Tuesday, June 26, 2012

YEAH!! Water heater is getting installed today!

Went to Home Depot last night and purchased a 50 gal., 40,000 BTU gas water heater with a 12 year warranty.  Called AGS to come and install it.  They will be out today to install.  I will be able to take a hot shower at home tonight and a bath without having to boil water first. YES!

Insurance adjuster is supposed to come out and take pictures of water heater once it has been removed from attic.

Got a call from another contractor about coming out today and measuring where all the drywall needs replaced.  

Hopefully my house will soon be put back to right.  Now waiting on some money to buy hardwoods and pay the installer to install it in the downstairs bedroom. 

Friday, June 15, 2012

Depending on your point of view

I am at the point where I have to find something positive.  So, it could be considered a bright side that the water heater waited until this week to explode.  It could have happened at any time while we were at Disney.  If that had happened we could have come home to find the whole house flooded and possibly floating off the foundation.

They have had to move walls, ceiling and flooring.  We know that at least 8 pillows, a European queen size pillow-top Sealy mattress and box springs, carpet, padding are all ruined.  I am trying to save the 6 hand made quilts that were in that room, along with the sheets that were on the bed and the ones that had been placed on the floor to go upstairs for washing before this happened.  We hand dried the 15 year old Amish furniture and hope it will be able to survive. We did not see any water on the tv, cable box, computer, printer, monitor, desk, bookcase, or Amish hope chest that were also in the room.  Right now they think the hardwood floors are fine in the surrounding areas - in the closet off the bathroom, the hall on the other side of the bathroom wall and the sitting area in the master bedroom right off the bathroom.  I did notice the wall this morning in the hall was bowed out and will probably have to be taken down and replaced too.

Right now we are kind of numb and shock.  We look and see lots of work to be done, but just can't thing of where to start.  Cold showers, heating of water to wash dishes.  Kind of makes you not hungry.

We finished painting that bedroom last fall.  I had planned on painting that bathroom this summer.  At least we had not installed the new ceiling fan in that bedroom.  I think I have it sitting in the dining room waiting on us to get motivated to installing it.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Pictures of Damage

Pictures of walls, ceilings, floor.  

these are pictures of the downstairs bedroom floor after they removed the wet carpets.  As you can see the cement is still wet.






 These are pictures of the ceiling of the downstairs bedroom after they removed all the wet drywall.


 Now here is the master bathroom.  They say said the wall between the bathroom and closet did not get soaked.







The water heater was over the half wall between the sink and the commode. 




Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Need a change of luck

Lets start with - a house that is only 10 years old, should not have to have the gas line for the stove fixed, both upstairs and downstairs heating and air conditioning units replaced after they broke, hardwood floors having to be replaced after they tried to re-glue it and it kept popping, vinyl floor in kitchen having to be repaired 3 times before total replacement, slate in kitchen window fell - replace window and they forgot to seal the window, a fiberglass shower floor cracking because they cut a hole around the drain pipe too big so there was nothing supporting the floor -ruining part of the ceiling of the bedroom below - all within the first 5 years of the house being built.  Then this year on Labor Day, after surviving through the tornado's that came through, the roof leaked everywhere and had to be replaced.  Today we came home to find the ceiling in the downstairs bedroom dripping water and the bed soaked, thinking it was the shower leaking, went upstairs to find that no the floor upstairs had standing water and that the ceiling there was leaking.  Called the plumber thinking it has to deal with the water heater, they came and said that the water heater burst and a new water heater with installation but not cleaning up of damages would be about $1,600.  Water damage people came around 7, set up 5 dehumidifiers and took pictures of ceiling, wall and floor damage and are coming back tomorrow to deal with all the mess.  




































Places to live

We arrived back from our vacation to Walt Disney World. My son tells us that wants to move there, I told him I wouldn't mind living around there but we have to wait until after David graduates from his PhD program, which will be around 4 years from now. This got David and me to discussing where we wouldn't mind moving to. We started with a list of all 50 states and both of us had our own ideas of what states we did not want to live in. We narrowed it down to 9 states that we would not mind moving to. The following states were the ones we decided we could live in (these are not in any particular order:

Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas

With in those states we said the following cities:

Alabama 
Huntsville, Madison

Arizona 
Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Flagstaff, Prescott

California 
San jose, Salinas, Monterey, Santa Maria, Long Beach, Santa Ana, San Diego, Riverside, Palmdale, Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo 

Florida 
Orlando, Ocala, Jacksonville, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Port St. Lucie, Palm Bay, Gainesville 

New Mexico
Santa Fe, Albuquerque

North Carolina
Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Raleigh, Durham, Wilmington

South Carolina 
Columbia, Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Greenville

Tennessee 
Chattanooga, Nashville, Knoxville

Texas
Houston, San Antonio, Dallas/Ft Worth, Austin, College Station

We are planning a family vacation to the Grand Canyon and will see how we like the area. We are also talking in a few years of a family vacation to Washington DC and maybe making a few days detour and checking out the Carolina's. We are somewhat familiar with Tennessee and Florida. My husband lived for about a year in Texas after he graduated with his Bachelor degree and I currently have a couple of cousins living in and around San Antonio and College Station, Texas. We currently live in Alabama and have visited Huntsville area. I have been to California once back in the 80's (before I could drive). Each state and city has its own pros and cons.

We plan on doing research and gathering a nice list of pros and cons and hopefully get some from people that live in those areas, natives and non-natives. We hope to have narrowed down to places we would prefer more over another and what our income required for him for each place, before he graduates. Thankfully we have 4 years to gather this information. We have said that what it really comes down to is, while we may prefer one place more than another, as long as it meets the pay requirements, we will move wherever we have to for his job. All the places that we are looking at have Colleges/University's and/or are big into technology.

Start of my Rambling Along

This blog, originally started last year, as a way to keep track of my quilting/crafts, but then I found  another blog site that I liked the backgrounds, etc. better for posting.  So this blog sat blank, unused, almost forgotten about by me.  Today, I decided that I would change the name to Rambling Along, and use it as a way to express my thoughts - and make sure I don't forget something.  I am among the first to admit that even if I write something down, it doesn't mean I will remember, or even be able to find the paper it was written on.  Now with so much going on, I thought I would start using this for all the rambling I may do and keep my other blog for all my crafting/quilting/baking, etc.  Maybe this way, I will be able to find my notes about such things, like my research into places that I wouldn't mind moving to, or vacations I would like to take, etc.