FLOOD, PESTILENCE, AND .....?

Hopefully not fire...

So, we called our insurance agent- they sent an adjuster out and he felt like there was more than enough damage to make it worth our $500 deductible. They send out a special restoration crew that tests for humidity in the walls and floor, etc. They found plenty-in the living room floor (obviously where the water damage was), but the shocker was in our archway AND upstair the entire bathroom, and they also found moisture in our bedroom. Anyway- long story short- the demolition crew arrived and removed walls, flooring, etc in both bathrooms, upstairs hall, bedroom, and downstairs front entry and living room.

so part of our house is currently being renovated- but that's not all...

We discovered a family of skunks living under our house- basically the kitchen. So Tom has been trapping and "disposing" of them. The last time one let go it's "essense" and the heater sucked it up and sent it through the house! So now the poor house stinks too!

Tom shut the heater off (the workmen have had it on high to dry out the house) and changed the filter, sprayed abunch of deoderizer in it, and it's smelling a TON better. I feel bad for the poor plumber who has to replace all the pipes under the, yup, you guessed it, kitchen. Well, I guess a little bad smell is better than getting sprayed.

Unfortunalety, the skunk smell just attaches itself to everything and after Tom came back to the office, I could smell it there now- and the car... he even threw the clothes he was wearing away-I asked him where he thought he was sleeping that night :-) ... He took a long bath.

I don't even know how to feel at this point-except to find the humor in it all.

The adjustor said that if we have hot water by Christmas they won't pay for a hotel for us to stay in while the center is rented between Christmas and New Years. But even if we do have hot water, there is no where to sleep right now since all the furnishings are moved into the spare bedrooms up stairs and the den downstairs. Not to mention the construction dust, etc.

So we're not sure where we'll be spending New Years...

One good note- the weather has been unseasonably WARM- we have "0" snow on the ground, it was 48 yesterday-this has all helped with the house- but the storms look like they're starting to line up on the west coast- so we may still have a white Christmas.