Something, at LAST!
Well, supposedly there's a cheque on its way to us.
The amount undercuts the contractor's estimate by four grand or so, but that's due to some factor of depreciation which, while sounding just a bit dodgy to me, is still somewhat workable. Essentially, once the work is done, the end result will be appraised, and reciepts for the work assessed, at which point we can ask for the balance of our money. Like I said; sounds dodgy to me, but we're already two steps farther along the road toward taking Allstate to court over the way they've been playing Hot Potato with our claim, and tossing us from division to division, so if this turns into another such game of Silly Buggres, well, we've been documenting everything as we've gone along, so at least we'll have all our facts straight.
So that means that now... I get to spend the rest of the week, or however long it may take, in packing up the REST of the contents of the room, and getting them out of there so the demo crew can come in and start removing the ceilings and damaged wall. That means researching storage options, since we don't have enough space in other rooms of the house to shift all this furniture about, and given my still-weak shoulder, and Dominus' somewhat dodgy back, it might well include hiring gorillas to do the moving for us. I would rather not do this, but I'm afraid we're a bit too far afield to ask the help of Calleigh House, as we all had grown used to doing in Texas.
It also means that we've got to decide right now whether we're going to be ditching ALL the damaged bookcases, as I want to do, or hanging onto them on the off chance that the personal property replacement decides not to cover them after all, and we find we have to make do with them after all. Truth be known, even without the flood and the mold, those shelves don't owe us a dime, so I'm less than sanguine about the idea of taking them down, shuffling them into storage, and then putting them back up again. I had much rather take them down, craigslist them to some college students who could use the cheap furnishings, and replacing the damned things. If only we had an ikea reasonably close... Then again, given the volume of the order, paying for delivery might just be a worthwhile expenditure. I dunno. We might even decide to build the silly replacement shelves ourselves. If we get possessed by the spirit of Bob Vila, or someone equally insane, that is.
This morning, I have been moving all the tchotchke from the living room, and finding places in other rooms, on other shelves, for them to temporarily reside. We have a LOT of tchotchke. Between our own jackdaw tendencies, and the decades of friends and family meeting every birthday, anniversary and yule with gifts of further cool little things, we are thoroughly besieged with the stuff. A Decorator would cry -- and then begin trying to convince us to be rid of the lot, which is where the real scrapping would begin. *Grin* The tchotchke is a key element to my visual style after all these years, and at this point in time, it's all memories more than just little figurines and stuff. (That overload of tchotchke was, by the way, the primary reason we started asking all of our tribe to give us framed photos of themselves instead. Because if we're going to focus on memorare, we might as well have the faces to go along with, eh?)
And it has just occured to me that I'm using this post to procrastinate against going downstairs and fetching up another armload.
Bad Clue.
Giddupoffyabutt -- (Thanks for that, Rikki,) -- and do something while you've still got time!
The amount undercuts the contractor's estimate by four grand or so, but that's due to some factor of depreciation which, while sounding just a bit dodgy to me, is still somewhat workable. Essentially, once the work is done, the end result will be appraised, and reciepts for the work assessed, at which point we can ask for the balance of our money. Like I said; sounds dodgy to me, but we're already two steps farther along the road toward taking Allstate to court over the way they've been playing Hot Potato with our claim, and tossing us from division to division, so if this turns into another such game of Silly Buggres, well, we've been documenting everything as we've gone along, so at least we'll have all our facts straight.
So that means that now... I get to spend the rest of the week, or however long it may take, in packing up the REST of the contents of the room, and getting them out of there so the demo crew can come in and start removing the ceilings and damaged wall. That means researching storage options, since we don't have enough space in other rooms of the house to shift all this furniture about, and given my still-weak shoulder, and Dominus' somewhat dodgy back, it might well include hiring gorillas to do the moving for us. I would rather not do this, but I'm afraid we're a bit too far afield to ask the help of Calleigh House, as we all had grown used to doing in Texas.
It also means that we've got to decide right now whether we're going to be ditching ALL the damaged bookcases, as I want to do, or hanging onto them on the off chance that the personal property replacement decides not to cover them after all, and we find we have to make do with them after all. Truth be known, even without the flood and the mold, those shelves don't owe us a dime, so I'm less than sanguine about the idea of taking them down, shuffling them into storage, and then putting them back up again. I had much rather take them down, craigslist them to some college students who could use the cheap furnishings, and replacing the damned things. If only we had an ikea reasonably close... Then again, given the volume of the order, paying for delivery might just be a worthwhile expenditure. I dunno. We might even decide to build the silly replacement shelves ourselves. If we get possessed by the spirit of Bob Vila, or someone equally insane, that is.
This morning, I have been moving all the tchotchke from the living room, and finding places in other rooms, on other shelves, for them to temporarily reside. We have a LOT of tchotchke. Between our own jackdaw tendencies, and the decades of friends and family meeting every birthday, anniversary and yule with gifts of further cool little things, we are thoroughly besieged with the stuff. A Decorator would cry -- and then begin trying to convince us to be rid of the lot, which is where the real scrapping would begin. *Grin* The tchotchke is a key element to my visual style after all these years, and at this point in time, it's all memories more than just little figurines and stuff. (That overload of tchotchke was, by the way, the primary reason we started asking all of our tribe to give us framed photos of themselves instead. Because if we're going to focus on memorare, we might as well have the faces to go along with, eh?)
And it has just occured to me that I'm using this post to procrastinate against going downstairs and fetching up another armload.
Bad Clue.
Giddupoffyabutt -- (Thanks for that, Rikki,) -- and do something while you've still got time!