Adjusting

The insurance adjuster came out on Tuesday.  I had no idea what to expect, since we've never filed any kind of claim before.  She took a look at the damaged part of the ceiling we had exposed, noticed the laminate flooring was warped, took a couple of pictures, then told us the ceiling, laminate, tile floor, underlayment, and subfloor should all be replaced due to "blackwater contamination". 

I wanted to hug her.

She said she'd send us a letter soon.  She also explained to us that they have their own estimation process, so basically she'll just mail us a check.  If our repairs cost over the estimated amount or we find additional damage, we call her, she comes out to do a re-inspection, and we go from there.  She said if we do all the work ourselves for less than the estimate, we keep the change.  After 1 year from the date of the claim, if we haven't completed the repairs, we waive our right to any additional money for any additional damage found.  Sounds simple enough.

All-in-all, I am very happy with the process so far.  The adjuster was friendly, loved old houses, and complimented all the work we had done.  She was also understanding regarding the old damage; I'm sure she could tell it didn't happen just from that one incident, but because the water was contaminated and we had no way of getting to certain areas to dry them/disinfect, it was obvious to her that we had to get to the covered areas to at least disinfect. 

So...  We're tentatively planning a bathroom remodel for the spring.  Since the ceramic and underlayment should all come up, it would be stupid not to do the whole remodel at that point.  I'd love to do it now, but with a baby due in 6 weeks or less, I'm thinking we should probably wait...  I'd go a little nuts if there was anything else torn up and unusable right now.  We've already had to put our floor refinishing plans on hold because of all the unexpected vet bills.  We had a target amount for our savings account to be at when I started my time off work, and the loss of $800 and knowing we have incoming medical bills from Shayne's surgery kind of threw a wrench in things.  Oh well.  The floors will still be there in the spring.  And our room and the nursery aren't in dire need of refinishing anyways, so it's really no big deal.

And then the ceiling caved in...

It's been an interesting month.  We seem to have stumbled into a run of bad luck that is encompassing just about every area of our life.  First, our dog Ares managed to somehow cut off half of one of his toe pads while playing in the backyard.  We have no glass or metal laying around, but a nice, clean chunk was missing.  Shayne called him to come inside, and the poor dog was leaving bloody tracks everywhere.  7 stitches and $350 later, he was all patched up and unhappily wearing an Elizabethan collar (or at least a baby sock to cover his bandage) for 2 weeks. 

Several days later it was the cat's turn.  She had been hacking up little spit balls all over the place, so I called the vet.  Kitty is very nice at home, and she often sits on my lap or crawls under the bed covers when I'm reading at night.  She's not so nice at the vet.  In fact, she won't let anyone come near her.  She hisses, growls, spits, pees, scratches, and bites.  They have to use a device called the Cat Nabber to even give her shots.  A physical exam is impossible.  So...  The vet sedated her ($75!), examined her ($40!), and reversed the sedation ($30!) in order to diagnose her.  And it turns out that she has raging gum disease.  This doesn't surprise me, as she is 13 years old, does not chew her food, and has never been examined in the 12 years I've had her.  Vet recommended a dental cleaning ($255, including blood work and anesthesia), with extractions to be determined (2 at $25 each).  While she was there I got her rabies vaccination, which was on the verge of expiration ($30).  Expensive freakin cat.  Thankfully, because she's such a bitch, no follow-up appointment was deemed necessary.

Right before this, Shayne had an outpatient surgery.  Nothing major, but still not pleasant.

My mom slammed her finger in the storm door at her house and had to get 4 stitches.  Ouch!

And then, the kitchen ceiling caved in.

The night before, I had used the upstairs bathroom.  I flushed, but nothing went down.  In fact, the water level in the bowl rose dramatically.  I plunged frantically, to no avail, then decided it was best left alone.  I called Shayne to ask him to buy a better plunger while he was out.  When I went back upstairs an hour or so later, the water level was back to normal.  I thought this was a sign that maybe it wasn't completely clogged, just running a bit slow...  I plunged some more, then flushed again.  Water level rose to the top of the bowl.  Yeek.  I decided to let it be again, and Shayne could try to plunge with the new plunger when he got home.  So I went to bed.

Shayne came home two hours later to a flood.  In the kitchen.  Apparently, at some point after I went to bed, the toilet had decided it needed more water in the bowl and started running.  It overflowed onto the bathroom floor, through the bathroom floor, and through the kitchen ceiling.  The countertop was flooded, and there was standing water on the kitchen floor.  Ick.

My wonderful hubby cleaned up the entire mess without even bothering to wake me up (He gets major brownie points for this.  I can't honestly say I'd have done the same in his position.  I'd have probably come shrieking into the bedroom and demanded he clean up his own shit.  I'm not proud of this, but...  yeah.).  When he came to bed, all he said that the toilet had flooded and that some ceiling tiles needed to be taken down in the morning.

Morning came.  We took down 6 or 7 soggy ceiling tiles.  And then the plaster, which hadn't been in great shape anyways, came down with it.  There had been a water leak at some time in the past, which we knew about from the several small water spots on the kitchen ceiling tiles.  Since the bathroom had almost certainly been redone after the ceiling tiles were installed, we knew the damage was old and planned on taking care of it when we remodeled the kitchen.  Now that some tiles were off, we could see that the remaining visible plaster was just barely hanging on.  Joy.

Because the flood waters pooled near the bathtub before leaking down into the kitchen, we're concerned that there may be lots of dampness under there that we have no way of getting to.  Plus, the fact that it was a "blackwater" flood...  Eew.  In our non-professional opinions, the ceiling in the kitchen needs to go, as well as the underlayment and maybe subfloor in the bathroom.  Since the subfloor is really just the tongue-and-groove pine, I would feel awful ripping it out.  I'd probably be happy with just sealing it.  There is no way to just cover up or patch the damaged portion of the ceiling, short of buying new ceiling tiles (no way).  So....  We decided to file an insurance claim.

To be continued...

I'm going to cry

Not only did our wonderful neighbors cut down the woods to put in "landscaping"...  They decided that they should build a gravel road right next to our now oh-so-visible property line.  A freaking road.  Cause that's loads better than woods, right?

The home appraiser cometh...

...And our house is a pit of unfiinshed projects.  We have stairs that aren't yet nailed down, and a dropcloth covering the bottom run of stairs in their semi-sanded state; a kitchen with no baseboard trim to cover the edges of the laminate floor; a nursery that is a catch-all room with no current purpose or organization; an office with bare and cracked plaster walls, a hole for the "new" closet door with exposed knob and tube wiring dangling in the opening, and unsanded floors with padding still stuck in places; a hallway with no woodwork, adhesive-covered floorboards, and two different colors of paint; and not a single door in the upstairs.

Shit.

The office is beyond help.  I'm just going to accept that and move on.  All I can do is organize the chaos a little bit.

All the doors need to be stained and rehung.  Thankfully, they're out in the garage waiting for me.

I've got to paint the ceiling in the the hall.  Two different colors is unacceptable.  How did I live with it for this long?!  The floor will just have to stay nasty.

Must nail down stairs.  I don't need a lawsuit.  Dropcloth on bottom portion stays.  Not enough time to finish sanding and refinish the whole thing...

The kitchen...  I'll have to see if Shayne can ru by Lowes and pick up a transition piece at least to cover the fraying carpet edge leading into the mudroom.  I'm not too worried about the baseboards, since most are covered by another object.

I knew this was coming, but we've been so overwhelmed by other life happenings that we haven't had time or energy to get things moving.  Yikes...

Sticker Shock

The Stripper Guy called me on Tuesday with the news that our doors were finished.  A 5 day turnaround time, including a weekend, is awesome.  Unfortunately, he told me when I got there that the job was a lot harder than anticipated, so his estimate wasn't exactly accurate.  5 doors, fully stripped, sanded, and ready to stain, ended up costing $700. 

Ouch.

But, last time, he ended up coming in under his estimate, so I still trust that he's being fair with me.  I certainly know what a pain in the ass stripping lead paint can be, and I'd much rather have him do some of the more tedious work.  Less mess for me, and more time to work on the projects that are still piling up.  And, I have no idea when (if ever) I'd have gotten to those doors on my own.

So that left me free to work on the office today, except that I've been sadly neglecting the rest of the housework.  There are doghair tumbleweeds floating around our bedroom.  So that's taking precedence.  And then we have the memorial service tonight, and the funeral tomorrow.  So...  I'll see what I get done.  On the up-side, at leasr the doors are stripped now, even if I had nothing to do with it...  :)

...And the Lord taketh away

I'm not one that generally shares my entire personal life over the internet, but I suppose this needs to be said, since I told the internet that we were expecting a baby...

Early yesterday morning I had a miscarriage. The embryo had never developed from the little ball of cells that is present about 2-3 weeks into pregnancy. My body didn't realize this for 6 more weeks, and I had no idea until two days ago that something might be wrong. The doctors say that in this type of situation, there was probably a chromosomal abnormality, and the pregnancy terminates itself rather than develop into an abnormal fetus. They couldn't give a reason as to why it took my body so long to figure it out.

After 2 ER visits and a minor surgery, I am physically fine. We plan on trying again once we are able, and hopefully the Lord will bless us with a healthy, perfect baby. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we go through this difficult time.

Surprises in the walls

Today I tackled a project I had been dreading. As part of our office renovation, we're closing off the opening the PPOs made that leads into the hall closet. We're also re-opening the doorway of the original closet, which I found when I tore down some paneling. That was a good surprise, since I had been considering putting a closet there anyways. I couldn't have been happier when I found out that was how the house had been originally. Today was a bad surprise.

In order to make the "new"-original closet more functional, we wanted to expand the doorway so that it opens on the full width of the closet. The original opening was 24" wide. To use that closet with a 24" door, we'd either have to use it as a tiny walk-in closet with the rod hanging perpendicular to the doorway na dhave a 2.5' long rod, or hang it parallel and only be able to reach half of our clothes. Neither idea sounded very good, which is how the dreaded project came about.

The plan was to knock out 3' of the wall next to the closet doorway, allowing the full width of the closet to be accessed. We'd then hang some nice frame-and-panel bifolds or two 24" pine doors that match the house. Even though the ieda of knocking out the original plaster made me cringe, I comforted myself with the idea that we'd be making the house more functional, not screwing it up like the PPOs had.

I grabbed a crowbar and spent a few minutes looking at the wall to be demolished. In the entire office, this was one of the few areas of completely good plaster. No cracks, no nail holes, no real damage of any kind. I felt terribly guilty for whacking my crowbar into it, but that's exactly what I did. I hoped that as I went, I would be able to gleefully tear down the lath and bash my crowbar into the plaster. Isn't that how most folks feel? I see all these pictures on the internet of demolition parties, and I should have been happy to finally take out some of my stress on the house.

But no, not me. I cried as I pulled down the plaster and lath, bit by careful bit. I'm glad nobody was there to see me, as I must have looked absoloutely crazy. I felt like I was butchering my house. I was taking something created almost 100 years ago and wrecking it. This plaster could never be replaced. I could cover up the hole I was making with drywall, or even hire a plasterer to replaster, but the original wavy horsehair-lime-and-sand plaster would be gone forever. Ugh.

It took me about 45 minutes to remove 18 square feet of plaster and lath. I spent about half that time in tears. Seriously. I'm all sniffly again just thinking about it. I don't know how people can stand to gut their houses. Unless my plaster was ruined beyond all repair, it woud probably kill me. Thankfully, this is the only plaster in the house we have plans to remove.

After the first few pieces of lath were off, I noticed this at the floor:

"How cool," I thought. "They left the old knob and tube in the wall when they updated the electrical." The PPOs were kind of lazy, and they'd left the old sash weights in the windows, as well as unused ductwork and other oddities.

The work progressed to this:

And then this:

Oh, but do you notice something a little odd? Yep, right near the top, the old K & T is connected to a new wire that runs into the attic, servicing God-alone-knows-what.

Freaking awesome. The lazy PPOs had upgraded to a circuit breaker and a few GFCI outlets (probably not even actually grounded), but they'd obviously left at least some of the old wiring in the walls and spliced it to the new stuff. Who knows how much of this is hidden in the walls? I don't know much about electrical, but I know it's expensive, and I know that if I find something that's a code violation or safety hazard, I'm obligated to fix it. If for no other reason than if my house burns down, I want my insurance company to cover it.

Some folks find money in their walls. Other people find nifty little antiques. I find a swirling vortex of doom that magically sucks the money out of my bank account.

Foundation woes

Shayne had a contractor friend stop by to talk about possibly expanding the mudroom/laundry room/back porch the length of the house. He confirmed what I had suspected: the back porch has no foundation. It just sits on wooden posts, which have since been enclosed with plywood and stuccoed over. This explains why the porch has sunk away from the house and the floor in there tilts at a crazy angle. The good news is that it would only cost $20,000 to tear it off, pour a new foundation, and build a new mudroom! That was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell...

Seriously, though, the new foundation for an addition might only be about $3000, and we could just have someone frame it and build a roof. We can handle it from there, which would save us a TON of money.

Regardless, I can see my kitchen remodel being pushed WAY back... The porch is a very awkward space, which just doesn't do what we need it to. I'm actually considering moving the laundry room to the basement temporarily, just to see if it works for us to have it down there. It would free up a ton of room on the porch, and would allow us to have a pantry and make the half bath bigger without adding on. We'd still need to do something about the insulation, though.

Just food for thought, since I really need to obssess about the house more than I already do...

My appliances hate me

I'm starting to get concerned that they're staging a revolt. Or maybe they feel that they're overworked and underpaid. Either way, I'd prefer a nice sit-down conversation instead of this passive resistance. Can't we just talk about this like rational adults?

Probably not. Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of a load of dirty sheets and towels, my washing machine broke. Granted, it's about 20 years old and spent several months sitting outside, so it's a little rusty and abused, so it was probably time for it to go. Still, I'd been hoping to get a few more months out of it. Like maybe until tax returns got here? Nah, that would be too easy.

So we spent last night looking at shiny new HE washers at Sears and Best Buy. We can't afford a dryer right now, plus we want to move the gas hook-up so we can stack them and drastically increase the space in our back porch/laundry/mudroom. The gas line currently runs along the outside of the porch (classy, huh?), so we need to wait until it warms up so we can properly move it under the porch, then insulate it. This might involve pulling up the floor back there (we have no idea how to access the crawlspace), so this is a spring project.

Then this morning, my toaster oven broke. Not a huge deal, but I use that little guy for everything from toast to heating leftovers. The top heating element no longer heats, and to compensate, the bottom elements go on full blast, scorching whatever you're trying to cook. It just bummed me out a bit.

And the furnace... Last year, we had a problem with one of the burner heads not igniting, causing the furnace to shut down before the cycle really got started. This caused the furnace to reset itself and go on standby for 3 hours before trying again. Needless to say, this resulted in a cold house! The nice furnace guy came out, cleaned it up, and charged us an arm and a leg. It's happening again this year. Not to the same extent, but I've had to reset the breaker 3 times in the past 6 weeks.

I'm just feeling very discouraged about the house and how much everything costs. As we've started to look at bathroom fixtures, I'm amazed at just how much they cost. Is it just me, or is $1200 for a bathtub ridiculous? $500 for a sink, $500 for faucets for both... Can you guess who's going to be scouring ebay, the ReStore and craigslist?

A history lesson

After receiving the letter from the previous owners, I figured it would be a good idea to talk to D and M across the street about the Prairie Box. I'm not sure why I didn'tdo this sooner, as they are very nice folks and we've visited on several previous occasions. Somehow, I can't figure out how, since it's one of my obsessions, the house never came up in conversation.

But this afternoon, armed with some wayward Christmas mail for the PPOs (K and L), I stopped in and asked about the Prairie Box. And M said, "Why D's sister used to live there... About 49 years ago!" Who'd have thought? Talk about a small world. They're going to talk with her and see if she has any old pictures of the house or maybe even the property abstract. That would be like winning the lottery!

D and M also provided some insights into the property, since they are good friends with the PPOs and had visited many times throughout the years. K and L seemed like they did the most modifications to the property, including adding a garage, remuddling the porch, adding vinyl siding andfake brick, opening up the wall between the kitchen and dining room, remodeling the kitchen, finishing the basement, and putting up the paneling and ceiling tiles. I learned that the 2 car garage had been moved to the property from South Bend in the middle of the night. I also learned that the back wall of the dining room, facing the back yard, used to have a window. Not a double-hung, but a head-high one that you put a buffet underneath. D and M also told me a little about the porch that used-to-be. It had a short railing and squat craftsman columns, just as I had imagined.

I'm amazed that so many of the changes I wanted to make to the house, even before we started uncovering clues to what was original, are actual features the house used to have. Before it was remuddled, this house was everything I imagined it to be. Too bad I haven't found any built-ins that had been removed...!

D and M were amazed that we want to make the house look old again. "You're young people, don't you want it to look new?" Their home, a vernacular farmhouse, had been remuddled almost to the point of style-less-ness. It is a very nice house; clean, well-kept, and homey, but just isn't what we want. I told them that I love antiques and old homes, and that we just want to pay tribute to the character of the house while making it our own. That's what it's about for everyone, after all: creating a vision of home.

Another story about how things don't quite go as expected...

Today I was getting frustrated with our lack of progress on our living room project. It's too cold to sand woodwork in the garage, and I don't want to work on the stairway inside because of the dust it creates. Both projects need to wait for warmer temperatures so I can have open windows or be outside without a parka. I talked to Shayne about how unuseful and unliveable the office is, and he agreed to let me start taking down the wallpaper. It's a pretty small-scale project that doesn't involve lots of money. I don't plan on stripping the woodwork (just repainting), and skimcoating and then painting the walls and ceilings shouldn't cost a lot. It's also a "feel-good" project, since the office is my absoloute least favorite room in the house. Unfortunately, it's also where I spend a LOT of my free time.

The only hitch is that the PPOs knocked out part of a wall in order to make a doorway from the office into the hall closet. Normal people have walk-in closets; we have a walk-thru closet... I was thinking that we could drywall over that doorway, then cut a new door into the wall between the office and the master bedroom closet. We'd divide the master closet in half and end up with one closet in each room. We wouldn't even be losing any space out of the master closet. Right now, we can only access 6' of the entire 12' closet, because of where they put the door. The other 6' is essentially wasted space. I'm not crazy about the idea of cutting into one of the original p
laster walls, but it would really improve the layout of the office and maximize storage space.

current layout

proposed layout

As soon as I got home from running errands, I moved some furniture around and fired up the wallpaper steamer. I was pleasantly surprised at how easily the wallpaper was coming off compared to the living room paper. There are about 5 layers, and the last one is painted, but there's only one coat of paint, so it doesn't seem to keep the steam from working. I cleared a 4' by 8' area in about an hour, which feels like good progress. The plaster looks to have been painted originally, and is a scary blue-green color:

I also pulled the wallpaper off of the north wall, revealing paneling. I had known ahead of time that the paneling was there, but wasn't sure why two walls of the office were wallpapered paneling over plaster while the other two were just wallpapered plaster. Maybe some strange 70s fashion statement?

After uncovering all of the paneling, I got curious as to how bad the walls underneath were. I was optimistic, since one of the living room walls had been paneled and the plaster underneath was fine. Then I noticed something odd. On most of the wall, I could see the plaster at the very bottom where the paneling didn't quite reach the floor. Then there was an area that looked like it had been patched with a piece of wood. Now I'm thinking, "Yeah, the plaster's in great shape, except where there's this giant hole that they covered with plywood... Shayne's gonna kill me." So I looked closer and saw that the marks on the floor where the original woodwork was stopped where the wood patch was.

Apparently, the builders of the house had thought the same thing I did about closet placement, and underneath the wallpaper and paneling is a boarded-over doorway.

I'm so excited about this, since it's the first real discovery I've made in the house. If you like 1940s decor, the wallpaper could also be considered a discovery... It's a very strange thing to find a doorway in a house you've been living in for 18 months. Even though I know where it goes, I fell as if I've found a secret passage or something! This whole thing begs the question every owner of an old house asks nearly every day: What were they thinking?? I can't fathom covering up a perfectly good closet in order to bash a hole in a different wall, creating two very strange closets, but obviously that's exactly what they did. I keep looking at the doorway, just amazed that it appeared exactly where I needed and wanted it to be.