Getting close!

We had a fun Halloween weekend -- trick or treating, soccer, soccer party, college football, zoo and crazy beautiful weather but ... we're coming up on 3 months since we were rained out of the house and we are more than a little tired of it all.

Being in a small rental home (that's not well kept and which has triggered the girls' allergies, Lisa's most seriously)... being away from our animals ... needing to drive to the house at least once every day ... needing to make two school drop offs and pickups each day ... only having one computer with an internet connection (we could never get the wireless network to work)... and managing the contract work going on.  Most of this has fallen to Lisa and she has done it with amazing patience.

How close are we to getting back into our house?  If all goes well, we could be in a early as this coming weekend.  Stay tuned ... we should know in the next day or so.  The painters and cleaners were in today.  The biggest thing left to be done is to replace carpet on the stairs that were ruined from all the contractor traffic.  If necessary, we'll move back in even if that's not completed yet.

It's hard to believe it's already November but it's been a long 10 weeks since this big mess started.  We know we've been fortunate, however.  We've been blessed to have great friends and family and that we have a great insurance company in Allstate and have been happy with our contractors.  It could have been much, much worse. 

So stay tuned.  I'll hopefully have real good news in the next day or two.  Meantime, here are some photos from the weekend and new photos of the house.

Some more progress

A few new photos of painting progress and the start of the floor install.  Still hoping to be in before Thanksgiving.   Pleeeaaaaseee!  This is getting quite tiresome.

Visible Progress

First, though, here are some pics from the Oklahoma State (Fried) Fair...

So the painting is moving along nicely, the new wood floors have been ordered, the exterior repairs are just about done and we approved a quote on some replacement windows.  Everything is pointing to a move-back-in date before Thanksgiving but we're trying not to get overly confident.  It will be nice to get back in and it'll be neat to have a house filled with new colors.

No pics but progress.

There hasn't been much to photograph the last couple of weeks.  Primarily the new drywall was being put up and minor prep work for all the painting that needs to happen.  However, Lisa met with the painters yesterday (a nice big family crew that takes its painting work quite seriously) and they have started on re-painting all of the doors and trim. 

The work on the exterior should also start soon -- primarily damage underneath the roof overhangs (I'm sure that's not the proper terminology) but possibly some painting also.  We're also going to replace a few windows that (unrelated to the water damage) have gone bad from the southern exposure to the sun.

The flooring guy has been the biggest disappointment at this point as far as the contractors.  Showed up very late to a meeting with Lisa and when he did he had forgotten the samples.  They've agreed to meet again tomorrow (but of course he has not agreed to a specific time yet).  Let's hope he doesn't end up being the reason we're not back in the house before Thanksgiving.

All else is going relatively well.  The rental house continues to be adequate and the ants have subsided with the end of the major rains we had.  The major downside we've discovered is that the house is not very friendly to Lisa's and Madie's allergies.  Lisa's was having major sinus issues (thought to be an infection) and visited an ENT who thought she may need sinus surgery.  But then a visit to an allergist indicated she was allergic to just about everything here and so she is now on new allergy meds and has started weekly shots.

The girls are good ... school is going well ... Madie's loving cross country and looking forward to her first Sooner football game October 10 ... Meredith is turning into a great little soccer player ... and we all enjoyed the fried food extravaganza that is the Oklahoma State Fair last weekend.

Will post new house photos soon -- hopefully by the end of the weekend.

No more holes!

Some good progress -- all holes in the walls and ceilings are gone! Also learned that even the basement will need to be repainted.

Some good news

We first thought it might be around Christmas when we got back into our house so we were thrilled this week when the general contractor told us we should be in no later than the end of November.

So right now the house is in demolition and new drywall mode.  All of the flooring on the main floor has been ripped out (as well as toilets and one sink now prominently displayed on our back deck).  Where there were holes with insulation removed, now they've been filled in with new insulation.  These photos are from the weekend; Lisa has been back since and workers are busy putting up new walls whereas here you'll just see slabs of drywall sitting around in advance (just biding their time).

The good news is that things are definitely moving forward.  As I mentioned before, we've picked out new paint colors.  Still to be determined is what we'll put in for flooring.  The plan for now is to replace carpet with some sort of fake hardwood and tile with tile.  We'll see.  Other than that we were needing to replace some multi-paned windows in the living room that had seals gone bad resulting in a fogging effect so we'll likely do that now.  Plus we'll look into what it would cost to add a bath tub in the master bath.  The builder had a small cut out prepped for an additional washer/dryer set-up and according to the contractor we could remove a non-loadbearing wall and install a tub if we wanted.  Again, we'll see. 

And if you are wondering, the animals are doing well and seem to enjoy the attention they get each day from the workers at the house.  Here are Roxy, Rex and Hank ...

 

"Girls... do you want to go look at paint?"

It seems impossible that it's been 20 days since we were rained out of our house.  Since the last post when the city turned off the water at the rental house things have settled down and we're (for the most part) settled into our temporary home.  Lisa's fighting a sinus infection but other than that we're doing OK.

The girls are enjoying school and doing well.  Meredith started soccer practice and the season starts next Saturday. Madie had her first cross country meet and Meredith received a pin for math at her school's weekly assembly (Antler Alert).  Lisa and I were able to attend both which was nice given that it was a Friday (leave without pay can be convenient sometimes I suppose, but that's another story).

We WILL say that the temp house is in a very handy location.  Except for being about 9 miles from our house, it's convenient to school, my office and any type of retail one would need.   AllState is having us keep track of all the travel back and forth to the house (at least one trip a day) and is reimbursing us for that expense along with everything else we're being troubled with.  (Is my wine tab covered?)

The house has officially entered the demolition mode.  Everything is dry, all of our stuff has been moved into storage and they've just inititated ripping out ceilings and walls.  Every bit of flooing on the main floor needs to be replaced, including the tile in the master bath which surprised us.  We'll probably replace it all (including what had been carpeted) with a combo of manufactured wood and tile.  The contractor thinks the carpet upstairs and in the basement won't need replacing.  Here are some new pics showing the one ceiling they have removed so far above the dining room (with a nice view from below of Meredith's room and vice versa).

 

Hopefully this won't take as long as the 3-4 months they think but we'll see.  One interesting thing (and good thing I think) is that the contractor is using the same guy who did the original drywall work when the house was built.

So, today after visiting the house and feeding and loving on the critters we went out for burgers (of course Meredith had chicken) and then to Target to pick up birthday gifts for a kids party tonight.  As we were leaving Target and heading to the car, Lisa asked, "Girls... do you want to look at paint?"  You'd have thought from their reaction that they'd been asked if they wanted to go to Disney World!  I couldn't believe their excitement but there we went, next door to Lowes, to look at paint chips.  Here is what we selected (today, anyway) for various rooms on the main floor and for the girls rooms.