Four days before the lease on my house expired this summer, I lay awake in the middle of the night, afraid that the maintenance man would overpower the chain lock on my front door, force his way in and try to repair my window.

This may sound absurd to a freshman reader, but to some of the upperclassmen who have lived in off-campus housing before, I expect that scenarios like mine, involving dramatic and sometimes desperate friction in a landlord-tenant relationship, sound more plausible.

It all started with a handwritten note my landlord taped to my door. It told me that I was to move my belongings away from the windowsill and clear a walkway for workmen to enter and exit. The workmen, he informed me, could tear out my windowsill in my bedroom and rebuild it and that portion of the wall.

I panicked. I was in the middle of moving clothing, textbooks and art supplies were heaped in piles or strewn about the room. Basically, if I wanted to continue living a semi-normal life I was going to have to figure out some way around complying with the instructions I had found taped to my door.

I weighed my options. If I did comply with his wishes, I would have to stop packing at once (or pack everything up in a few nights, but then where to put it all?), find sheets to drape over my desk and bed (anything I didn't want coated in dust and debris) and move approximately 150 books from beneath the windowsill. At the time, I was teaching a creative writing workshop at the university, transcribing medical interviews from home and doing PR and distribution for a magazine. However I looked at it, I'd be screwed if I wasted all that time clearing out my apartment and then made nice with repairmen as they trekked in and out of my bedroom replacing a windowsill that looked fine to me. Not to mention that I'd already paid my $650 rent for the month.

But I didn't want to make a scene. I'm non-confrontational by nature. I once consented to dog-sitting for two months without asking whether I would be paid. Last month I went to a book signing where two women cut in front of me in line, one of whom asked to borrow my pen. I never got up the nerve to ask for it back, she didn't volunteer, and I was out a pen. So it took me three days to psych myself up enough to call the 6'2", 300-pound maintenance man. In this article, I'll call him Mitch.

I told Mitch I had to respectfully decline his offer to rip out my windowsill, as he was already planning to re-side the right side of my house that week. He cited a paragraph in our lease that stipulates landlords can enter a property to make repairs if they give the tenant 24-hour notice. But here's where I think my story might be useful to other tenants: In a last-ditch effort, I called my dad, a practicing attorney in Adrian, Mich., who told me that because I was effectively being evicted from my bedroom, the repair was illegal. I don't know how many other people out there have encountered similar situations where overzealous landlords embark on invasive repairs, but I'm guessing I might not be alone.

I called Mitch back, this time with my dad feeding me lines about "constructive eviction" and "stop work" orders. I thought my scholarly speeches would surely pacify him, maybe even elicit heart-felt and eloquent apologies that I would then reluctantly but graciously accept. Instead of backing down, though, Mitch got angry.

He told me he wasn't a lawyer and he'd enter the property no matter what. I told him I'd lock the door. Based on my father's knowledge of the laws surrounding leases, the books were on my side, but that wasn't much comfort when he told me he had the keys.

At the time, I was living alone in a three-bedroom house. So I was terrified when, after my father threatened to call the police, Mitch said he'd welcome the company. Mitch had never been cordial on the phone, and it struck me that if he was hostile enough to force his way in through a locked door, he had the potential to become violent. He'd already showed his disdain for legal contracts and I wasn't dying to find out if he showed a similar abandon for criminal law.

So I chain locked the door and waited. I spent a sleepless night thrilling at the sound of a squirrel's footfall or a leaf scraping against the driveway.

The next morning, I got a call from my management company saying they were halting construction. Just like that, it was over. I was able to peacefully move out of my house, and they didn't even do the residing work.

The lesson learned? If you pay your rent it's your property, so don't hesitate to challenge your landlord. Just don't count on getting your full deposit back.

-Sarah Sala is a staff reporter for The Michgan Daily.