I suppose an update is in order. But I've got to get to bed, so I'm keeping this bullet form:
- House repairs are moving forward, slow but steady. I'm finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. The smoke sealing is done, so it no longer smells like there was a fire. Framing is complete and the sub floors are back in. So basically it is ready to start getting plumbing, electrical, etc put back in. 9 months to get to this point!
- The car insurance did what it needed to do, but with all the things that have happened, I couldn't afford to replace the Model S. I joked earlier about getting a Bolt, but that's exactly what I ended up getting lol. I actually like it. I recently also got a Model 3 so now we're fully electric.
- My new job - ironically in insurance - turned out pretty good. That was probably the most stressful thing to deal with, looking back. I mean... I had no clothes! It seems silly, but that was really difficult to deal with for some reason. Having no clothes and no time to shop and having to show up every day. 9 months later, I have a reasonable wardrobe at least lol. My employer is really supportive, at least, allowing me to take time off to meet with the contractors and trades in moving the house forward.
- Regarding our stuff: it was all gone. 100% loss. A few things were cleaned as best as possible and kept because of the sentimental value, but it has to stay sealed in plastic because even after thorough cleaning and ozone treatments it still smells awful.
There are some silver linings (eg. nothing declutters like a house fire!) but overall, I don't recommend anyone go through something like this if they can help it! I'm sure that sounds obvious, but wow... it has been rough. So please be safe out there. You can't prevent everything, but do the best you can.
Cheers.
- Steven
So sorry to hear about this. We had a house fire about 2.5 years ago. It’s devestating. House repairs are hard because it’s your home but contractors know you’re locked in to them and they’ll get their money whether they finish a particular phase in 1 month or 6. So they’ll prioritize any other job because they know they can fit your remediation job in when they might otherwise be slow.
In our case the insurance adjuster said repairs would be over the policy limit so we just took the buyout and moved to another home. Insurance covers the structure/house, not the dirt so even after getting insurance payout for the house we still sold the lot with the fire-damaged house for a small amount. A contractor bought it for a steal, then on his time and dime fixed it up ASAP, like in 4 months and flipped it for almost regular market value.
In our house fire it took over a year before we were into a replacement permanent home and were able to repurchase things we had lost. There was no point or space to purchase tools and yard equipment while staying in a hotel or temporary accommodations. Only once we were into new permanent housing could we really repurchase everything lost then submit for reimbursement from insurance.
I now highly recommend to anyone to have FULL size fire extinguishers. We only had the narrow/little ones and when it runs out before the fire is out you know that your are up a creek without a paddle. It’s a terrible feeling looking at the fire and knowing you’re powerless to stop it. Get full size extinguishers, permanently mount then in prominent places. When you’re awakened at 1am and find a fire you’ll be disoriented. Having to search for an extinguisher wastes time. Have them mounted so you know exactly where they are.
In our case the fire started at a deep freezer we had in the garage. In the US smoke alarms aren’t usually installed in garages because ICE vehicle exhaust might cause false alarms. That’s my #2 recommendation of lessons learned, put smoke alarms in your garage! We got Nest Protect alarms now because even at $100 each it’s cheap compared to the cost, time, and heartache of recovering from a fire. If our garage had a smoke detector I believe we could have found the fire fast and early while we could have put it out ourselves. With no detector on the garage it had time to grow before smoke got into the hallway to the first smoke alarm.
We also had a newer 2010 home and all the smoke alarms were cross-linked so when one went off they all went off. At 1am waking up to that is terrible and disorienting. The Nest Protect alarms (if configured) can tell you WHERE the alarm was triggered, such as “Emergency: Smoke detected in the Garage” (or basement, etc). This would have helped us save 10-20 disoriented seconds trying to figure out why and where the smoke alarm was indicating a problem.
Interesting, the insurance adjusters said that since the reduction of people smoking in bed, bedroom fires are less common and most fires now start in either the kitchen or garage.
