Last January, Fred and my house in Iowa had water damage. We got a call from John, who was checking on our house every week. It wasn’t due to frozen pipes or an over flowing sink. A small section of pipe, going from the boiler to the radiant heat burst. John caught it within the week, but there were 4 inches of water in the basement. This wasn’t cold water. Oh no! This was hot water which makes steam. It lift tile (which covered our entire basement). It rolls up the stairwell, creating wet, humid conditions upstairs as well. Our favorite room, a large room with tile and pine car-siding on all walls and ceiling and 13 windows only had fireplace heat, so when the steam hit that room, it was like a rain shower. We kept our home at 60 degrees, so the thermostat that was upstairs was telling the boiler, “send up more heat!” You can see the dilemma.
John took care of the initial leak. Fred called insurance who sent an adjuster.While he was there, another spot in the same pipe burst. The basement was totalled. Servepro was called. When they are called everything is taken down to the studs, and all your belongings from that area are put in the garage. While working one day, they heard a crash upstairs. The kitchen cabinets fell off the wall. Not all of them. Just the ones with glass dishes. Fred came to Iowa for the month of February. He cleaned mold off walls, moved stuff around, took care of insurance stuff, and shared some horrific pictures of what had happened. Exclusions on insurance…we learned about the exclusion: if damage is caused from excessive humidity ….Yes, State Farm did not cover the upstairs at all. Fred itemized about 1/4th of the damage from the basement and then, returned to our home in Florida, while John continued the work on our home in Iowa.
Easter weekend we drove to Iowa on Friday, picked out new kitchen cabinets on Saturday, went to Mom’s 90th birthday party on Sunday, and drove back to Florida on Monday. What a whirlwind weekend. Loved the cabinets we picked out! Found out that we can do a lot in 4 days when we’re on a mission!
Summer, 2023. Back to Iowa. John had finished a lot of work upstairs. We painted the kitchen first, so we could put the cabinets in. As John finished drywall in rooms, I painted and Fred did trim and made sills (13 windows in the big room), refinished the mantel. All of this was punctuated with the wonderful-ness of Iowa in the summer! Inventory was still happening. Even though we didn’t use the basement unless the whole family was at the house, or we were doing laundry, the basement was full….of stuff! And now it was stinky, moldy stuff. My massage room was in the basement, there was furniture, the piano, treadmill, craft stuff, books galore (libraries have nothing on us!), and boxes and boxes of memorabilia, collections and materials from each of our careers.
Watching the news in late August, a tropical storm Idalia turned into a hurricane and was projected to make landfall by our Florida home…..(continued in Floods, part 2)
DocKLucas 