Fixing up the apartment

In the year and a half since I moved in here, it occurs to me that I have invested a sum of money into this place to fix it up. I've had new storm and screen windows made, put in a new toilet seat to replace the badly broken one that was here when I arrived, painted the kitchen and bathroom and put in a garden out front. I've put my own stamp on this place to make it mine and it very much feels that way. If I can ever resolve the ongoing neighbor issues, it will feel a lot more like home here as I settle in and do more fixing up of the place. The last piece of the puzzles are to put in new light fixtures in the hallway and kitchen and to put in new cabinet handles and drawer pulls in the kitchen. I have a pretty good idea what I want and it may involve hitting a lot of antique stores to find exactly what I envision for this place. I'm trying to give it a historical look since it's a nearly 114 year old house. I hope that, as the year goes by, that I can afford to do a bit more fixing up of the place to finish the last things that need to be done to complete all of the improvements. A broken kitchen drawer also needs to be repaired, something that I will have to look into having done eventually. For now, I am in my cozy home and hoping that the neighbor dramas will be resolved and that I will no longer be saddled with 100% of the utility bills as I have been almost since moving in here. These last water and electric bills have been outrageous - over $80 a piece! The normal electric bill is somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 and the normal water bill is somewhere in the neighborhood of about $40.

The most recent water bill arrived today and it was an outrageous $84.25. I have no idea what THAT is all about. Either someone left water on and running or we have a leak somewhere in the house that needs to be fixed. I am having an inspector from the city show up tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. to try to get to the bottom of this crazy water bill. Given that I will be paying it in its entirety (unless the neighbor downstairs gets the bill that I left in the mailbox today outlining the money owed for last month's combined water and electric bill and the money that is owed for half of this month's water bill), that's going to hurt a lot, especially right after Christmas. As it is, I paid a combined $134 in water and electric bills last month, which was a huge chunk of change to pay out, especially around holiday time. I'm probably never going to see the the half that the neighbor owes, and if the lack of cooperation in paying their half of utilities continues unabated, I will ask my landlord to evict the tenant for refusal to pay utilities. I won't have that anymore. I've carried two tenants on my back now and paid their utility bills for them and I will not continue to do so at my expense. If you move in to this duplex, you pay your half of utilities, period. That has been made clear from the get-go. Not to do so is, in my opinion, grounds for eviction. We'll see what happens next.