Progress, slow but sure!

The basement carpeting is officially done! They came back on Monday to finish it!! The installer that has been working on our house is too much fun! He is easy to get along with, likes to joke around and is quick with a smart remark, and does fabulous work. But just don't call him Sir... he said that just doesn't work LOL We also found out yesterday that our vinyl for the kitchen has been ordered and will be here in about a week or so. We are tentatively scheduled to have the kitchen floor taken care of the Thursday after Labor Day! That will take a few days and then they will be able to do the living room carpet.

Guess that means that we need to think about getting out new washer and dryer ordered so that it will be here shortly after the flooring is done in the kitchen/laundry room!

In the meantime, after we finished painting the bathroom, I guess we didn't have enough... we decided to paint the living room! We think we have paint figured out, but just to be sure we picked up a sampler of the paint and tested it in a few spots around the living room. If all goes well, we will pick up the paint right away so that we can start painting next week.

So there has been progress. Seems like it had been crawling along but now it seems like things are moving right along and before long we will have a "mostly" new house! Guess the only think left to consider is pulling the wallpaper from the kitchen, but that is another discussion for another day! Let's just get through one project at at time... oh wait, we are already in the middle of 15 bazillion projects! LOL

Update

I figured that it was time for an update on our home repair adventures.

Going to the laundromat is for the birds! Last night was laundry night... granted it took me less than an hour and a half to get everything washed and dried, but the whole idea of having to HAUL it to the laundromat and back home again is no fun!

Last week Wednesday, the Dehu's left (no more extreme heat!) and on Monday the last of the fans were finally taken out (everything is quiet again!) We are also missing a bunch of the flooring in the kitchen as they needed to pull that out to get the floors completely dried. The last week has been spend talking to several different companies and getting estimates from them on the repairs. We are still waiting on the one form the restoration company that was originally sent out to do the initial cleanup/drying. We should have that by the end of the week. We have also been going through endless samples of ccarpeting and tile to figure out what we are going to have put in! We had foudn some vinyl that we really liked and kept going back to as our favorite (in photo to left). However in our last trip to one of the flooring companies, we found another one that is from the same company and same line that we like better. Will have to get a photo of that one posted as soon as we have time to get them uploaded.

We have also decided that, since our house is going to be torn apart to get everything fixed, we are also going to redo the carpeting in the living room as well as the wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom. So, we have spend the last 4 days moving everything that would could out. When you are redoing floors in the 3 largest area's of the house, it gets hard to figure out where to put everything! We have a garage full of stuff and the spare bedroom is getting close to being full! Jim is going to take the toilet out for us this weekend when he is in town so that we can start pulling wallpaper and get everything repainted right away.

The pool table was also moved yesterday. We had a crew come in, disassemble the table and haul it out to the garage. Once the flooring is done in the basement, they will come back and haul it back into the basement, put it all back together and then replace the felt on the table and rails. So glad that we didn't have to do that ourselves, and that insurance is covering the cost of all the moving of it, reassembly and felt replacement!

It seems like we are getting no closer to the end of this project! But in the end, we are practically going to have a new house!

The temperature continues to rise!

We thought it was bad earlier...

When I got home this afternoon after work, the temp in the kitchen had risen to 98.6! It was body temperature in my house! NOT COOL! Darrin and Jacob helped me get a few things moved out of the house and clean up the garage somewhat and then we headed out to dinner with Jacob and Kelly - the least we could do for them taking in Darrin AND the cats!

We stayed at the hotel tonight, so of course the boys were excited about being able to go swimming! John had called Jerry to talk to him about the extreme temps in the house and he did give us the ok to turn off the Dehu in the kitchen and then open some of the windows upstairs. So hopefully that will help somewhat until they can get back to take more of the equipment out. WooHoo!

John went home after dinner to open the house up somewhat before we took the boys swimming. When we stopped at the house after dopping them off, it had already dropped a few degress but it was still warm!

Day 4 and still counting

Met with the guy that was coming to check out the furnace this morning. He was also going to check out the Dishwasher and move that so that it was out of the way when they do the flooring. We could open a used appliance store in our garage with all the stuff out here now!!

The dishwasher and furnace look fine. He is going to recommend that they replace the vent in the laundry room and well as the pipe going up to it. You can see where the water got into it and he would rather have it replaced as a precaution. No complaints by me!

When he left he told me that we just have to let him know when the floor is done and he will come back and put the dishwasher back and take care of the vent.

I was finally able to talk to our Ins Adjuster and go through the list of stuff so far that has been damaged or may have been damaged and what we need to do to have this added to the claim. This could be a long process! oh well She did say that when we call to get an estimate on replacing the felt on the pool table that we can have them add in the cost of having them come and disassemble the pool table and move it out of the way so they can replace the carpeting, then come back and put it back together and replace the felt. Works for me! I don't want to have to try and figure out how to move that!!

Day 3 and it continues to get warmer!

Tonight after work, I met Jerry from the restoration company at the house so that he could check on things and assess how everything was drying.

The carpeting in the living room and basement steps is dry! However the basement still has some damp spots especially at the bottom of the walls where it soaked into the drywall. In the bathroom off the kitchen, the floor is still damp under the vinyl and he pulled some of this back (so I guess we will get new vinyl in here too). We also discovered that it did get into the the floor in the hot tub room. The floor is wet and he asked if we still have any of the vinyl left from when that flooring was done... guess we will have to check on that. There is also damage to the wood on the door frame and baseboards. Didn't realize that one before. Bummer.

He has someone coming tomorrow morning to check out the furnace and dishwasher to make sure that nothing shorted out with them and check a few other things associated with each of those.

When Darrin stopped at the house when he got home this morning, he called me and it was 94.2 degrees according to the thermostat in the kitchen. By the time I got home at 3:15, it was 96.4. It was quite warm waiting at the house while Jerry worked! We decided that it was time to find something to do with the cats as it was getting too warm for them in the house too.

I figured that while I was sitting there, I would call the Ins adjuster to ask a few questions. The claims adjuster assigned to our claim was not in the office anymore so I was going to be transferred to someone on her team. After being on hold for 20 minutes and 3 different attempts at being transferred I FINALLY got to talk to a human! WooHoo! This was the first time through this whole adventure that we came across someone with the ins company that was difficult to deal with.

They will not cover anything associated with pet so if we bring the cats to be boarded we have to cover that ourselves. We did however get the approval for a hotel stay for us for 2 nights. When I first asked about the hotel, she questioned why it was now, 3 days after the incident, that we are finally asking about housing allowance. It was like she was questioning if we really needed it since we didn't ask before. We just didn't call to ask about that since Dan offered his place for us and we thought it was only going to be for a few day - and that would have been more comfortable than a hotel! In reality we saved the insurance company the $$ they would have spend reimbursing us for hotels. But I guess she didn't see it that way. She then asked if I knew what hotel we were going to stay at. I explained that I would have to call around and see what I could find since EAA started in Oshkosh. When EAA rolls into the area, there are usually a shortage of hotel rooms! She proceeded to "tell" me that it "had to be a reasonable hotel with a reasonable rate and if we were that close to Oshkosh, what would I find that was at a decent price?" Well, I know that it needs to be a reasonably hotel and rate, but I can't tell you where it will be until I get off the phone and make some phone calls!

She finally did approve the hotel stay for 2 nights for us. Wow, that was a painful conversation! lol Since we already were planning on going back to Dan's we will save those for the next few nights since it sounds like the Duhu's and fans will be here for at least another few days.

With all the difficulty she gave me, I will wait until tomorrow to call back and talk to our Claims adjuster!

When Darrin got home, I told him that he could stay at Jacob's tonight that way he could get to summer school tomorrow. Yeah, he was really disappointed about that! LOL NOT! I jokingly asked Jacob if he wanted a few extra cats for a night. His eye's lit up and got excited, so he called him mom. As he asked his mom, I yelled in the background that she could say no! But she said that was fine as long as we brought an extra litter box. Yippee! The cats no longer have to be miserable in the house! Poor Fozzy was laying on the cement floor in the basement trying to keep cool!

Cats and Darrin at a friends, we are back at Dan's. It's been another fun filled day in this adventure. Wonder what tomorrow will bring!

The saga continues

48 hours later and the adventure continues.

Yesterday morning when we stopped at the house to check on everything, it was 70 in the basement and 82 in the kitchen. Not very pleasant to start working on any more cleanup and going through stuff to see what was damaged. We stayed about an hour and that was it!

Today, it was 75 in the basement and 90 in the kitchen! We did get a few more photo's of various things around the house that we will have to post later. Again, we stayed long enough to get what we needed for work tomorrow and left. It seems like the carpeting in the living room is dry but the carpeting on the basement steps is still wet.

Dan has been gracious enough to let us hang out at his place while our house is miserably hot as they try to dry everything. We will find out tomorrow just how long the equipment will have to be in the house when Jerry comes back to check on things.

the summer flood

Originally uploaded by FuzzyKryton

When John called me at work and said that it was raining in our basement, my first thought was to look outside to see how bad it was raining. Then I realized it was not actually rain! Our washing machine apparently decided to NOT stop filling and left water to cascade out onto the floor.

Thankfully John was at home when it happened! He had thought about running out to do dome errands after he started the washer but figured he would wait to run to the bank etc. He did not realize we had an indoor pool until her heard a splash. he looked into the kitchen to see a wet Silver. The cat either jumped from somewhere and landed in the water or came running up the basement steps and hit the water that was on the kitchen floor.

Once the washer was turned off, John started throwing towels on the floor to try and sop up some of the water. By this time, the water was everywhere in then kitchen and starting to get the living room carpeting.

Then he headed to the basement to see how much may have leaked down there. He was not expecting to see the waterfalls that he did! It was coming down in several places and by this time he was really not sure which way to go first. There was water running down the pinball machine as it came in from above - the washing machine was right there. There was also a waterfall coming down near the pool table (the pipes etc for the ice maker in the fridge go through the floor there). The pool table actually had a pool on top of it. Thankfully the plastic cover was covering the table. However the one corner that has a rip in it was near that end of the table and some water was able to get underneath. The laptop was sitting on the other end of the pool table, just 2 inches from the water! however the boards for the portable poker table were on the pool table and were sitting in water.

It also was leaking down from the stairs. The water has starting going down the basement steps and just leaked right through the seams between the boards. The computer that was under the stairs is the main server, not sure yet if that was damaged, however the laptop that was under the table had water pooling on it.

It was then that he saw the cascading waterfall coming down the shelves where a bunch of Darrin's toy's were. This again is basically right under the washing machine...

Since I was at work and I knew that he was busy with the water, I called the insurance company to see if this was covered. Our agent was not in the office, but the receptionist pulled up our policy and said that we were covered for water damage caused by failed appliances! At least that was a good thing. She gave me the number for the claims department so that I could call once I got home to see the damage. Instead of waiting, I called John and gave him the number so that he could call right away and open the claim.

By the time I got home, it looked like someone's closet exploded on the back deck. We had one clean/dry towel left in the entire house. The rest were out on the deck along with all of the dirty laundry that had been on the floor in front of the washer (3-4 loads worth). Now it was WET, dirty laundry.

The insurance company was already working on everything for us. The adjuster had made a call to the Estimator who was on his way to our house! Once he got there, he showed us just how wet the walls and everything were. He put in a call to his emergency crew to dispatch them to our house to start the process of getting everything dry. They are also going to move the washer and dryer so that they can get the floor dry under it. He was also going to call someone to come out and check out our furnace to make sure there was no damage to that, as well as the dishwasher that had water leaking around it.

Between the time he left and his crew got there, we were hurrying to try and get some of the sopping wet laundry spun out and at least dried somewhat so that we could haul it out to wash it.

Once the crew of 2 got to the house, they went right to work pulling up wet carpeting, moving the washer and dryer out to the garage and pulling up wet vinyl. By the time they left we had 7 large blowers and 2 HUGE dehumidifiers going to pull out the water and dry the floors and walls.

We were warned that the fans were going to be loud... loud was an understatement. Also, with the dehumidifiers, it was going to make it warm in the house. Seeing as we have to keep the house closed up so that the equipment is not trying to pull in the moisture etc from outside, we opted to NOT stay in the house. We were heading to Dan's for at least the night, where we could also do our mountains of laundry!

We will post more updates once we go back to the house and talk to the insurance agent.