Wow. Six years since I last posted on here, cannot believe it has been that long. So what has happened?
We just moved back in our house about six weeks ago after a complete home restoration. On 2 January, while Randy and I were at the Tampa Bay Lightning game, I got a call on my cell phone from Emily's. I thought it odd, then had a moment of panic when I thought something might have happened to mom or pop (who were staying with us at the time and were home with the girls) and Randy quickly told me to answer it. I was not prepared for my mom to be on the other end of the phone telling me there had been a fire in the house and that we needed to come home. She stressed that the fire department had been called but I heard panic in her voice so about halfway through the third period of the game, Randy and I hightailed it out of there and drove as quickly as the radar detector would allow to get back home. When we came in through the front entrance, I saw a fire truck leaving so took that as a not-quite-good, but better-than-I-thought sign. When we rounded the curve before our house, I was relived to only see one truck left in front (there had been three). I vaguely remember even putting the SUV in park before jumping out and running up to the house. The girls were on the sidewalk, mom was up towards the house, pop was in their car with their two dogs and our two dogs, and both front doors were wide open. I could smell the lingering tmell-tale smell from an electrical fire. And the house was cold...every single sliding glass door in the house was wide open to dissipate as much of the smoke as possible. And while one fireman was standing in Randy's office, the other one was taking tons of photographs of our 180-gallon fish tank...from the top of the hood to the floor. Something electrical under the tank itself had caught on fire.
Thankfully no one was hurt and everyone quickly evacuated the house. Mom had been in the spare bedroom (with the door closed) just down the hallway from the living room/office where the tank was. Pop was in the family room with the dogs watching a movie and the girls were down the back hall in their bedroom playing on the Xbox. What we learned was that mom and the girls smelled something around the same time. Mom realized it was the fish tank and yelled for everyone to get out of the house. While mom was trying to get her and Grace out (pop headed out the back door), Emily grabbed the nearby fire extinguisher. While mom was calling 911, Emily completely extinguished the fire before the fire department even arrived. Her quick action kept our house from burning down. As it was, the only damages we could find from the fire itself was our now-defunct fish tank and what we could see of the wall behind the tank. Smoke had permeated throughout the house though.
I contacted our insurance company Monday morning (the fire happened on a Saturday night) and started the claims process. Before that time, I had never filed an insurance claim for anything, not even with auto insurance. Our adjuster was great, though, and walked me through what needed to be done. He arranged for a fire inspector to come out to see if he could determine what caused the fire as well as another inspector to give an estimate on cost of repairing the house. They were both there within two or three days. The fire inspector pulled out much of the equipment in the stand below the tank and found a burnt-to-nothing strip cord. That's where the fire had come from. He also noted that the plug in it (there was only one) was also damaged, that one being to the hood lamp, so he took the strip cord and the lamp with him. (It was later determined that the hood lamp had overheated the power cord, but fault was undetermined. good news for us, we weren't found liable.) The other inspector came out, noted the damage on the wall (what he could see of it since the tank was still there and could not be moved), noted floor damage in the office, noted that there was also smoke damage in our bedroom (right off the living room/office) and the dining room (open to the living room).
Several days later I received a copy of his report. It called for a complete replacement of the wall with fire damage. As a note...the fire did not breach the sheetrock behind the tank. Emily's fast action is to be thanked for that. The estimate also called for the replacement of the floors in the living room, dining room and master bedroom as well as cleaning of the popcorn ceiling in all three rooms and repainting of all walls in those three rooms plus the entryway and hallway. Whew!
We eventually settled with the insurance company on personal property...the fish tank complete setup, curtains, dry cleaning that was hanging on our door, and the signed Peyton Manning college jersey that was matted and framed and hung above the fish tank. I had a couple of companies come out and give estimates on repairing the wall. Each one I talked to said they would not do all of the painting nor would any of them touch our popcorn ceiling.
About six weeks after the fire, I was on the phone with the insurance adjuster and he asked me how the repairs were coming along. I told him I hadn't even started because, to be quite honest, I didn't know where to begin! He said no problem, they had a company they worked with that sort of acts like a general contractor...that company would hire the subcontractors, monitor and approve/disapprove their work, pay them, etc. He put in a request to have a rep from that company call me. And the next day I got a call. Belfor Restoration came out and did a walk through the entire house. Over the course of about a week, a change in project managers and much numbers crunching, the estimate came in for them to do their work...at a whopping four times more than the original estimator. I was stunned. Instead of repairs to the living room, dining room, master bedroom, entry way and front hallway, they included the spare bedroom, kitchen, nook, family room, both back bedrooms and the girls' bathroom. It included the removal of all of the popcorn ceilings...in every spot of the house...repair of the damaged wall and baseboard in the living room, repainting of all walls in the house, carpet replacement in the living room, dining room and master bedroom with tile deep cleaning throughout the house and carpet cleaning in the other three bedrooms and family room with determination to be made later on replacement. That's a heckuva lot more than the original estimate! Oh, and Belfor would come in, pack up all of our stuff, take it to their warehouse to clean and have another company come in to remove and clean all of the bedding and window treatments. This would mean that we would be moved to a hotel for the duration...original estimate of three weeks.
Once everything was removed from the house, the painting contractor and his team came in and hung plastic on every wall and covered every floor surface...removing of the popcorn ceiling was going to be a huge mess. And messy didn't even begin to describe it.
Even though the insurance company only paid for the removal and replacement of popcorn-to-popcorn, pretty much no one does that type of ceiling anymore...so we ended up with textured! And yes, we are the envy of the neighborhood...LOL! After 5-6 days of ceiling work, the painting crew started prepping for painting. The fun part in all of this is that I was able to pick out new paint colors for every single room in the house. And I definitely love what I chose more than what was here when we moved in! All-in-all, the painters were here about 2-1/2 weeks doing everything, including painting all the baseboards, the wainscoting and even the built-ins in the family room. They finished and the flooring guys came in. While they got started, Belfor sent in one of their guys to try to clean the carpet in the bedrooms and family room. It didn't work, there were still signs and odor from the smoke so the adjuster was contacted and approval was given to replace that flooring as well. We ended up electing to have wood laminate installed in every area where there had been carpeting except the family room, we chose to replace the Berber with Berber. They ended up taking 3-4 days to do their work. Then it was scheduled to bring our household goods back in.
All told, by the time they were done, we had spent 33 days in the Residence Inn in downtown Tampa. During this time, I was driving Grace up here so she could go to school every day. Emily and I were staying at the house during the day...it saved us from driving back and forth to the hotel twice a day and allowed Emily time during the day to do her schoolwork. It made for long days. So naturally, when they gave us a date that our HHG would be returned, we started packing out our little apartment at the hotel.
By Friday, 8 April 2016, we were back in the house. Randy had asked me a week or two earlier what I wanted for my birthday and I told him two things...to be back in the house and to have steaks on the grill. We made it back in the house two days before.
It took a lot longer unpacking the boxes than I'd planned, but I have done almost all of them myself so I could clean out and clear out...keep, donate, throw away. I did get some help from two friends and it was appreciated more than they will ever know. Dana even came over one day and helped me hang up Randy's "I love me" wall.
I have boxes here and there, probably no more than 2 or 3, in the house that still need to be unpacked but I'm getting there. The garage is another story. Before we temporarily moved out of the house, I cleared out my craft room to give to Grace when we moved back in, finally giving her and Emily their own rooms again. But everything from my craft room is now in the garage waiting to be gone through and gotten rid of, including the furniture. The garage also has close to 200 flattened boxes in there that I am holding for a friend who is moving this summer, but she will be here this week to take most of them. I guess we're going to have to break down and rent a Hippo trailer and clean out the garage because right now you can't even walk through it.
That is pretty much the gist of what happened since we had a fire in January. So much more has happened since then, I'll have to save everything else for another post. It's late and I'm tired and my alarm goes off way too early in the morning!
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