Dude, that blows. Fobia just pointed me towards this thread, I haven't really been paying attention to much around here. But if you seriously need any help moving stuff, I have a jeep I don't mind throwing dirty crap in
Well, things are moving forward. We are getting everything itemized and ready to submit to insurance. We have people from some sort of disaster place (in tennesse!) that came up to help us sort this whole thing out. They are doing alot of work. inventorying everything and packaging stuff up to be cleaned ect.. w/ some luck we will be ready to start cleaning the house by friday.
Update: Well it has been awhile. The house is looking 1000% better than it ever has before. During the demo and reconstruction alot of stuff was noticed and fixed. The wiring was a disaster. There was some really shady construction. One of the oustide walls was rotted pretty bad so that was replaced. Right the house is in the finishing stages of construction. just have to finish some tile work, put in cabinets and appliances. then furniture can come in. It has been a real long process, and well yeah. It will be really nice when we can move back home. I still have barely touched the surface of replacing all of the lost stuff. that just seems like a monumental task. It really kind of sucks cause i feel kind of like i screwed myself over and am getting the shaft by the insurance company on my personal property.
It looks great, though ... material possessions can always be replaced. Then one day you'll end up like me - with too much **** and wishing a fire would destroy it all so you don't have to clean it up. Nah, I kid, I kid. It really does look nice now though dude. You'll get back to where you were eventually. How is the insurance company ****ing you around though? Are they just refusing to cover some stuff?
Well I guess its not really the insurance company but the fire restoration company. How it worked out for me is that since my room was declared a total loss, they didnt even try to inventory what was in there. So that left me to remember exactly what I had in my room and create a spreadsheet of it. This is how I screwed myself over, its not really my fault but it just happens. Since I have to pull everything from memory I forgot about a bunch of stuff. Some of it was little some not so little but it all adds up, and since I didnt have it recorded when we filled the claim I cant go back and say that xxxx item was there. So pretty much since I couldnt remember everything that was in my room I loose out. Then the fire restoration company takes the list I generated and assigned values to everything. They were failry accurate but some stuff is just way off. I was specific to include as much information as I could including model numbers and purchase prices, but they "adjusted" some of this. Somethings worked out in my favor, in a very minor way. Otherthings did not. a good example is sleeping bags i had in my closet. I had 3 sleeping bags in there. A north face cats meow (~$150), a Northface Darkstar (~$300), and a Campmor bag (~$75). Well they assigned all 3 of these sleeping bags the same value as it would be to replace them w/ a generic target bag of ~$34 ea. So right there I am out about $400 some dollars. /rant
^^^ that sucks dude. I know when my car got broken into they cut me a check for what they thought it was worth. once I went and bought the items and it was more I showed the insurance company and they cut me a check for the difference.
WOW!!!!!!!!!!111 That looks amazing! had I seen those pictures out of context, I never would have guessed they were of your house. especially since I stopped by that day not long after the fire (wtf was I there for anyway? was that the day we were meeting the guy who got the brat topper?), I was in complete shock at the damage, and now I'm in just as much shock at the repair! I'm curious, are you guys having to pay for some of this stuff out of pocket? obviously this project involves more than just restoring the house to the condition it was in before the fire.
I think you had stopped by to help me get the brat running. Right after the fire I had to get it ready to drive so that we had room in the mini storage for boxes and stuff. The restoration is kind of weird. Insurance is covering almost all of it IIRC. I am not 100% on that since I have not been really working with the finances on the house. The policy that the house is under is supposed to cover 200k worth of repairs/damages. The original repair quote came in at about 186k and well the insurance company through a fit. After some negotiating and cutting corners we got it down to ~165k. The insurance company agreed to this but still isnt happy (which boggles me as IMO they should have to cover the orignal 184k). Part of the cutting corners is stuff like having my dad do all of the electrical work. He is certified and everything but he wont get much for doing it (quoted out at like $15k for someone else to do it), and had to take time off from work to do it. IMO this is BS we shouldnt have to have had to do any work if insurance is covering it. As for the remodeling changes, some of those are out of pocket and some are built into the repairs. the way the insurance works is that they will give 70% of the value and then after everything is done they will give you the remainder. Its their way of making sure you dont cut and run. The one thing that kind of ticked me off was that it took so long for them to do figure this stuff out. The fire was in Oct., construction started in Dec., and we didnt see any money until Jan. I understand that it takes time for things to work, but if the goal is to get someone back into their home ASAP, this isnt good. We basically covered the first bit of the repairs out of pocket until the insurance company caught up. Had we not been lucky enough to be able to cover it off hand, it means that the whole process would have been delayed. IDK. Insurance is a good thing to have, just try to avoid using it. Its a PITA. This is so true. I lost a lot of memories w/ some of the things that went with the fire. The pic below is a flag that was flown over the nations capitol, and was presented to me when I earned the rank of Eagle Scout. It obviously didnt fair to well in the fire. You cant put a value on memories. For those that care this flag will be properly retired this summer.
Well, it might be tough to see now, but so many good things come out of these kinds of disasters. Keep thinking, "now we can get it the way we always wanted it." We had a major house fire about 7 years ago and it was a total loss for the structure (in Mtka Beach). There were the "expensive" unreplaceables (very large historic gun collection, artwork, etc.), but many photos made it through and they are way more valuable to us. (we also had a really really tough time with insurance; lawsuit...I remember making the excel lists!!!! and I'll never forget that smoke smell) We now go through our house with a video camera for a full inventory and place that tape in our safety dep. box. You have to be able to laugh through it and make the best of the situation, which it looks like you're doing. Movin' forward...
