Our contractor stopped by the house today to deliver his final bill for the siding work. It was supposed to be cheaper than his estimate, since we decided to cover the existing siding rather than having it torn off. However, I opened the envelope and discovered that it was about $1400 MORE than he had estimated. I was furious. I called him to ask what happened, and he said, "I dunno. I guess that's what it cost us." Looking over the breakdown, it appears that he is trying to mark-up the labor for his subs by another 100%, so that's about $700 worth of the overage.  read more »

I admit that the title of this post is a little out of character for me. But I've reached that point where my patient frustrations are giving way to sailor-born colloquialism. And I need to vent to somebody. So please bear with me for a little while...  read more »

I'm a bit concerned about the latest news regarding Washington Mutual. Our mortgage is (was?) carried by them, and while I don't think it is going to affect our monthly payments in any way, I am worried about our current homeowners insurance claim. The insurance company cut us a check, but included the mortgage company's name on it. As a result, we had to mail the check to them first. I had never heard of this policy before, but I guess it is pretty common.  read more »

After a bit of splitting hairs with our insurance adjuster, we finally have both an accepted estimate and a roofing contractor. They are supposed to arrive tomorrow to start tearing the old roof off and get the new roofing felt laid down. Can you believe that the morons who installed our current roof didn't even put roofing felt underneath? It is amazing that our roof hasn't been leaking all over the place.  read more »

Now that we have found a contractor who seems intent on actually getting our home restoration work done, it is only a matter of days before half of our home is going to be sectioned off for new drywall installation. I would imagine that we're going to have to stay in a hotel again, if I can convince the insurance company to pay for it. Our last stay was kind of a joke - they didn't even get us a mini-fridge and microwave until the day that we checked out. So much for our temporary home away from home. I already mentioned the cockroaches, too.  read more »

Today, the insurance adjuster made it out to the house. After spending nearly an hour, he came up with 21 pages of repair estimates totaling about $12k. I have to admit that this is less money than I thought it was going to be, but his estimate doesn't include the tree removal that we already had done. What really shocked me was that he sat there in his van and printed out the estimate and the check and handed them to us.  read more »