House Update...

Well, we now have a large hole in the side of our house. They completely ripped down the chimney and took out the gas fireplace. They have rebuilt the base for the fireplace, but had to plywood over the large hole until the fireplace company gets our new one. Today was rainy, so they didn't want to take down the tarp in case it started raining again....that would set us back so far if we got MORE water in the house! Tomorrow and Friday should be cloudy but no rain, so here's to hoping! The roof is completely fixed, and our contractors happened to have matching shingles in their shop, so you can't even tell there was a chimney sticking up there!

I have to say, I'm pretty worried about what they will find when they start ripping into the walls from the inside. The outside damage was so much worse than they thought it would be that they are thinking more moisture was getting inside than we thought. The wet-rot stopped before effecting the integrity of the interior supports, but the drywall is toast. The insurance guy's moisture sensor popped positive when he put it on the floor....so we may have to have the entire upstairs flooring replaced (it's an open floor plan and laminate hardwood). I asked the contractor about it a couple of days ago. He said that he thought since the fireplace was so rotten, the floor probably just wicked up the moisture from the rotten wood. I'm really worried about mold. I can't see any from the inside, but if the wall's been that wet for that long, there has to be something growing. I'm having nightmares of something being found that causes us to have to leave the house. A good friend of mine got mold poisoning. I don't want that for anyone!

The exterior damage is not covered by insurance because it is wet-rot. Thank goodness for the intense rain storm. The interior damage is covered because a lot occurred during the storm. They're calling it wind-driven rain. Since they can't differentiate what occurred during the storm, and what was long term damage, the interior is covered. (so far).

I don't even want to think about the mess we'd be in if the storm didn't dump so much rain that it came in. We never would have found the rotting problem until it was much more major repairs. The contractors say that if this had been found in a year, we would have had to replace the major floor joists on the inside. ugh! It makes me mad to know that the roofers cared more about the fast buck than doing a decent job. If they had just put the flashing on the chimney correctly, we wouldn't have this major headache!