Let me tell you a little story about this summer. On July 6, we got home from a lovely camping trip for the long weekend and found that the water supply line into our master bathroom toilet had cracked and leaked water all over the bathroom, through the floor, and into the office below. It also dripped over into the living room and landed on the piano. Nice.
Jim found the problem around 7 PM so we had to wait until the next morning to call our insurance company. We cleaned up the water and waited.
The next day, they assigned us to an adjuster. The day after that, I talked to the adjuster and he had a project manager at ServiceMaster come to our house that afternoon. Within two hours, there was a crew at my house tearing down the ceiling in the office and in the living room, and tearing up the floor in our master bathroom. I really had no idea they would demo that quickly. Then for the entire weekend we had seven large industrial fans and three dehumidifers running 24 hours a day.
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| Cords running down the halls. Not really that interesting but remember this, the old flooring. |
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| The office turned into a red zone |
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| Moved our office necessities to the upstairs guest room so we could still function. |
The adjuster said, “Call a contractor. I’ll send you my estimate and a check.” We thought it would be easy and wrapped up within the month. Ha!
We called four contractors and only heard back from two. Of the two that came out to the house, one took three weeks to get us an estimate and we finally gave up on the other one. Seriously?! By then it was the end of July. So we called a friend of ours who works for RW Anderson Homes and asked for some advice. He referred us to their handyman services, RW Handyman. It turns out, Jim went to college and lived with the general contractor for RW Handyman! He came out the next day. He gave me a verbal estimate before he left the house and a written estimate within one business day. Now that’s what we expected for customer service.
While we were gone camping for ten days, the RW Handyman team coordinated with our housesitter to fix our ceiling. Then they painted the walls in the living room, hallway, and office. When we got back, it was time to talk about flooring. You know you’ve spent too much time in flooring stores when your three-year-old starts to say things like “I like this trim” and “Can we get this tile?” Pretty funny. After lots of decisions, we landed on flooring that I love, and it is an upgrade from what we had before and was less than our budget because the company is discontinuing the color. That was good news. So we started to pull up the floor…
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| We did the house half at a time. Everything from one half moved into the other rooms, garage, and to the deck. |
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| Ready for floor! |
Unfortunately, at this point, we hit a snag. By now it was August 15 and we were anticipating our floor going in that week. Jim picked up the floor materials and then found out (why no one mentioned this earlier, I will never know) that you have to let the flooring sit in your house for 48 hours or more to acclamate to the humidity in your house before installation. Really. So we hosted Haley’s first birthday at our house with half the downstairs torn apart and only one working toilet, upstairs. Thank goodness we had nice weather!
The night after they installed the front room floor, Jim and I moved all the furniture out of the family room, kitchen, and dining room and pulled up that floor as well. We worked until 2 AM, but it was done!
While they installed the kitchen floor, they found a water leak behind the dishwasher. That had to be fixed, obviously. When we put the washing machine and dryer back, the washing machine stopped working. We had to order a part and do laundry elsewhere for almost two weeks. I’m not making this up.
With the flooring in, the team from RW Handyman started on trim. Once we had the trim installed, we realized how ridiculous our old oak doors looked with beautiful white trim. So we decided to have them paint the doors as well. And when you’ve got the doors off, you might as well replace that old gold hardware… so we did that too. Meanwhile, the powder room needed some paint touched up and I did a horrible job. I decided to repaint the entire bathroom, and redecorate a little while I was there. Jim installed a new faucet for me and it took way longer than it should have and included a trip to the hardware store for new water hoses.
Then we focused on the bathrooms upstairs. We decided to have the workers go ahead and replace the flooring in the kids’ bathroom too, and to upgrade from vinyl to tile. When Jim pulled the old floor and trim out, the trim all broke it was so brittle. Off he went to the store for new trim…
And while you have toilets and trim out of a bathroom, it would be silly not to paint it. So I painted the kids’ bathroom this “sweet mango” and it looks beautiful with the new tile! Nothing had been hung on the walls yet when I took this, but you get the idea.
After the floor was in, we reinstalled the toilets, fixed one last leak, and had many trips to the hardware store to fix the original leaky toilet. We think it might be all fixed now. 🙂
And finally, just last night, we finished the last of the small items in the downstairs. Here’s a look at the new floor, trim, doors, hardware, and paint (the “dapper tan,” the red was there already).
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| View from the front door walking in |
It’s been over 11 weeks since we’ve had a fully functioning house… it’s nice to be back!
The Keene Family 