We were making excellent progress,
first stage of drywall was complete, siding had arrived, and the house was
looking beautiful. Should have known it couldn't last.
We had been concerned for weeks about
a moat that had been left behind our house. Our Production Manager said
he left it this way to ensure the dirt dried out before he backfilled the
foundation.
But he assured us everything
was ok, it was not hurting anything and that it was scheduled to be backfilled.
Well.....
Over the Labor Day weekend, Michigan got a lot of rain...
And the moat had
not yet been dealt with. The rain water flooded the moat, which then flowed
into our egress window and busted it. This allowed all the water to have
free access to our newly dry walled basement. And with the water came the mud.
So. Much. Mud.
I was actually up
north driving home from a funeral when I got the phone call about the basement
followed by the photo below.
I called our
Project Manager who explained exactly what happened. He was honest, that
he waited too long and this was his fault. While there was some solace
in that, it didn't fix my basement.
We took the next
two days and talked it over with many people and we were encouraged by all to
get ourselves out of our contract. We could be looking at a really big
mold problem.
To say I was
heartbroken would be a very poor word choice because I was crushed. This
was my house and now I had to give it up and possibly pay a lot of money to do
so because someone made a huge mistake, again.
We decided it was
time to call in the big guns. We have a wonderful, wonderful real estate
agent, who is really like a mother hen to us. ( We didn't bring her in on
this project sooner because we didn't know we could) but after so many issues
and now this HUGE mistake we called her and told her everything.
While she is no fan of Allen Edwin, she did say we would be fine. She
gave us the exact verbiage to use when we spoke to them and gave us contacts to
numerous people to help us should we feel we were not being adequately taken
care of. Armed with her guidance, The Knight sent a very well worded and
stern email to our production manager covering all the issues to this point and
the lack of communication and urgency in our project and explained that they no
longer had our trust. Then we waited. It was the longest 24 hours of
my life.
The next day we
got a phone call and spent over an hour being profusely apologized too and
hashing out all the details of what was going to happen and how we were
going to get our house back on track. Allen Edwin brought in a professional
team that handles flood restoration and assured us they would
fix everything. They are gutting the whole basement. Drywall, insulation,
mechanicals, furnace, hot water tank, its all coming out.
A day later, we
went to see the damages. At first we were very angry, who wouldn't
be once you see the damage in person. But then the team that was pumping
the water out came up from the basement and talked to us for a long time.
They were amazing! They reassured us and promised us that this house
would be beautiful and safe for our family.
After the water
was drained.
Finally
backfilled. This was hard to see. While we were so happy to see it
finally done, we couldn't stop thinking that if this was done right to start
with, this never would have happened.
Our Heroes at
work.
After I shot this
photo they came and told us that not only was it worse then they thought (far
more mud than expected) but it blew the motor in their van and if we wanted we
could even speak with the owner of their company as he was on his way out to
help out. Seriously! That's a great company if the owner is still that hands
on.
Stairs to the
basement.
So much mud.
Hoses and pumps
everywhere.
There was a
silver lining in this mess though, we also go to meet our neighbor. The
restoration company had to ask to borrow his electricity to get the pumps
going. We went to thank him and ended up talking for about an hour.
He seems great and he had a lot of advise on the build process and the
following year of warranty work. He also gave us the low down on the other
neighbors. Good news, they all get along and are friends. After meeting
him and hearing about everyone else, I really cant wait for this to be our home
and our community.
Please Lord, let
it be smooth sailing from here on.
Not a lot to report
today, except that the siding has started to go up!
Actually, a lot
is being done at the house. They are not stopping work on the main floor or the
up stairs, they are still mudding and sanding and prepping for prime. The
basement will just have to catch up later.
We gave up hope
on the siding still happening though, we didn't even notice it at first.
We were walking around the house checking out the broken egress window when we
finally noticed strip of green.
Its not very much
yet, but you can really see the color and it looks great! I was so nervous
about the color, but in the sunlight it looks wonderful .
Look at all that
white trim!
No comments:
Post a Comment