Help - First time landlord dealing with high maintenance tenants

[Dana Holland]

We rented our house out for the first time ever starting last November.  The tenants seemed good on paper and wanted to sign an 18 month lease which we thought was great to have it rented for so long.  We had a water softener in the house, but it broke and we intended to remove it from the property before renting it and did not disclose it as coming with the house. After the tenants agreed to the contract, but before moving in they decided to have their realtor make sure that we would maintain the water softener.  We thought it was strange that they randomly decided to mention that one thing and we were going to fight it and tell them that the softener does not come with the house, but at the advice of our realtor we went ahead and replaced it to get things started off on the right foot.  During the move in inspection, they  were unhappy with some of the walls had chipped paint (result of taking things off the walls when we moved out) and demanded that we repaint them.  Some walls had very minor defects and some moderate.  I initially said we would only paint the ones with moderate scuff marks but they pushed back, demanding that all the walls with marks on them be painted which amounted to a $700 job. Again, being inexperienced and not wanting to start a fight before they even moved in, we did it.  After they moved in, they wanted to heat the pool but the pool heater wasn't working.  We didn't know this because we never used the heater when we lived there and it was our mistake to not check it out before renting the property.  We got a quote of over $3000 to fix it, so we basically told the tenants we couldn't do it.  They threw a fit and claimed that the single reason they chose our house over other houses was because of the heated pool (sure...).  They wanted to renegotiate the lease to pay less per month, but we didn't want that so we decided to find a way to fix it and ended up driving to another city to buy a used heater in good condition and had our pool contractor install it.  Last week the regular weekly pool service that we pay for (since we want to keep our pool equipment in good condition!) showed up on a day when the tenant's weren't expecting them.  Their gate was locked so the pool technician rang the doorbell to ask for access to the backyard.  The tenant came unhinged and yelled at him for disturbing them when he wasn't supposed to be there.  (I later talked to the pool company owner who said that he personally had informed the tenants of the change in service day).  The tenant called me and told me what a major inconvenience  it was and said she would even consider just taking care of the pool themselves which we won't allow as we want a professional watching over our pool.  We suspect they were doing that to try to get rid of the pool service and then ask for a rent reduction.  Now this week we had our landscaper come to trim some very tall trees on the property that we had agreed with the tenants that we would take care of it.  The landscaper trimmed the trees on Tuesday and the tenant texted me pictures of the trees after saying how nice they looked.  Then on Wednesday the landscaper called us saying that the tenants had called him back to the house to make the bottoms and tops of the trees perfectly horizontal.  He trimmed the bottoms but refused to do the tops as it was too time consuming and dangerous.  She told him ok, but that next time he better make them even.  We are beside our selves with what to do with these people.  It's one thing after another and we are afraid it will just keep escalating with them finding something every month or so to complain about and try to get something out of us.  Not really sure what to do at this point. We want to send an email laying down the law with them but we are also afraid to make them too mad in case they start to trash our property or find some other way to make our lives miserable.  Any advice on how to deal with people like this?  We can't wait for the next 13 months to go by to get rid of them!!  TIA!