doityerself
New Member
Hello, thanks for reading my thread.
My husband and I rented an apartment in Pittsburgh beginning in February of this year. Actually, we took over a lease of the previous tenants who moved away for new jobs out of the area. We have had several issues upon moving in that we aren't sure how to handle.
First, I moved into the apartment sight unseen. I'd shared lots of photos with the previous tenants (who had posted the ad on Craigslist and handled everything up until signing the actual lease). I never saw a photo of the bathroom so I was very unpleasantly surprised when I saw it in person. There were major cracks in the plaster, a non-working light fixture, ugly paint, peeling 'paint' in the tub and a chipped, peeling, painted over ceramic tile surround. The landlord "fixed it" by replacing one walls drywall, replaced the mirror/light fixture (we paid for the fixture, he paid for the new mirror). We went about 3 weeks with no lights in the bathroom aside from a small dangerous lamp with a BURNT THROUGH lampshade until he finally came in to "fix" the issue. He had this guy, Steve, do the work for him. He did an okay job, so it seemed. He also primed the whole bathroom with heavy duty primer, which was fine as we were going to paint the bathroom anyways.
The problem started when Steve primed over the peeling bathtub. Primer does not go in bathtubs. In fact, the whole bathtub seems to have been painted or primed or SOMETHING and began peeling like crazy. Our landlord left the country (and left us with several deposit slips to his bank account as he was going to be gone for a long time). He has a residence in another country and spends his time there and only comes to Pittsburgh for apartment issues. Our emergency contact is this guy Steve, who doesn't speak any English. So the tub began peeling like mad, as did the tile surround. Giant paint chips and strips of primer were peeling away and clogging the drain on a daily basis. Finally I got sick of the issue and bought some pretty harsh paint removal chemicals, gloves, and a respirator, and got to work remvoing what I could of the paint. What I'm left with is a now pink bathtub, but hey, at least it doesn't peel. There were about 6 layers of different colors of paint/primer/whatever on the tile. I have yet to remove it all, but theres a LOT on there. The tile underneath seems to be in good, clean condition, so Im not sure why they painted it in the first place, but whatever.
Now we have an issue with mold. Our tile surround only goes up to about nose-level for me, and I'm around 5'2". The surrounding drywall is constantly wet because, well, its a shower, and there is black mold beginning to take shape along the border of the tile and wall. There is also some decay beginning where the water pounds the drywall, which I'm sure is only a matter of time before it too begins to mold and further decay. I've considered just handling it myself (hence I peeled the paint) but now there are other issues that are coming up that are making us just want to break our lease and get out.
One, we have extremely noisy neighbors. I understand apartment living can be noisy at times, but these folks have two young kids who get up around 5am daily and run, jump, stomp, etc. We can feel our floors shaking when they are running around, and it goes all day long until they finally crash out around 8pm. Its nervewracking and affecting our sleep, our mood, and ultimately our marriage. I talked with the landlord about this before he left and he basically sympathized but said I should talk to them. They've been there 2 years and are planning on renewing their lease for another year. I don't know what we can do about this, legally, but its annoying never the less. We probably wouldn't have moved in had we known there were kids upstairs.
There are also several cracks forming in our plaster. There is water damage under the tiles in the bathroom, in the kitchen, and brown stains on the cieling in both the living room and kitchen (and one bedroom) where leaks once were. Since we took over a lease, there was no cleaning done before we moved in and the place was filthy. We don't have vents over our oven/stove (well we do but they don't work), we don't have screens on half of the windows, our mailbox is so rusted i'm afraid of cutting myself every time I reach in to grab the mail, and so on and so forth. I don't know what, if any, of this is grounds for cancelling a lease, but since we're only obligated to stay till September we're not too worried. We love our apartment though, and would like to stay, but it needs a lot of work (especially the bathroom) and we don't want to put it in if we're going to just be driven out by the noise, etc, anyways.
We have no way of contacting our landlord. As I mentioned already, our 'emergency contact' does not speak English, nor do I speak his language. We feel totally stuck here and are concerned that if we find another place, we don't even have a way to give notice. I haven't even tried calling Steve because I know what a joke it will be...last time I tried to ask him a question in English he just laughed and talked to himself. We don't have an email, address, or any other method to contact him.
We'd like to know our rights. Prior to wanting to just move out, we were hoping we might be able to have someone come and reglaze the tub and tile with APPROPRIATE finsihes instead of latex primer. With the noise and other issues, however, we are considering just moving out altogether but we are concerned about losing our security deposit over breaking the lease early, etc.
What can we do? We also know, from talking to the upstairs neighbors that their sink is constantly leaking and the landlord won't hire anyone to fix it (insists on fixing it himself but never gets the job done) so its just continuing to leak. They also mentioned they actually have rooms that are beginning to be uneven, indicating the building is sinking, which frankly, scares the hell out of me. Its an old building with an old landlord. Sadly I think he just doesn't have the energy to keep up with the place and probably no family in the US who will inherit the property when he passes on anyways, so its not 'worth it' to invest in his own property.
My husband and I rented an apartment in Pittsburgh beginning in February of this year. Actually, we took over a lease of the previous tenants who moved away for new jobs out of the area. We have had several issues upon moving in that we aren't sure how to handle.
First, I moved into the apartment sight unseen. I'd shared lots of photos with the previous tenants (who had posted the ad on Craigslist and handled everything up until signing the actual lease). I never saw a photo of the bathroom so I was very unpleasantly surprised when I saw it in person. There were major cracks in the plaster, a non-working light fixture, ugly paint, peeling 'paint' in the tub and a chipped, peeling, painted over ceramic tile surround. The landlord "fixed it" by replacing one walls drywall, replaced the mirror/light fixture (we paid for the fixture, he paid for the new mirror). We went about 3 weeks with no lights in the bathroom aside from a small dangerous lamp with a BURNT THROUGH lampshade until he finally came in to "fix" the issue. He had this guy, Steve, do the work for him. He did an okay job, so it seemed. He also primed the whole bathroom with heavy duty primer, which was fine as we were going to paint the bathroom anyways.
The problem started when Steve primed over the peeling bathtub. Primer does not go in bathtubs. In fact, the whole bathtub seems to have been painted or primed or SOMETHING and began peeling like crazy. Our landlord left the country (and left us with several deposit slips to his bank account as he was going to be gone for a long time). He has a residence in another country and spends his time there and only comes to Pittsburgh for apartment issues. Our emergency contact is this guy Steve, who doesn't speak any English. So the tub began peeling like mad, as did the tile surround. Giant paint chips and strips of primer were peeling away and clogging the drain on a daily basis. Finally I got sick of the issue and bought some pretty harsh paint removal chemicals, gloves, and a respirator, and got to work remvoing what I could of the paint. What I'm left with is a now pink bathtub, but hey, at least it doesn't peel. There were about 6 layers of different colors of paint/primer/whatever on the tile. I have yet to remove it all, but theres a LOT on there. The tile underneath seems to be in good, clean condition, so Im not sure why they painted it in the first place, but whatever.
Now we have an issue with mold. Our tile surround only goes up to about nose-level for me, and I'm around 5'2". The surrounding drywall is constantly wet because, well, its a shower, and there is black mold beginning to take shape along the border of the tile and wall. There is also some decay beginning where the water pounds the drywall, which I'm sure is only a matter of time before it too begins to mold and further decay. I've considered just handling it myself (hence I peeled the paint) but now there are other issues that are coming up that are making us just want to break our lease and get out.
One, we have extremely noisy neighbors. I understand apartment living can be noisy at times, but these folks have two young kids who get up around 5am daily and run, jump, stomp, etc. We can feel our floors shaking when they are running around, and it goes all day long until they finally crash out around 8pm. Its nervewracking and affecting our sleep, our mood, and ultimately our marriage. I talked with the landlord about this before he left and he basically sympathized but said I should talk to them. They've been there 2 years and are planning on renewing their lease for another year. I don't know what we can do about this, legally, but its annoying never the less. We probably wouldn't have moved in had we known there were kids upstairs.
There are also several cracks forming in our plaster. There is water damage under the tiles in the bathroom, in the kitchen, and brown stains on the cieling in both the living room and kitchen (and one bedroom) where leaks once were. Since we took over a lease, there was no cleaning done before we moved in and the place was filthy. We don't have vents over our oven/stove (well we do but they don't work), we don't have screens on half of the windows, our mailbox is so rusted i'm afraid of cutting myself every time I reach in to grab the mail, and so on and so forth. I don't know what, if any, of this is grounds for cancelling a lease, but since we're only obligated to stay till September we're not too worried. We love our apartment though, and would like to stay, but it needs a lot of work (especially the bathroom) and we don't want to put it in if we're going to just be driven out by the noise, etc, anyways.
We have no way of contacting our landlord. As I mentioned already, our 'emergency contact' does not speak English, nor do I speak his language. We feel totally stuck here and are concerned that if we find another place, we don't even have a way to give notice. I haven't even tried calling Steve because I know what a joke it will be...last time I tried to ask him a question in English he just laughed and talked to himself. We don't have an email, address, or any other method to contact him.
We'd like to know our rights. Prior to wanting to just move out, we were hoping we might be able to have someone come and reglaze the tub and tile with APPROPRIATE finsihes instead of latex primer. With the noise and other issues, however, we are considering just moving out altogether but we are concerned about losing our security deposit over breaking the lease early, etc.
What can we do? We also know, from talking to the upstairs neighbors that their sink is constantly leaking and the landlord won't hire anyone to fix it (insists on fixing it himself but never gets the job done) so its just continuing to leak. They also mentioned they actually have rooms that are beginning to be uneven, indicating the building is sinking, which frankly, scares the hell out of me. Its an old building with an old landlord. Sadly I think he just doesn't have the energy to keep up with the place and probably no family in the US who will inherit the property when he passes on anyways, so its not 'worth it' to invest in his own property.
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