Archive for the ‘Floor’ Category

Question for you southerners.  (Yes, I’m a Yankee)   My parents always go south to Orange Beach, Alabama for the month of February and it always seems like no matter the condo the rent it always will have tile for flooring.   This is where my question comes in.  What’s go great about having tiles for your flooring?  I can’t imagine how hot it gets down there during the summer and the tile feels cooler on your feet, but does it really make that much of a difference?   Or is there another reason why you tend to choose tile?  To me it’s just so hard on the feet and if you drop something say good-bye to it because more than likely it would break.

Maybe I’m just biased because I’m so used to having nice soft carpet up here.  Of course it does make our room feel a little warmer in the winter because of it too because let me tell you, those wood floors are CHILLY when it’s cold in the house.

The question.. how long after your house is built does things start breaking? It seems like all of a sudden things seem to be breaking in our house. First it was the garage door opener. Sometimes it just has a mind of it’s own and refuses to open and refuses to close. We know it’s not the batteries as we put new ones in. We even had changed the circuit board thinking that was it, but it still acts up from time to time. We plan on getting a new one, but still don’t know what kind to get. Do we get the same kind we currently have? Or do we go with one of those belt drive ones? Can I say I hate decisions, especially when I know nothing about them!

Then it was our refrigerator. As many of you know we had a major leak and didn’t know about it until our kitchen floor started bubbling up and at that point it had gone on for quite some time and not only wrecked our kitchen floor, but our bathroom floor & ceiling in the basement as well! Thankfully we did have someone come out to look at the refrigerator once we got everything fixed just to find out what caused it and it ended up being the valve in the back had split! Here Paul thought it was just a loose nut or something.

Since the refrigerator mishap Paul went to put something in the sink the other day and stepped in a puddle of water. He assumed and blamed the kids for once again spilling and he ended up wiping it up. Then later on I went to do the dishes when I stepped in a puddle too and since we knew no one had been in the kitchen since we opened the doors underneath to find that one of the pipes down there had split as well! Thankfully that was an easy fix, something Paul did all by himself!

Now I notice (actually I have for some time now) that our faucet seems to be leaking up on top. Whenever I do dishes, water ends up leaking all over the counter from the faucet. So I have a feeling before to long we will be going off to buy a new one of those too. Of course we might try and hold off on that as I know before long we will be wanting to repaint our kitchen and Paul was thinking of redoing the counters and if that’s the case maybe we can redo the sink & faucet as well as Paul hates the sink anyways. It will just be where do we end up buying all thing things? Do we go to a specialty store or a box store where we could get things like discount faucets, sinks, counters, etc?

Did I say I hate making decisions?

As we speak our Kitchen floor is being installed!!  WOOHOO!!!  Of course I’m not home to watch it happen as Paul and I both thought it would be better for the kids not to be around as we both knew they more than likely would be getting in the way.

So today the kids & I went to the zoo and had a great time!  You couldn’t of asked for a better day as the sun is actually out!  We are now hanging over at my parents even though they aren’t home.  At least there is heat, water, tv and internet here!  I was thinking of going to the mall, but I knew the kids would want to play in the play area and since I’m hearing a lot of people are getting sick I would rather them not catch anything right now as we leave next week for Florida!

I can’t wait to get home and see how it looks.  I did call Paul to see how things were going and there was a set back as I guess there was mold growing under the bathroom floor.  YIKES!  They poured some bleach on it and are now waiting for it to dry up.  So hopefully once the Kitchen floor is done the bathroom floor will be ready to be installed too!

I did take some before pictures of the kitchen/dining room area and Paul is suppose to be taking pictures of the process.  I’ll hopefully be able to post them today or tomorrow!

This momma is one happy camper today! The drywall work in the basement is just about done. He still has one more thing to do so he’ll be back on Monday and then we will be ready to repaint the basement and haul all the kids toys out again! (along with my missed treadmill)

Then our neighbor came over today (the one who will be installing our floor) and gave us the good news that our floor is in already and he was wondering if it would be ok if he came over on Wednesday to install it! Wednesday actually works perfect for us as that’s Paul’s day off so the kids and I will be heading to the mall that day so they won’t be getting in my neighbor’s and Paul’s way!

To think by this time next week my house will be back to normal!! Like I said… I’m one happy Momma right now!!

I’m happy to say our new floor is on order and as soon as it comes in our neighbor will be coming over to install it for us!!   So hopefully it will be all installed by next Sunday!! 

Then yesterday we had the drywall guy come over and start working on the ceiling in the basement.  Since he is here we are also having him fix some cracked and bubbled walls we had in the basement.  I guess he is coming back today and tomorrow so at least the drywall should be done by this weekend! 

Then after he’s done with the drywall we get to repaint everything down there.. and my guess is we won’t get to that until we get home from vacation.

All I know is I can’t wait for my house to be back to normal!!  Whatever normal might be. 

Paul was finally able to talk to someone from Citizen’s this morning and we have it set up for him to come look over the damage Monday morning!  I asked Paul how the agent seemed on the phone and he said really nice!  Usually when people have water damage like this they will hire someone to come out and rip the floor up to dry it out like we did.  Paul told him we called the two places that were recommended and the one didn’t answer while the other was going to come out and just do the project, not give an estimate, and since it was during the holiday weekend of course the price would go up.  (That’s why we did it ourselves as we really didn’t want to make a claim)

Paul then informed me that per the agent since we tore out part of the kitchen ourselves that they will reimburse us for our time, plus since there is no way we would be able to match our floor, so we will be getting a new kitchen/dining room floor,  a new bathroom, laundry room, hallway, mud room floor as that was one big piece, they will have someone come out to see what they can do with our cabinets plus more than likely we will have to tear out the drywall in the basement since that got damaged too.  So it looks like there will be a lot of construction going on in our house in weeks to come.

All I know is thank goodness for Insurance!

Last night I ended up running to Meijer’s for Paul and by the time I got home Paul was just getting off the phone with his Dad. He turned to me and informed me that we would be calling our insurance agent in the morning to have an adjuster come out as there is more damage than what we originally thought.

He brought me into our half bath and stood by the sink and that’s when I then noticed the big bubble in our floor that never used to be there.  Our half bath is on the other side of the wall from where our refrigerator was.  So it looks like all that flooring will have to come out and more than likely the hallway floor too.

We called our insurance agent this morning and she started the process for us.  Now we are waiting to hear back from Citizen’s to see what will happen next. 

Who do you have for your home owners insurance?  Do you have Citizens?  If so, have you ever had to make a claim?  I really hope they are just as good as State Farm because I’ve heard from a couple people State Farm is great to work with.  We used to have them when we bought our house, but their prices went sky high so we started shopping around.  I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite us in the butt.

I’ll keep you posted on this process!