Rebuilding the home
The whole metropolitan area got drowned and, depending upon where you lived, how much water you got in your house. Since then general contractors and handymen are worth their weight in gold ... if you can find an honest one. Managed to get 4 people out for quotes on replacing wet insulation and drywall. The figures were from $12K to $33K for the first floor (approx. 2000 sq. ft.)
The general contractor that we signed with comes with a good reputation and great references from some people we know. His crew has got the insulation in, drywall up, and today are spraying the texture on in preparation for painting next week.
In the meantime the wife and I have been shopping for kitchen and bathroom cabinets- so much fun! I've had 2 cabinet companies say that they were too busy to even come out to measure for a quote - I had to do this for them. 3 said that current cabinet styles won't match my existing uppers so they would have to replace them too. Price ranges are $15K to $20K. (Cabinets weren't in the contractor's quote.) These are top quality cabinets, not the shit that Lowes or Home Depot sell. And even those 2 places are so slammed that they needed several weeks before they could come out for measurements. One cabinet guy only makes the boxes; someone else would have to make the doors, and then someone else would have to do the staining. Who would have thought about specialization in cabinet making these days?
Of course, the bitch wife wants to replace the carpeting with laminate flooring ("It'll cost about double," says the general contractor) and to paint over the kitchen and bathroom wallpaper ("Wallpaper is so 90s", she says) and to "upgrade" the master bathroom to "keep up with the neighborhood" - a11 things she decided AFTER the guy gave us his quote and we signed on the dotted line. So now we're looking at an additional several thousand bucks out of our pocket because the fat sow wants to "keep up with the Joneses".
Did manage to get her out for car replacement shopping. Even though the kids have moved out she wants another midsize 4 door sedan when all she needs is something smaller, so that is in the $25K - $27K ballpark after TTL. Haven't even gotten around to shop for the several rooms for furniture we threw out, nor for the personal things like ruined clothing and dress shoes that needs to be replaced.
And all of this has to happen with FEMA denying us an SBA loan (law says you have to apply for an SBA loan before you can be considered for a grant from FEMA, and by law that maxes out at $33,300). So we're looking at draining our lifetime savings, denying buying what we can to avoid facing personal Chapter 11. FEMA will stop paying for our motel room in 10 days; after that, our options are to move in with the daughter (which she doesn't want to do because they both are massive bitches) or to move back into the house (which we can't do right now because there are no appliances, no garage-to-utiity room door for safety, and no furniture to eat at, sit on, or sleep in).
Yeah, life is wonderful.
The general contractor that we signed with comes with a good reputation and great references from some people we know. His crew has got the insulation in, drywall up, and today are spraying the texture on in preparation for painting next week.
In the meantime the wife and I have been shopping for kitchen and bathroom cabinets- so much fun! I've had 2 cabinet companies say that they were too busy to even come out to measure for a quote - I had to do this for them. 3 said that current cabinet styles won't match my existing uppers so they would have to replace them too. Price ranges are $15K to $20K. (Cabinets weren't in the contractor's quote.) These are top quality cabinets, not the shit that Lowes or Home Depot sell. And even those 2 places are so slammed that they needed several weeks before they could come out for measurements. One cabinet guy only makes the boxes; someone else would have to make the doors, and then someone else would have to do the staining. Who would have thought about specialization in cabinet making these days?
Of course, the bitch wife wants to replace the carpeting with laminate flooring ("It'll cost about double," says the general contractor) and to paint over the kitchen and bathroom wallpaper ("Wallpaper is so 90s", she says) and to "upgrade" the master bathroom to "keep up with the neighborhood" - a11 things she decided AFTER the guy gave us his quote and we signed on the dotted line. So now we're looking at an additional several thousand bucks out of our pocket because the fat sow wants to "keep up with the Joneses".
Did manage to get her out for car replacement shopping. Even though the kids have moved out she wants another midsize 4 door sedan when all she needs is something smaller, so that is in the $25K - $27K ballpark after TTL. Haven't even gotten around to shop for the several rooms for furniture we threw out, nor for the personal things like ruined clothing and dress shoes that needs to be replaced.
And all of this has to happen with FEMA denying us an SBA loan (law says you have to apply for an SBA loan before you can be considered for a grant from FEMA, and by law that maxes out at $33,300). So we're looking at draining our lifetime savings, denying buying what we can to avoid facing personal Chapter 11. FEMA will stop paying for our motel room in 10 days; after that, our options are to move in with the daughter (which she doesn't want to do because they both are massive bitches) or to move back into the house (which we can't do right now because there are no appliances, no garage-to-utiity room door for safety, and no furniture to eat at, sit on, or sleep in).
Yeah, life is wonderful.
