I’m asked often how I learned my home improvement skills. I can chalk my style and taste up as hereditary I think??? I didn’t really take any design classes, so I’ll thank DNA for my ability to visualize. I do however owe my ability to wire a light, change a faucet and drywall to 2 influential projects during my teen years.

The first being what my family called The Miller. My parents purchased the building in 1992, yes way back so don’t judge the pictures. The original 1908 plans of The Miller included fifty-six hotel rooms plus private offices. Also it had a bar, kitchen, lobby, ladies lounge, salesman lounge, and laundry and furnace room. It was fireproof and totally modern for its time.

Here’s what the exterior looked like:

The building was always a little erry, I remember as a child running past it quickly, fearing who might be lurking inside. The condition did not deter my parents; my mother had grand plans for this building. My mothers love for math and my fathers mechanical inclinations definitely helped as they undertook this project of designing and changing the hotel into apartment living.

Gutting began, with sledge hammer in hands I remember tearing through the lathing and multiple layers of wallpaper. Walls where moved and rebuilt as 56 rooms became 17 apartments. The project took almost 3 years, to make something neglected into a beautiful apartment building. There was a lot of work if statistics thrill you, 350 knobs for cupboard doors, all installed by us children. Count the doors, 100 oak doors, 81 closet doors with handles. What I didn’t mention before is The Miller is located in a small town, so the closet Menard’s at the time was a good 50 minutes away. I recall going to movies on the weekend as a family but making sure we left early enough to head into Menard’s to fill the truck with goodies for the hotel.

It was a family job, and the efforts were soon realized. This had been a longtime dream of my mother, to refurbish and old home which turned out to be a home with 15 apartments. Gee, I wonder where I get it from?

Later my parents were honored for their work in renovating the Miller Hotel at the Main Street Awards at the State Historical Building in Des Moines. They received the first place award for “Best Adaptive Re-Use Of A Building” from the Governor at the time.

Jumping to present time, the family managed the property until just last year allowing us children to learn the ropes of property management.

It’s CRP time again I’m ahead of the game this year as I start to prepare to have these ready for mail the first week of January.  So you have about 6 weeks because Minnesota residential rental property owners and managers have until January 31, 2010) to complete Certificate of Rent Paid (CRP) for each of their tenants.  That includes any tenant that paid rent in the last year, even if it was for one month only.

So, get out the books, or whatever system you have and devote a few hours to sorting through the dates of occupancy and amount of rent paid by each tenant.  Hopefully you have the current address of past tenants… if you don’t you’ll learn your lesson.  I’ve learned through trial and error to have my tenants fill out a exit form making my life easier each time this season comes around.   If of course, you don’t have the address or the address is incorrect when it comes back, hold on to the thing until you get a call and then forward it to the correct address of the tenant.  It’s bad enough sorting through the dates of occupancy if you’ve had a high turn over, but having to sort through which tenants had adult roommates and divide the CRP’s between the roommates (even if THEY didn’t pay), etc., is tiresome at best.  It must be done or the landlord can incur a fine for each incident.

The State of Minnesota has made the small landlord’s job a tad bit easier, though, by giving us the forms online with the ability to fill them out ONLINE.  That thrills me because I can type faster than print and I only have to change the tenant specific information on each form I print.  Regrettably, the form cannot be filed online, but they can be completed and printed for distribution to the respective parties.  The form and instructions for filling it out can be found here.