Nightmares in Home Repair

Door shopping is not going good. We found a door we liked, but it of course is astronomically expensive so it is unlikely that we will be able to convince the insurance adjustor...

The wood on the interior of our house was the main thing that we LOVED about the house when we decided to buy it. It got busted up in our entry and we apparently can't find a match to it so we are having to figure out what do about that.

The wood that made up the wall of our bathroom that got bashed in, supposedly is easy to match but the "match" the rebuild people brought by doesn't actually match so now Kevin and I are in disagreement: he wants to use it and just not worry about it not matching the other walls while I would rather do something different with that wall if it won't match.

To make matters worse, we realized that the crew who cleaned up had thrown away my cowboy boots which was a big blow as I spent 10 years looking for my boots so they will be difficult to replace...

By the afternoon we were at the Brewery near our rebuilders office because we couldn't take anymore.

About your shoes...

Kevin keeps his shoes easily accessible in the closet as you enter our house. When the truck crashed his shoes got filled with sand. The restoration company offered to have them "detailed." Those of you who know my husband, know that he doesn't bother with "detailing" anything and so he opted to just have them leave the shoes, he planned to dump the sand out and continue wearing them. Somewhere in the chaos of getting the debri cleared and our house sealed his shoes got thrown away but it was not until this morning that this sad news was shared with me.... Model of efficiency this project is turning out to be.

I was instructed to start shopping for doors last week: not a fun experience. If anyone has any great french door recommendations please let me know. Also looking for a bathroom vanity...

Many people I have talked to seem confused: no one drove into our house, in an awesome twist of fate a truck containing materials for the fence being built in our neighbors yard rolled from across the street, over our planted divider, down our driveway and into our house, no one was in it. Our neighbors fence looks great, they have got lots of compliments.

When friends drop by and you have no door

Our friends were on a bike ride the other day and decided to drop-in and survey the damage but they said upon their unannounced arrival they were not sure where to knock....ah the perplexing reality of having no door...I leave the garage open so that if people aren't timid they can access an entrance to the house but so far most people just knock on the plywood bolted to the side of the house where the doors used to be which makes me laugh, then Jasmine and I go to our window that looks out over the former entryway and view our perplexed visitors and laugh some more. We are averaging two visitors a day what with all the insurance/repair related folks dropping in and so this provides much entertainment for my curious toddler.

It was fun when the insurance adjustor got lost and called and said "I didn't see a #21" to which I replied "Oh did the numbers on the side of the house get demolished too?" They didn't, but his comment had me realizing all the details I had yet to note regarding the damage.

It has been over a week since the accident occurred and all I know is that they can't find a match for the damaged tile on the steps so the steps coming down our driveway will no longer match the steps going up to our door-- I am having trouble caring since we have no door to go up to yet. I haven't made much progress on door shopping: with a sick baby and no idea what my budget is, I am having trouble motivating.

"OH they were DOUBLE doors"

Says the "team leader" on our home repair. I had just shown him a picture the inspectors had taken of the front of our home when they had inspected it last October per our contract to buy. I was proving that there were new cracks on our driveway, trying to enlist him to help me argue sucessfully that the insurance should cover repair of the new cracks. He was just stunned by the fact that what he had been picturing as a single door was actually a double door before the accident. I now realize how disorienting our house looks to others. The shards of the left-hand door still looked like my idea of "welcome home" but to the men who cleaned it up I realize now it just looked like shards of wood. I have adjusted relatively well to not having front doors and when I look at the front of the house I either picture the beautiful doors we used to have or the replacements I hope to get. Others probably see the ugly plywood that is there and wonder if we had a meth lab blow-up or something else sinister this week. Last night Kevin was able to download some pictures as I put Jasmine to bed because instead of his normally heavy load of paperwork he came home perky after an afternoon of doing physicals for high school spring sports. So I hope to have those posted soon for people's viewing pleasure. Sorry my blog isn't more involved at this point, I thought keeping up with Jasmine was a 24/7 job and now I am struggling to also facilitate the home repairs that need to happen.

A truck rammed through my front doors today

We never did get around to weatherstripping our front doors like the home inspector suggested in October before we bought this house and eventually we had hoped to replace the dated bathroom sink and vanity but seriously did god really have to send a pick-up truck barreling through our front doors to motivate us to change? For whatever reason I had the urge to laugh about this all day, even though deep down I feel sick thinking about how one of us, namely 16-month old Jasmine, could have been standing in the entryway when the truck barged in. But the hardest losses we suffered today were our doors that we both really liked, the tile steps, that had really grown on us, and the quirky old sink designed to be able to wash a person's hair in which I sadly never got around to trying out in the 4+ months we have lived here.