Crazy Crystal's Attempt at Explaining the Events that led to the Crazy (the ole chicken vs. egg): The Neverending Nightmare

It's been quite some time since I blogged. I really promised myself that I'd get it together this time and post more frequently. Whatever happened to the days when I would start off by blogging, get work done, go for motorcycle rides, do whatever I wanted! I outsource my housekeeping and landscaping, so that's not soaking up time. I'm not in school anymore. Where the toot does my time go? Like seriously - where?

I'll try to blog more frequently but honestly not sure how for real that goal is. How ‘bout this – I do a small mass update today and save some topics for Wednesday and Friday, slowly getting back into the habit?

The biggest thing going on in my life right now has been going on since February 22^nd. While Dane and I were in South Africa our house was flooded with water from the kitchen sink. We suspect the cats somehow turned the water faucet on and the faucet was left over the counter side, not the sink side, so that’s the difference between a $400 water bill and a $40K restore and remodel. Though I will say that Peck came to the rescue, as she does, and saved almost all of our stuff on top of managing the sh*t out of the mitigation and handing over to me solidly. Since a picture is worth a 1000 words and I don’t have time to type all day, here’s my picture blog:

Water in basement, 1” standing from what I was told – not in this pic but at the worst. Peck and the family was on scene to mitigate, Shelby and Stephanie came out, Becky and Jamie, Brandon and Jamie – it was all hands on deck to save our house.

Water logged carpet. All furniture was saved!

Water logged counter top and warped flooring. You can see how the faucet was over the counter just enough to cause a ton of damage. Sucks, but what can you do. I've left it on that side before, I can't really blame Dra too much.

A million fans all over our kitchen and in the basement and a de-humidifier (not pictured) to dry everything up. Crazy town. By this time you can see the island has been demoed, the drywall, the flooring, the baseboards. A ton of stuff.

Arya checking out the damage. We went through 11 contractors before we finally found one patient enough to do our work. Of the 11 GCs that visited our house, only 4 came back with bids. Of those 4, 2 would not negotiate with our extremely difficult claims adjuster. Finally LR Contracting broke it down for State Farm and I just broke down and went crazy. I drove to my local agent's office and got an advocate there and went crazy on JoEl, our claims adjuster. Boring story long - he was holding us up based on $1900 difference between the drywall and painting and he was going to take another 5 days to review our claim. I said nope-nope-nope-nope-nope-nope-nope-nope. The next day the original inspector came back and met with LR, worked it all out and got a check to us the next day. We signed with LR and finally got moving - it only took 3 months, if you will believe that. Fuckers.

Work finally starts! I told State Farm (on a Tuesday) that if someone didn't come to my house by Friday - even if all they did was drop off a tool and scratch their chin at the situation - then they were going to have to pay out on a lot more claims. I reminded them they hold all our auto, home, property and life insurances and wouldn't it be something if they had to pay out on all of that. Okay, I didn't say all that but I did tell them someone would be in my house by Friday or else. By Friday LR came by and taped up this cupboard. Progress!!

Oh snap - the island is demoed to make way for our new idea - total concept built in dining table out of granite. Back to no kitchen sink again. Lame.