, selling later for a tax free profit and moving onto a new project.

 

I'm sure you have already thought of it, but I hope you've got basic business insurance.

 

Wouldn’t Angel need to have a business first to get business insurance? Also, small business insurance may cover things Angel may not need like vehicle cover etc.

This project sounds more like ‘mates helping out mates’ (with a bit of project management and minor diy) rather than an actual business.

 

Exactly.

We have owned businesses in the past.