The adventures of ‘property management’ were in full swing in early May. I headed back to the old homestead in Cambridge, Massachusetts for a work weekend with the other owners of the Cardinal Medeiros property. As the owner of the top floor, but being far away in the Midwest, you have two major concerns… are my tenants ruining my home, and are the other owners/tenants ruining the building. Fortunately for me, I have the greatest tenants on the planet Earth, and now fortunate for the entire building, we have new owners of the first floor who are very engaged in the condo matters and willing to help out to drive great value in the building.

Therefore… bring on the ‘Spring Work Weekend.’ I flew into Boston on Thursday night, upgraded the Hertz rental to a new Cadillac SXT, and drove up to Tewksbury where Kristen and Keith have recently bought a new home. Now, they used to live in Southie, which basically meant there was a direct tunnel from Logan to their home… but now it’s 37 minutes away. C’est la vie… can’t have it all. That being said, their new home is excellent… and it beats staying on the couch downstairs in the old apartment. Day one I was off to Home Depot by 6:30am, and at the homestead by 8. The external work was by far the focus for me this weekend, and 9am was the first drop off of 3 yards of mulch. The issue with having a home in Cambridge, MA, the fifth most densely populated city in the US (yes, look it up), is that there is no ‘yard’ necessarily to dump 3 yards of mulch. Thus, the sidewalk was the location, and blocking it completely off to pedestrian traffic was the result. Since I was alone at this point, I was hustling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of the fine smelling ground hemlock to different areas of the property. Within two hours, I had completely dispersed the mulch into smaller piles ready to be spread. Good times.

A bit of pruning, some weeding, etc., consumed the rest of the morning until the second floor owners arrived just afternoon to help out. I’m glad they did, because the mulch was one thing, but 3 tons of stone (yes, 3 tons), was a whole different challenge. That pile, once again to the surprise/concern of the delivery guy, ended up right on the sidewalk again. Have you ever moved 3 tons of stone by hand? I hadn’t, until May 7th, 2010. Add on to that the fact that we decided to pull up the broken concrete sidewalk that was on the side of our building, made for a backbreaking afternoon. One of those days where you go to bed and know you ran until empty.

Alas, the results were excellent. The yard hasn’t looked this good since before I purchased my top floor, and it will not need much work for quite some time. Other work, such as the cleaning out of the basement, the ‘inverting’ of the basement insulation that was installed incorrectly (a horrible job), and installing some new under cabinet lighting in my unit rounded out the remainder of the work weekend. And finally, as an added bonus, it was Mother’s Day… and Mom & Dad came down to Kristen & Keith’s house, and Sunday was spent with the family on a chilly, but gorgeous day. New England… you are my home.