If it aint one thing it's another!

[Hank70SS]

Tony, you wanted to hear about the Chevelle. Well it's a long story.

So back when we were in Fl I mentioned our furnace stopped working. Talked our son through changing the ignitor and got it going. Thought all was good, but we were wrong. A few weeks later he came over to use our printer and noticed water stains in the vanity in the main bathroom. One of the shutoff valves froze and blew off the end of the pipe. He repaired that and turned on the water. Water was still leaking but he couldn't tell where. Then he noticed a water stain in the garage ceiling under that bathroom. So I called AAA and they sent people out to start the repairs.

Our whole house, even the garage walls and ceiling, are sheetrock with a skim coat of wet plaster. A previous owner added a drop ceiling in the garage and put insulation inbetween the drop and real ceiling. Well the guys had to rip into the ceiling to locate the leak and dry things out. Our son moved the one car out of the garage but couldn't get the Chevelle started. Talked to our neighbor Darrel and asked if I could put my Chevelle in his garage next to his Chevelle. Henry towed the Chevelle over to Darrel's and our neighbor Tom helped him push it in the garage.

I told the company doing the work to get the plumbing fixed so the house was liveable when we got back, Thursday before Easter, we would arrange for restoring the ceiling, etc. when we returned. Well after driving the motorhome all day in the rain we get home and open the garage door. It's covered from one corner to the other with broken pieces of plaster and plaster dust. It was all over the shelves and all my stuff, they didn't cover anything up. Opened the door into the house and find pieces of plaster and dust all the way to the 2nd floor and down the hallway. They tore out part of the wall that backs up to bathroom, ripped up some carpeting and cut out the padding.

Our house is almost 40 years old and we have a well. If you remove water pressure once it's restored it blows out 40 years of accumulated gunk and spits and sputters until all the air is out of the lines. Well that gunk was sprayed in both showers, the sinks, all over the vanities and even on the walls. They didn't even rinse it down once the water ran clear. So after driving all day we get to vacuum most of the house and clean the showers and sinks. Now I don't get upset too easily but after seeing this mess I got on the phone and blew a gasket. Well that was 4:30 and they were closed Good Friday so we wait until Monday for them to come out.

I could write a book about our dealings with them, you're getting the short version. Needless to say I finally told them to get out and don't ever come back, I would finish the repairs myself. After walking through the house with one of the owners of the company and explaining everything we went through he did write off our $1000 deductible.

This is part of the reason I haven't been on here much. While they were still working here I painted the other spare bedroom, now an office. After kicking them out I had to finish putting the suspended ceiling back together in the garage. I noticed big gaps in the insulation so I decided to replace all the ceiling tiles and fix the insulation. The new tiles were bright white and the old ones a dirty gray. That was a fun job, replacing the tiles when there's 9" insulation stuffed into a 7" gap isn't easy.

... to be continued.