After all the posturing and bellowing rhetoric about the apartment and couch, the landlady emailed me the other day and was "pleased with the appearance of the apartment, especially compared to the last time I saw it" and got an estimate for $350 to fix/recover the sofa. We had a guy come give an estimate at $300 last month before we moved out.
Sure it should have been "wear and tear", the key word being tear, but we aren't really in any position to argue about it. There's no laws down here keeping landlords from being total douchebags and small-claims court exists but takes forever.. in the meantime she's holding on to the deposit.
The next paragraph she wrote "I don't want to be the typical mean x-landlady, so if you want to meet up later this week, we can exchange keys for the remainder of the deposit".
WTF? Who are you and what did you do with the landlord who I was dealing with last month?! I had already made a decision in my head when I got back from Miami last week that if she wanted to charge us more than $400, then I was going straight to the courthouse to open a case in small claims court. Since this was under it, I wrote her back right away saying sure that's fine, let's get it done (and put it all behind us).
I'm hoping to meet up with her today and do that, then pop by the water company and pay last month's bill and have my name taken off her account and put on to the new account and then we're done.
Even John was shocked when I told him about it that night... "just do it, man let's put it behind us!" which made me laugh because that was exactly my thought.