Landlord Not Returning $6500 Deposit

Location: California, US

We lived here for 14 months and hired professional cleaners (before we handed the keys) for almost $1000. There was some damage to one of the kitchen cabinets that we caused and some wear and tear in the paint due to baby gates. Most of the house is carpeted but we did hire professional carpet cleaners before we left.

Landlord gave us a good faith estimate claiming damages of over 14k!!! It was shocking to read but they claimed they have to replace all the carpets, do major electrical rewiring, replace all the screens, claimed we stole their curtains (obv we did not!! They were so ugly), etc. FYI we only communicated with them through a rental management company the entire time we lived there. The owners refused all our requests for getting their contact info.

The entire time we lived there was a total shit show. The AC was so busted that in the brutal California heat where it was 95 degrees inside the home with a 9 month pld baby. They pretty much refused to replace it and the HVAC repairman they sent basically told us to put a crowbar through the system and intentionally break it so they would have to fix it. Obv we didn’t do that but it was bad, no matter his recommendations they did not replace it. We paid $1800 in one month in the summer in electricity bills running their stupid AC….

Anyway that’s irrelevant. After weeks of asking them for invoices and receipts. They send us a bunch for stuff like fixing electrical wiring, reinstalling doors (?), $2000 worth of cleaning… it totals to over $8000 claiming we own them over $2000. The receipts were for work done in April. The law states they have 14 days after work is completed to send us the receipts. Of course this is also all through the management company. Do I have enough to go through small court? The mistake we made was that we did not do a walkthrough with them before we moved out. We also didn’t do a good enough move-in inspection because they’re claiming that the damages that were already there before we moved in were caused by us because we didn’t mention it in the move-in walkthrough. LESSON LEARNED obviously…