Finally!

After almost three months of our house looking like this:

the repairs have started! We are so grateful. Finally seeing some actual physical progress gives me hope and is exciting. I'm so ready to be back in our home.

Long story short we ended up getting a new adjuster after our initial adjuster submitted an absolutely asinine estimate to us (and she only got around to that because I called her supervisor...can you tell I'm still a little bitter?). We then met with our new adjuster and our contractor (very helpful), and our contractor submitted an estimate. After weeks of waiting, we received word that our insurance company would pay all of our contractor's bid except a few hundred dollars. We were stunned and elated as this was about $47,000 more than the initial estimate.

Of course nothing works quickly when an insurance company is actually paying money out (but they sure do demand prompt payment from their insureds), so it took another few weeks to get a check, and then when we received it it was several thousand dollars short. It took another few weeks to resolve that, and in the meantime we worked with our mortgage company on getting disbursement of funds from them (since we had to forward the insurance checks to them) which is another ordeal. It's really been a very time-consuming few months-- and such a blessing that Blake and I both have such flexible jobs.

We're hoping to be back in our home in July by which time our house will be a different color! We're adding money to the insurance funds so that we can go ahead and put Hardie Board on our home, which we're going to paint a light/medium gray with white trim.

Happy summer!

p.s. I'm grateful for this progress and for the fun that Pinterest has been for me the last few weeks.