This is a semi snark/winners circle post. Starting at the beginning of September I noticed part of our bathroom floor was getting soft which is a sign of water damage somewhere. With further investigation I found a part of the flooring that if I stepped on it that water came out between the flooring, so really not good.

Then filing an insurance claim is sucky in the best of times. But is a thousand times worse when you have a weird ass situation and because of covid that inspection is done virtually. Whoever had the bright idea that was our laundry "closet" is a freaking idiot. There was a normal enough closet in the bathroom, but whoever built it had cut holes in the drywall to make room for the dryer vent and the washer hoses. Then proceeded to build the closet AROUND THE WASHER. You could *NOT* remove the washer. The wall for the closet came about half way across the front of the washer then combined with the plumbing in the wall you couldn't even just slide it out. Our contractor had a hell of a time getting it out after all the drywall had been removed even. But anyways, the insurance inspector kept having a "hey now little lady, how about you just give it a good ole try to just slide that there washer out". Completely ignoring the fact it was next to impossible. Whatever, at least its done and my insurance would cover it. But that took like two-three weeks to get the payout on that because our insurance is "two weeks behind" on claims.

In all the insurance parts we were trying to find a contractor who would do good work and not steal our money, insured, licensed, etc etc etc. My husband worked with a guy who left their job to start his own contracting business. So obviously we contacted him first with my husband knowing him and we have seen his work it is great. The guy comes out and gives us a quote which is good, it is within our budget with what the insurance is giving us. Then... nothing. We don't heat from the guy again. We gave him two weeks and messaged him multiple times and got no responce. There was only ONCE that he asked to come out and do work and it was at 6:20 PM. AT NIGHT he wanted to start construction when we have two young kids. No thank you. We didn't respond, we weren't even home anyways, and that was that with him.

I took it to Facebook which was a nightmare. So many people were responding to my post, messaging me, people were warning me about people who were commenting. I was in a freaking panic about it because I did not want all our money stolen or a shitty ass job. Then our very, very lovely contractor messaged me. Let me tell you I could kiss this man. He is so sweet, the work he does is amazing and for a good price. He went over everything with us. If he left for the day and I was still working (I work from home) he would message me or call me and just explain everything he did for the day. If he felt that something needed to be changed or he felt something should be done that we weren't originally going to do he would explain why he thought it should be done. And he explain from a construction point of why it should be done, not in a way that seemed money grabbing. 10/10 would recommend.

Anyways. So David is lovely, works quickly, fantastic. He gets everything removed that needed to be; all drywall from up 4ft down, insulation in many places, flooring, tile flooring under that flooring, etc. And as he is doing demo he notices that there is almost nothing to support the roof. So a new header had to be installed in the closet that was in the bathroom to support, you know, everything...

Then David got everything like done for the dry wall, mudding, etc. THEN THE WATER BACKS UP FOR THE WASHER DRAIN and bubbles go streaming down the brand new drywall that was in no way protected because it was JUST FINISHED. So in comes Roto-rooter and another like $200 they cleared a clog.

After that there wasn't really any more hick ups and my bathroom is so, so amazing. I love it.

Then because David was amazing we asked him to do another project for us. We haven't been able to use our upstairs bathroom for about two years now because we found a cracked cast iron water main pipe that leads from our upstairs bathroom. We first found the crack just before covid hit, we had someone (actually the first contractor who ghosted us) come out and quote it, but because of Covid we weren't comfortable with someone coming into our home to do the work. And we had another bathroom so it wasn't like we were totally out of a bathroom because of it.

Anyways, so David the Saint agreed to do the work to replace the water main. Which the crack started in the basement, came up into the first floor/dining room, and all the way up to almost the ceiling/floor to the second floor. All in all probably around 13ish feet long. And it is probably a half inch wide, its insane. So David replaced that and fixed up our upstairs bathroom, replaced flooring, etc.

It has been a nightmare but also at the same time I am SO glad all of it is done. And I am SO, so, so thankful for David. The work he has done is beautiful, he was so kind and helpful.

But here are some pictures if anyone is curious.

Clicky clicky for album of pictures of both bathrooms and finished dining room