Now, where was I? Oh, yeah...just narrowly avoided burning the trailer down, staying at Heather's mother's place and calling the insurance company. Like I had said yesterday it was -40 or even colder for a few days and we don't have any insulation underneath the unit. It was so damn cold the furnace quit. Things freeze. A couple of days later I drove home to check on the cat and what do I find? A lake in the trailer park....oh darn.
The reclamation company had to bring out some giant air dryers to pull all the moisture out of the drywall and subfloor. No easy task considering the outside temperature. We had to pull up nearly all the laminate floor and move all our furniture so the dryers could do their thing. Can't live in those conditions so ten days later, we're still living at Gramma's house. Eight months earlier, Heather agonized over picking out the colour of the floor. It had to be the right colour and fit into our budget. When it came time to replace it, we told the insurance company where to get it and how much it cost: Totem building supplies and it was about $1200. Cheap and we liked it, win win, but no....the insurance company sent somebody from a highend flooring shop to take measurements to replace our $1200 floor with a $5000 floor. A lot of people would be happy with getting another floor, a 'better, nicer floor' but this was going to require them bringing in a storage container and emptying our house into it. This was not acceptable as we'd already been out of the place for 20 something days and it was going to keep us out for another two+ weeks with the hassle of packing up and then unpacking again. Needless to say we found this unacceptable for a couple of reasons: one, our insurance didn't need to spend that kind of money and two, we just wanted to get back home with as little hassle as possible (we were starting to feel pretty drained by now). So one curt call to insurance and we got the proper floor and they were going to get it installed within a week!
The water inlet valve on both my washing machine and dishwasher had frozen hard enough to crack them open. Of course with those valves not doing their job to stop water from going anywhere water had been running amok for a couple of days! One or one hundred expletives later I managed to steel myself to once again climb under the trailer to turn off the main water line. Not too pleasant considering the temperature. I know, poor me...
The reclamation company had to bring out some giant air dryers to pull all the moisture out of the drywall and subfloor. No easy task considering the outside temperature. We had to pull up nearly all the laminate floor and move all our furniture so the dryers could do their thing. Can't live in those conditions so ten days later, we're still living at Gramma's house. Eight months earlier, Heather agonized over picking out the colour of the floor. It had to be the right colour and fit into our budget. When it came time to replace it, we told the insurance company where to get it and how much it cost: Totem building supplies and it was about $1200. Cheap and we liked it, win win, but no....the insurance company sent somebody from a highend flooring shop to take measurements to replace our $1200 floor with a $5000 floor. A lot of people would be happy with getting another floor, a 'better, nicer floor' but this was going to require them bringing in a storage container and emptying our house into it. This was not acceptable as we'd already been out of the place for 20 something days and it was going to keep us out for another two+ weeks with the hassle of packing up and then unpacking again. Needless to say we found this unacceptable for a couple of reasons: one, our insurance didn't need to spend that kind of money and two, we just wanted to get back home with as little hassle as possible (we were starting to feel pretty drained by now). So one curt call to insurance and we got the proper floor and they were going to get it installed within a week!
Yeah. About that dishwasher and washing machine....those had about $300 (nearly $800 with labour!) worth of replacement parts and off they would go. Well, $300 at most people's cost but I'm an appliance guy so I can get my parts at cost+, so more like $150 for the parts. No place in town had the parts. These are pretty new machines so that's not unusual so it was going to be 2-3 weeks before the parts even came in so insurance just bought us new machines. See? Saving the money on the floor got us laundry and dish washing earlier, the floor earlier and us into the house earlier.
Yay!!! Nearly six weeks later we get to go home. It's all over. Right? Nope, there's more to come.........the minivan trilogy and why I'm still an idiot.
Well...congrats on the new floor and appliances...I guess.
ReplyDelete