Drying Out

We finally met with our insurance adjuster today. He was very nice and is recommending a few more fixes than we first thought (by the way, he is an independent contractor and the head adjuster who actually works for the company makes the final decisions). They are trying to salvage the carpet but we have up to a year before they close the claim in case mold appears or it becomes obvious it is stretching out too much. He couldn't tell us his honest opinion on the carpet but kind of hinted that the upstairs may need to be replaced. He told us to remind them that we have a 2 year old who is on the carpet often. He said to plan on complete new padding of the upstairs and downstairs.



As for the ceiling, he is going to review the pictures again but said to plan on at least 4 new sheets of sheet rock and scraping/retexturing of the entire ceiling. He first said 2 sheets but we showed him pictures we took the morning of the damage and instantly changed it to 4 sheets. They also will be replacing all the baseboards near the fridge and because of this, will have to repaint. We have an open floor plan so they will have to repaint the dining room, living room, and hall to make sure it matches. We planned on repainting in a few years since Samuel has left his mark on the walls so this is a nice surprise. Oh yeah, we will be getting a new fan downstairs too. Thursday night we went to check on the fan and the fixture that surrounds the light bulb was filled to the top with water. We also will be putting in a claim for some shoes and towels that were damaged too. Finally, it is still up in the air on if we are getting a new fridge. Being a new policy, no one is sure if the fridge if covered because it technically isn't part of the house. It was the actual fridge that malfunction though and not the water line. The adjuster turned on the water today and within seconds water was shooting out the bottom front of the fridge.

The funny thing about all of this is we were labeled suspicious by the insurance company since we just got the policy last week. The adjuster said not to worry because it was obvious we didn't make this up. As soon as he turned on the water, he knew it wasn't us. Below are a few pictures of our house at this time.

This is our dining room and the big object in the middle is a dehumidifier which is draining into our kitchen sink.

This is the disaster in our kitchen. One fan is drying it out and the clutter on the cabinets are the contents of my china cabinet that had to be cleared out so it could be moved.

This is the basement. The large object is another dehumidifier and the two fans on either side are drying out the ceiling. There is another one in the back, left corner pointed at the floor. Our couch is normally in the middle but it is now split into three units and spread out around the room. Luckily, we don't think the couch got any damage because the water was just reaching that area when we found the disaster.