I heard back from the landlord today, and there was no check included. Here's his reasoning, and my current response. Any advice is encouraged!
Painting: He said that the useful life is 2 years, but he painted it right before we moved in (so it 1-2 months shy of 2 years). When he said it was painted before we moved in, he wrote "just as all of my apartments are painted before I rent".
I have 2 problems: 1, it was not painted. I'll have to reiterate that to him. We moved in a couple hours after the prior tenant moved out, and there wasn't any time for him to paint. But the second problem is that, if he paints every apartment before renting it out, then it should not be my responsibility to pay for it. He didn't paint because of spackle marks - he painted because he claims he always paints. I remember reading that they should not charge for things they routinely do - I'll have to search for where I read that.
Floor damage: He said that he does not have to pro-rate the costs (and can therefore pass the entire cost to us) because it was 'damage' and not 'wear and tear'. This doesn't make sense to me. If it was wear and tear, there wouldn't be any charge to us. Since this is damage, it should be pro-rated. Is there any way for him to legally justify having me buy him a new floor, rather than pro-rating based on useful/depreciable life?
Cleaning: He says that I am responsible for cleaning the outside of the windows (I was not on the ground level, by the way). According to his letter, the windows can be removed from inside of the unit, so a ladder is not needed. I'm baffled with this, as I've never heard of a landlord that required a tenant to remove the windows to clean the outside of them. And if that's the case, he could have at least let us know ahead of time - I'd have to think that virtually no tenant would take out the windows to clean the outside. The part that irks me the most is that I gave him 3 1/2 days to let me know if anything wasn't clean enough, and he didn't let me know. According to Cal Civ Code sec 1950.5(f)(1), the landlord must give me notice of my rights to an inspection (he didn't do this), and he must allow me to fix any problems (the exact words are: the landlord shall give the tenant an itemized statement specifying repairs or cleaning that are proposed to be the basis of any deductions....The tenant shall have the opportunity during the period following the inspection until termination of the tenancy to remedy identified deficiencies..to avoid deductions from the security). If he told me about the windows and I didn't fix it, that's on me. By keeping that to himself until I turned in the keys - even though he went through the unit after it was cleaned, but before I turned in the keys - that's just dishonest.