The Long Ordeal - Final Ending...I Hope

If you've been following along then you know that my 2017 did not end very well and 2018 picked up the suckiness that was my life at that point and ran with it!

Here's PART ONE and PART TWO in case you want to catch up or refresh your memory.

Before I get started, I want to thank all of you that made a point of telling me it was not my fault mom fell. Thank you! I know in the back of my head it wasn't, but sometimes my head doesn't communicate well with my heart! Someday I will tell you of the ordeal that was my marriage and you will totally understand!

I'm in insurance, but I've never had a claim and I'm not an adjuster, so that doesn't make me an expert in claims. I figured the pipe had burst and damage was caused and I could understand that perhaps the insurance company would not cover the pipe but surely they would cover the resulting damage.

When I called the insurance company in the beginning to report the damage, they immediately told me to call a plumber, have him make sure there was no mold or asbestos and then let them know and they would send out an adjuster. 

I did that and called them again to report no mold, no asbestos. The lady I spoke to at the time understood it was the holiday's and that my mom was ill and just out of the hospital and she told me that the pipe would more than likely not be covered because it's the responsibility of the homeowner to make sure that maintenance is done on a regular basis, but that she was pretty sure the resulting damage would be covered. (I had no idea how important it would be to me that she said this.) So I gave the go ahead to the plumber to fix everything.

Remember I said in part one that they would have to tear down walls? Well they did. They completely gutted the bathroom and since the pipe was bad they knew they had to break walls in the kitchen and the laundry room and the second bathroom and replace all the pipe throughout the house. To make a long story short, it took forever and in the end they handed me a bill for $10,400!!!

Total shock!!! But, I was counting on the insurance company covering most of that minus my deductible of $1000 so I figured I would probably be out of pocket a couple of thousand dollars. I sent them the bill and photos and waited to hear.

The adjuster told me that because the leak was caused because of non-maintenance by the homeowner that in normal circumstances, they would have paid a big fat ZERO! But...because they had in the notes that the insurance representative I had spoken to had told me the pipe would not be covered, they were standing by that, it would not be covered. However, because she also told me the resulting damage would be covered they were obligated to pay that...whew!

You know how much they paid? $5,000 minus my deductible, so that means they sent me a whopping $4,000! I was crushed. Again...to make a long, long story (three blog posts long) short, I came up with the balance of the money and now have to eat beans for the rest of my life. 

So we've moved back in. Did 2018 get any easier? Any more disasters? Well yes and no, but I've always been a "look on the bright side of things" kinda person. I have a gorgeous brand new bathroom and brand new plumbing throughout the house. I eventually would have had to replace all that pipe anyway, I just hadn't planned on it being so soon. Mom is back in her home and no long term repercussions from her fall. 

Sure, there are still things going on in my life that aren't perfect, that will require time to fix, but at least it's not raining hell on my head all at once. You know the old saying...

Thanks for reading and commenting and we'll just have to see how the rest of 2018 goes.