Sunday, August 7, 2011

Displaced

   So, I haven't posted much but news since the Mt. Rainier trip. Here's why.

   About a month ago we discovered some mold on our dining room wall behind the buffet. An hour or so of watching the water meter confirmed that we had a leak. We contacted the landlord who got a plumber out. The plumber found the leak in the hot water line going to the bathtub/shower on the other side of the dining room wall. The leak was tiny but had been going on for who knows how long. Next in was a flood damage specialist who determined the entire floor in the kitchen, dinning room, and bathroom would need to come out as well as much of the wall between the dining room and bathroom.

   We were planning to go to Mt. Rainier the following day, so we arranged to have the demolition team come in then. While we were away it was found that the damage was worse than originally thought. On top of that, a nest of ants had decided that the damp wood made a nice home. When we returned the bathroom was gutted and a significant chunk of the floor in the bathroom and dining room was completely gone. There were five industrial dehumidifiers running and the temperature inside the house was around 100 degrees. Fortunately, we had made arrangements to stay somewhere else.

   We spent a week staying in some friends' house. The timing had just happened to work out that our friends were moving into a new house, but hadn't yet moved completely out of the old house, so we had the place to ourselves. We made regular trips home to take care of the chickens and the garden and to check on the progress of the repair. The dehumidifiers came out after a few days and then the progress slowed to a sudden stop. The insurance company was in no hurry to cut a check and as a result the house sat untouched for over a week. I spent my days off away from home trying out recording software on my MacBook.

   After a week in our freinds' house we had to move to a motel as there had still been no work done on our house. The landlord said he hoped to have the bathroom useable in three days when we had to be out of the motel. At this point my mother-in-law had come up from Portland for a previously planned visit. Three days later, still having not received any money from the insurance company, the landlord bought the materials himself and he and the contractor started on the bathroom. My wife, son, mother-in-law, and I moved to a different hotel.

   The following day we checked out of the hotel and moved back into our home where our landlord and the contractor were still working on the bathroom. It had now been two weeks since we left the house and at 1am our landlord and the contractor left us with an unfinished, but functioning bathroom.

   It is now a week later -- three weeks since we first moved out. We spent the past week still living out of our various bags and backpacks as we tried to get back into a routine. No further work has been done. Our furniture from the dining room and bathroom -- shelves, table, buffet, hutch, etc. -- is still unstrategically littered throughout the house. We haven't heard from our landlord or the contractor.

   I am hoping we will hear from (or see!) the contractor today...

No comments:

Post a Comment