Home Improvement

Eomer_sl said:

Fucking terrible, sorry to hear man. Safety is serious shit in construction. That's one of my worst nightmares, is one of my workers getting killed.

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Yeah, it's awful. He was a young guy with a thriving business, owned three shops. Only 42, and he's leaving behind a wife and kids. It's just crazy to think how even a veteran builder can make one little mistake and suddenly he's gone.

Got my wood delivered today. This weekend and beyond it's trim/wainscotting time. Can't wait for this project to be finish.

Wife will want me to do a backsplash sometime in the next month or so. Please donate to support my family. I have no monies left.

Finally some good news! State Farm resolved my claim for considerably more than they offered me earlier in the week. We should be getting a hair less than $13,000 in total. Pretty good considering the coverage limit is 10k, but I guess they paid out the room contents under my standard policy.

After playing the cleaning bill (assuming they refuse to drop the ~$550 I contested) and paying ourselves back for the sewer line I had to replace, we'll have a budget of about $8,000 for the rebuild. More, if we consider the sewer bill a sunk cost and/or the cleaning bill is reduced. I am super happy.

God this is such a relief.

That's awesome. I don't envy you guys the stress from all this. Must feel a lot better now.

It's a relief, but now I get to wait on the checks. Can't actually do too much until those arrive.

8k to rebuild and then replace furniture is still going to be an incredibly tight budget, but that's just our break even point. If we end up coming out of pocket a little bit, that won't be the end of the world considering the value we add to the home.

Don't be surprised if and when those checks arrive that they have your mortgage company on them, you may have to send them off to be co-signed before you can deposit them if your mortgage company doesn't have any local offices/banks. And they may require proof that the repairs are done or at least scheduled(contract) before they sign off. Thats one of the big things that people tend to flip their shit over when it comes to large insurance claim checks on your home. Technically, the mortgagee is a co-owner of the home, so they have to be included in all claim payments(unless the insurance company is willing to risk having to pay out twice, in the event that the mortgage company isn't on the check).

At the very least, the check for the home/structure damage will have your mortgage company on it, if there's a separate check for the personal property damage it probably won't have them on it.

Yeah, they'll be listed. I spoke to the mortgage company yesterday, and they made it sound like it is pretty much a formality. They have a local office about 15 minutes from me, so I'm lucky there. I'm just going to walk the check through the door and get it signed the same day.

Thinking on it, the only way they could possibly have come to that value on the room contents is if he just didn't depreciate anything. He issued the checks very quickly while I was on the phone, so I'm guessing they were just trying to go ahead and resolve things to get me to stop calling. I'm totally fine with that.

One thing State Farm is fast with is checks. You'll have that in hand within a week probably.

Very sorry to hear about the man. I am still trying to understand how it happened.
Anyone in this business has had some close calls, and mine was earlier this year with a table saw( see pages back warning Draegan ) and I've lost people I've known from it. Hell a guy that helps me when I need it only has 3 fingers on one hand due to a miter saw.
Heavy machinery, voltage, heat, heavy materials and tools gone bad and just plain accidents. It isn't the deadliest job, but it is hard to do it long term and not have some serious or in rare cases fatal injuries. It is hard to get things done and constantly watch out for yourself and the people around day in and day out.

You people doing projects take your time, and always think a step ahead. I personally find I get more done when I relax a bit anyways.

Do I need to do you a awesome backsplash done cheap post Draegan?

Motherfuck. We went out last night with some friends for dinner and drinks, get home at about 11pm(we were gone maybe 4 hours) and when I pull the car in the garage, theres water running onto the windshield. Running, not dripping.

I back the car back out, and the entire garage floor is wet, and water is running out of the ceiling like there's a faucet in the ceiling. I run upstairs to where the bathrooms are, and our main bathroom has water covering the entire floor, coming from under the toilet from what I can tell. So I run back downstairs, turn off the water, and try to figure out what the hell is happening. After some searching around, the back tank of the toilet(that holds all the water) has a HUGE crack in it, all the way from the top, down the side, and across the bottom. And of course, it wouldn't just empty it's contents, since its a toilet tank it kept refilling as it got low. Motherfuck. How in the hell does that happen? I took a shower in that bathroom right before we left and nothing was wrong, but somehow while we were gone a massive crack appeared.

So, we're going toilet shopping today. Luckily I don't think the water damage is too terrible, the garage ceiling wasn't finished, just insulated, so I need to replace a lot of wet insulation but that's really about it(other than the toilet)

Is it possible that you (or someone you were with) fell or bumped into the toilet before leaving? It's a porcelain (glass), so easy enough to crack it. It's possible that you just didn't realize that it happened.

Never heard of a tank just cracking like that. It could be a defect in the commode when it was made/installed and finally gave way, but even then there has to be a why.
Was the tank tight to the wall, usually on a 12" on center drain from wall it leaves a inch or so behind the commode after finishing/drywall/tile whatnot.
I have seen people crack them installing them tightening down the bolts between the tank and lower unit before, pretty hard to do with new ones that have so much rubber gaskets on every item.
Headstomper for sure.

What is the toilet brand/manufacturer? Is it Crane? They had a massive class action lawsuit or settlement a decade or so against them for the same thing. Thousands of toilet tanks cracking and flooding people's homes.

In any case, that kind of shit is exactly why you should always turn the water off to your house if you're going to be gone for more than a couple days as a precaution. A lot of insurance policies have clauses about it in them, you either have to turn the water off or have someone checking your house every 72 hours or some shit.

Info on the Crane tanks:https://www.sgicanada.ca/sk/pdf/insu..._jan_flood.pdf

Not sure if they were just Canadian ones that were having problems, but I think it was in the US too.

Speaking of crappers and Eomers post above, the place I am redoing the shower right now, I also had to run a shutoff from under the house into the guy's closet , basically a loop before it got to outside faucets/everything else due to him calling me in March and saying he had a $800 water bill. He left in September , someone came to check on the house every month but in March it showed he had used 2 swimming pools or some shit of water. I rushed over 10pm on a Saturday night expecting to find a flooded fucked up house. Walk in, nothing. I crawl under the house, nothing. I was like what the fuck. Check meter, not spinning. Called utilities guy Monday, met him, he reread the meter again, no change in 3 weeks since he last read it, BUT it had used that water someplace.
Told Joel all this on the phone. He calls guy who checks on the house, guy says a week earlier he had found a commode running nonstop, but he hadn't used commode there anytime in past 6 months.

We still don't know who used it, and why it got stuck in a open position, but ya shutoff. He is only at this house in summer months but many other people use the house traveling through. Now they will have to turn the shutoff valve on in the closet and light hot water heater if they want water now on.

I thought his house was going to be fucked. It is a very very nice house and 2 doors down only the month before they had a line break on the 3rd floor flooding whole house while home. We had like 11 straight days of 0-20 degrees in Feb which is rare here.

New toilet installed. Only a small amount of blood was shed in the process. Soon I will be posting here from my new throne.

Only bad part was removing the old toilet, all the bolts were rusted to shit so I just took a hammer to the toilet base and broke the porcelain to get it loose. I also managed to get a hunk of porcelain down the drain so I had to have my wife sick her small hand down the shitter pipe to retrieve it. She was not thrilled.

Good times

Just received a third bid after a walkthrough yesterday that is very attractive. However, I don't want to just jump on the best value without looking at some prior work. I can find a lot of photos of commercial and exterior renovations by this guy's company, but not much in the way of residential interiors (all he has online is a facebook album). He's going to send some photos over this evening to look at.

Anyway, he came in at 8k for pretty much our whole list: fix all the damage, wall removal (and support if necessary), fireplace rebuild based on a photo we liked, tile in bathroom (and a faux stacked stone wall, which was sortof a wish list item for us), carpet OR laminate throughout (our choice), new bathroom vanity, 8 recessed lights and moving/installing up to 5 new outlets, and painting the stairs. He's also including painting and installing my kitchen cabinet doors, which are currently sitting in my garage and we were trying to hire out when this accident started.

Honestly, it seems like a lot of value to me as a layman.

This is the fireplace we were hoping to aim for:

What you're having done isn't "too" expensive, materials wise. You're mostly paying for his labor and expertise. He probably isn't a large contractor company that charges a minimum of $125 an hour for labor. He's probably being a lot more reasonable and charging $75/hour range. That's enough to cover him & his insurance. And a helper. I'm sure he has one. Take a look at a lot of the stuff he's done, though.

He apparently has a contract to remodel Ihops, among other things. I see a lot of images of those in his photo album. I guess he had a portfolio yesterday but I honestly forgot to ask to see it. He's going to send me more tonight.

Frankly, labor and expertise is what I need. I'm hoping by Tuesday or Wednesday we can go ahead and give the nod to get started, because goddammit I miss my basement. I'm tired of watching Netflix from my living room coffee table.

If he has some jobs posted and you can't find anything bad, then go for it. Yolo!

Glad things so far are working out better for you Heylel. If you have any issues or concerns on the job, and he can't satisfy you, and if you can find us, you can always call the Rerolled Team.

My next project, since I havent finished the other 25 projects I have to do around the house

How big?