In April my Fiancé Lorraine and I decided we wanted to remodel our home. After loads of planning and designing, we were informed that work would begin in June and would be wrapped up on August 22nd. When all of the work was finished, we were so excited to put our belongings back and enjoy the brand-new additions to our home. On the day that our renovations were finished, we decided to go out to dinner. However, when leaving the house, we noticed some water in our garage. After some investigation on our part, we discovered that our water heater was leaking.
This was completely unexpected considering it was the same night that the all the renovation work had been completed. After calling our home warranty company, they dispatched a plumber who confirmed the water heater was the issue and ultimately that it needed to be replaced. The plumber also said he would call a water restoration company to check for any water damage in our walls.
By the time I got home from work, the water restoration company was ripping up those very same walls and baseboards that had just been painted over the last 60 days. The damage was not only in the garage, but also the laundry room and guest bathroom. The recently completed sections of our residence were reverted to a state of renovation, as fans and heaters were conspicuously distributed throughout each area.
This was not at all how we expected to be enjoying our newly renovated home.
The restoration company left for the night and returned the next day to assess the drying progress. They discovered water damage in our hallway’s wooden floor, necessitating its replacement. To accommodate more equipment, the washer and dryer were moved to the garage. We were informed of a change in crew leadership, and we mentioned finding water damage in our master bathroom. The team inspected it and assured us that while present, it was less severe and should dry by the weekend.
Saturday arrived and the restoration company’s weekend on-call team came out and to see how things were progressing. It was discovered that the “not so bad damage” in the master bath was worse than they had previously expected and the baseboards in that area also needed to be removed and replaced. To make matters worse, our freezer that they plugged into their power supply lost power when they blew out a breaker and $1100 worth of frozen food was lost. Thankfully, the restoration company wrote us a check to make up for all that was lost. On that day, the restoration company, originally scheduled for a brief 20-minute visit, ended up staying in our home for an extended duration of over 3 hours.
Since that first weekend we noticed the leak, the restoration company has almost completed their work. We have had the field supervisor and production supervisor out twice and our job has now been escalated. The field adjuster has also been out and has approved for the company to start replacing the floor in our house. We are still in the process of repairing the master bath and the floors. The restoration company will start digging up the tile next week as we continue to wait for that to be approved for repair as well. I expect that maybe by Thanksgiving or Christmas, we will get our house back to normal.
This whole experience really helped me understand what it is like to be a policyholder.
I can now understand how they feel when things go awry in their own homes as we were so upset, stressed, and anxious. On top of all the things we were feeling, we were not able to reach our Insurance Adjuster which made the whole situation that much more stressful.
