Finished

The basement is finally finished and looking better than it was before the flood.  All my hand-me-down/leftover furniture has been replaced with new stuff, all the stuff I've been meaning to get rid of is gone, and my laundry room has carpet in it now!  Ah, I'm so happy.

(Really quickly, here's how my laundry room has carpet.  I have been wanting to finish that room for a long time now.  I spend so much time in that room doing laundry and it's the ugliest room in the house.  Concrete floors, open beamed/spider filled ceiling, bad fluorescent lighting, you know the type:  a basement laundry room where the furnace is and sump pump and water heater.  Well, my parents were re-carpeting their family room the other day and I asked to take their old carpet, which was still in great condition.  So, my mom had the carpet installers cut up the old carpet nicely and roll it up.  My mom brought it over in her trunk and we brought it to the basement where she cut it to size by herself with a utility knife.  She is amazing!  It doesn't have padding and doesn't go all the way to the edge of the walls, but it was FREE and that's the best price!  It is good quality carpet, so I don't miss the padding, and I have shelves along the edges of the walls, so I don't care there's a few inches missing.  Ah, I'm SO HAPPY I don't even feel the need to finish that room anymore - it feels finished now!)

But wait, it gets better.  Our insurance company (Erie) has been absolutely wonderful this whole time.  God brought people out to clean the water out and get the wet carpet out the same day as the storm, and the insurance adjuster was there just a few short days later.  This is unheard of because this happened during the hurricane and everyone and their brother needed an adjuster.  They brought people in from out of state to help with the crazy workload.  Because I have a touch of OCD with organization, they got to me right away because I had my paperwork ready first.  We had our first check (about 75% of what we needed) a week after the adjuster came.  I was so impressed!  We started paying some of the bills we already had and our contractor got to work.  Since our contractor is a friend, he didn't charge very much, but I assumed once the insurance company got all of our receipts, they'd only pay us what we paid.  Nope.  They paid the full amount of the estimate, which was MORE than what we actually needed.

So, we made money on the flood.  I'm really happy with my insurance company!  (I also loved how they were always reachable - 24/7 - and very pleasant to me on the phone when I had a bunch of stupid questions.)

Pics are coming soon.  I just have to put some shelves together first - I've been putting it off for weeks!

Comments

Anonymous said…
That is fantastic!!! I too have my mom's carpet! That's what we put in the game room when she got new carpet!