Thursday, December 06, 2007

Karma?

Man we are getting our share of bad luck lately.

We are on a shared well (well is on a neighboring property) and when it gets really cold the pipes sometimes start to freeze a bit. The water runs slowly out of the faucet. This happened Sunday morning when we were getting ready to leave for the day for a family gathering. One of us thought we turned off the bathroom faucet but apparently we only turned it far enough that the water stopped running but the faucet wasn't closed tight. Combined with the fact that that particular sink has been draining a bit slowly lately (we tried cleaning out the pipe but couldn't figure out how to get the sink stopper out) we came home approximately 8 hours later to a minor disaster. The water pressure had increased back to normal and the tap was running. The sink was not draining fast enough so the water had overflowed all over the bathroom and seeped way out into our bedroom. The carpet was soaked. Luckily Jaxon had stayed at his grandparents for the night (as he usually does on Sunday nights) so we didn't have to deal with him while we spent the next 5 hours cleaning up. We had to move all the furniture out of our bedroom into the guest room (you can't even walk into that room for now) and every towel in the house was used to sop up the bathroom floor. Then I spent 3+ hours with our carpet cleaner vacuuming up as much of the water as I could out of the carpet (must have emptied the tank 30-40 times).

The good news - our homeowners insurance is going to cover all the clean up and repairs and replacement
-some drywall repair
-repainting walls
-replacement of carpet and linoleum
-replacement of damaged appliances (hairdryer, electric razor, etc)
-replacement of insulation from under the rooms
-replacement of heating duct under the rooms
-electric bill from running 9 fans and a dehumidifier 24/7 for 5 days

The bad news - $1000 deductible and a 30% premium increase for 2 years and 25% increase the 3rd year (~$1750 out of pocket over 3 years!)

And, it will probably be the end of the month before we can move back into our bedroom IF we're lucky. Right now we are sleeping in Jaxon's room on a full size bed and he is in his old toddler bed. John has been cleaning out our studio which is behind our detached garage so we can move the furniture out of the spare bedroom and move into that temporarily.

The other upside is that we have been meaning to deep clean and clear out the clutter on these rooms anyway and now we HAVE to. We have been wanting to clean out the studio and set it up as a guest quarters and convert our guest room in the house into a playroom for Jaxon as well so that is some good that will come out of this. Also we will have new carpet and linoleum in the master bedroom/bath which will be nice, although they were in pretty good shape and didn't really need replacing. Now our living room? THAT carpet needs to be replaced. Oh well.

2 comments:

Leslie said...

Oh no! At least the insurance kicking in makes it a little better. And you're pretty good at looking on the bright side. (I'd whine a lot more about it.) I hope all is back to normal, soon!

Anonymous said...

Oh no! Geez, insurance is helpful, but $1700 out of pocket!? Seems insane.