6 days later: a re-cap

So ... it's Sunday afternoon and the Andersons are hopefully going to be finished with casa La Quinta after tonight. All things considered, we were very lucky that CRS, the temp housing company, put us up here as opposed to another property on Memorial Road. 

Adjoining rooms, great beds, an indoor pool and hot tub, easy wireless, good breakfast and no need to get into a car to eat.  Mimi's Cafe and Abuelos are right across the parking lot.  And a putting green outside that I only noticed yesterday.

So where to begin...

Monday, August 17.  Day before school started for the girls. Great day meeting teachers... helping Madie get situated with her locker.  Dinner with friends at Old Chicago ... all the while roofers are working at the house.

They leave around 8:30pm.  Clouds and lightening in the distance.  Everyone's asleep when around 11pm a thunder storm rolls in.  Instantly think, "Crap.  This may not be good."  Jump out of bed, walk out toward the foyer and sure enough water starts pouring out of the door frame to my office.  Then across the foyer water starts pouring out of the ceiling between the stairs and the dining room.  Then it starts coming through the light fixtures and light switches and fire alarms.  Scramble for towels, buckets, trash cans to catch the water.

Then the real fun starts.

The alarms go off throughout the house and outside.  Can't turn them off. We call the fire department and the roofer.  Friend Shelley arrives with extra towels.  Fire crew arrives.  They can't get the alarms off.  We call the alarm company.  Even they can't help.  We end up needing to clip the wires at every alarm to turn off the deafening sound.

Roofer arrive and put more tarp on.  Rain stops, dripping stops.  Fire crew and roofers leave maybe around 1:30am.

Back to sleep. 3am the rain starts again.  The water starts streaming in again.  What a *&%^X&! nightmare!

These pictures don't look too bad, do they?  So we get the girls up around 6 and off to school.  Insurance company contacted.  ServiceMaster heads out to survey the damage and start drying things out.  If you're ever shopping for homeowners insurance, we highly recommend AllState.  They have been unbelievable!  So far have exceeded all of our expectations.  Determine that we'll use them and they will get reimbursed by the roofer's insurance. 

Will put us up in a hotel and if necessary short term housing.  ServiceMaster arrives and starts poking around.  Soon becomes clear that looks are deceiving and that water has made its way through just about the entire house. 

They start tearing into walls and ripping up floors.  CRS books us into La Quinta that night (Tuesday). 

Wednesday through today, ServiceMaster has been tearing up more walls, pulling out wet insulation and blowing fans everywhere to dry things out. (The crew from ServiceMaster has been awesome!)  The adjuster has been out with a general contractor.  Initital estimate:  $200,000 claim.  Wow!  (I guess we can put plans to refinance the house on the backburner.) 

On Friday Lisa signed a lease for a house, maybe 5 miles from our house and convenient to school.  It's a house used for temp housing.  Most recently used by a family hit by a tornado.  Turns out friends owned a house there before and their parents still do.  We learned yesterday we're confirmed to move into the house tomorrow (Monday) along with rental furniture and appliances.  It will be very nice to get out of the hotel and back to some degree of normalcy. 

Thank you to everyone who has helped and offered to help!!!  The bourbon and wine were much appreciated.  It's still hard to believe this has happened but we're doing well (with occasional moments of near emotional breakdown).  The girls have handled this soooo much better then their parents (though Meredith has come down with a cold today).  The dogs, cat and fish?  They are great and seem happy to have new visitors daily to play with.  We're thinking they will be able to stay at the house with daily visits by us.  (I can't say enough about electric fences -- it has been wonderful since we installed it a year ago.)  Last night we all enjoyed some down time -- the girls went to friends and Lisa and I went to an 80s themed birthday party.  I think that's plenty for now.  We'll be walking to Abuelo's for dinner shortly.

You've seen the initial signs of damage.  I'll post pics of ServiceMaster's work next and you'll get a better sense of the extent of it.