Picking up the pieces: Vacation rental, small business destroyed by Vrbo guests

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SHEBOYGAN FALLS, Wisconsin ( WTMJ ) -- One vacation rental in downtown Sheboygan Falls looks nothing like it did two weeks ago.

The floors are stripped down to their foundational wood, half the kitchen appliances are missing from the kitchen, and the furniture and decorations have been shoved into two rooms.

Ashley Deutsch, an active master’s student, and mother of four, is still trying to process the chaos that is her life right now — chaos caused by two men in just one night.

Deutsch owns the building with her husband. They bought it three years ago with the money they received after her father and grandmother passed with hopes of taking a sad situation and turning it into something positive.

“We took a leap of faith,” she said. “My dad was a small business owner and we wanted to follow in his footsteps.”

So they opened a vacation rental upstairs and saved a business space downstairs. Deutsch said for three years they had wonderful guests — that was until this month when two men from Chicago booked the unit.

Around 4:00 a.m. during the stay, the Deutsches were awoken by constant notifications from their doorbell camera at the rental unit.

Caught on that footage were the two men, seemingly intoxicated, with drinks in hand, stumbling and slurring their words.

“I’ll f- - - - - - fight you in the streets,” one said laughing.

“The sink was clogged with pizza and things they might've had at dinner time,” Deutsch said, pointing by the area where the sink used to stand.

The men left the water running for hours – 640 gallons worth.

The floor was completely flooded. "Every time you took a step, water would be squishing out from the floors,” she went on. Only the laundry room in the whole upstairs was clear from damage.

Deutsch said she and her husband had to use a crowbar to pry open the kitchen drawers because they were so swollen with moisture.

In additional footage, the men can be seen throwing soaked towels, bedding, and rugs down the stairs while devising a plan to cover it all up.

One suggested they claim they woke up to the mess and blame it on the dishwasher.

But Deutsch said she confirmed with an insurance adjuster and a plumber that the damage did not come from any appliance in the building.

“It's so frustrating to hear them come up with lies to excuse their behavior, as he's wringing out a towel with his feet."

But the damage wasn’t confined to just the rental unit.

The water made its way downstairs, dripping through the ceiling and the walls.

Earlier this year, the Deutsches had Jamie Prinsen move in, a tattoo artist who was ready to open up her own shop. She called it Peachy Keen Tattoo Studio.

She started accepting clients in January. But now, less than nine months in, she’s had to reject or reschedule all appointments through at least September.

"Hundreds of hours of work into making this studio what it was and just seeing all of that just…kind of ripped away,” Prinsen said, her tearful eyes wandering around the now blank, pink walls.

She was alerted by the Deutsches on the morning of the flooding to check on her business.

“I was expecting nothing and it was just soaked."

Her own security camera footage shows the moment she laid eyes on the studio floor which was filled with enough water that she could’ve seen her own jaw drop. Several black tiles had fallen from the ceiling from the weight of the water. The hanging light fixtures were nearing the same fate.

“I would’ve been more understanding had they taken some responsibility, but they haven’t,” Prinsen said. “They said something along the lines of ‘We don’t know what happened. It must’ve been a dishwasher malfunction.’”

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but the priority is getting Prinsen back up and running as soon as possible, according to Deutsch, who saw the full extent of tattoo studio damage during the TMJ4 interview.

"It’s awful to see this. It is not okay. This is terrible,” she said, wiping away tears. “We had to start selling some of our things to upfront some of these expenses.”

But as legal action takes its course, they will continue to support each other like small business owners often do.

“I think that we will come back a lot stronger,” Prinsen assured.

“We are going to move forward…and rebuild because we are just that type of people,” added Deutsch. “We are not going to let two people and one bad rental stop us from continuing our business in the future.”

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