More weekend work but still not all the rent

Last Monday I got my first rent check from my property. The only problem was that I was supposed to get two. My second tenant apparently had a verbal agreement with the past landlord to pay her rent on the 6th when she gets her paycheck, but that was yesterday and she still didn't have it. The 6th fell on a Saturday though so she said she should get it Monday, and trust me I'll be there Monday to pick it up from her...

Meanwhile I kept working on the building this weekend and am about to head off for day two of work. Yesterday I started the morning by helping Spring in our Steps clear out an alley a few blocks away from my place and then returned to the basement for more clean up there.

I bought some plastic strapping to secure the plumbing pipes which had been dangling from the ceiling when I bought the building. I got that all done and then moved on to trying to figure out the wiring and plumbing systems in the basement. It became evident that the best use of my time was pulling out the old unused portions that were still bolted to the joists. I think I got all of it or at least the majority, but I also learned a thing or two about knob & tube wiring. It turns out that you don't need to hammer the tubing to get it out (just push from the other side of the joist and it slides right out) but the knobs can really be tough to get out when the joists aren't wide enough for my hammer to pry them out. My building had had knob & tube wiring in the distant past, but the remnants were still everywhere sitting used. (I need an electrician to look at one section where it looks like they tied a ground wire into the old K&T).

I also bought a good push broom and used it to find the bottom of my basement floor. Boy did it get dusty down there. There was about a quarter inch layer of dust on the entire basement floor until yesterday. The piles will need to get shoveled into buckets and dumped out back in the future.

I also got two sets of keys made for 2 of my 3 occupied units (hoping to get the 3rd set today). The previous owner had only given me keys to the gate, hall, basement, and 3 vacant units, so until yesterday I had no way of getting into the occupied units. Not that I really need to get in them, bu shouldn't I have keys to my entire building? Still confused as to why she didn't give them to me in the first place.

Some pictures of the rest of the building are on the way, but will probably only get uploaded some time during the week. Stay tuned.  I'll try to get some pictures of the knob & tube wiring to link back to this post too.