Home Makeover

When our house was damaged in that huge storm last January, we learned how horrible the windows on the south side of our house were (you know it's bad when you have to make sure your windowsills are stuffed with towels whenever the forecast called for rain!), and the door in our bedroom to the backyard we knew had definitely seen better days. In April we bit the bullet and decided to replace it all! What a difference it makes!

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My friend, Ricky (who I have known since 1st grade) has is own window company and did the work for us. He did a fantastic job and cut us a great deal. We are so happy with this home improvement. And it is already saving us money on our energy bill! Home ownership is always a work in progress, especially when you have a 25 year old house. We've got a lot left to do on our house, but we're pleased with the progress we have made so far!

Finally Finished!

Three months after the big storm, and after 3 nights in a hotel, our house is FINALLY done! I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves!

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Although it doesn't really show up in the pictures, one of the other things we did was get rid of the outdated popcorn ceiling and instead have it textured and painted. It all looks so good, and we're SO happy to finally have our house back!

The Work Goes On

Our house is still a work in progress after The Big Storm back in January, but we're getting there! With all of the rain we've had this year, it seems like every time it's rained, we're finding a new place where our house isn't water tight. One issue we've found in the last couple of times it's rained is that there is a small amount of water coming in on the outside wall of the chimney. We've known the trim on the chimney could have used to be replaced, as the wood was really warped and separating from the house. So before we close up the wall, we wanted to get the trim replaced and make sure that solves the problem and seals everything up tight. Andrew worked so hard, and did a great job replacing the wood. Check it out!

Here's the before:

And here's the progress that was made this weekend. Quite a difference!

One of the other things we had noticed was that the cap at the top of our chimney wasn't really fitting properly. So we had someone come out to look at it, and come to find out the whole thing needed replacing. So now, we have a brand new chimney cap!

We're supposed to get another storm passing through this week, so after that we'll hopefully be able to confirm that the rain will all stay outside, and we can get going on the fun part... having our living room drywalled and painted! I'm so excited to have this all done, and to see our new living room! Here's hoping it gets done sooner rather than later!

Roof Update

Almost 6 weeks after the bout of Storm vs. Roof, we finally have a new roof! Here's what it looked like before (you might want to click on the photos to enlarge to really see the difference):

And here is our brand new roof!

The difference might not translate well in the photos, but to us it really looks like a brand new house. While our roof was being torn up, anyway, we thought it would be a good time to take the opportunity to add some ventilation to our attic, which was something we were wanting to do this year anyway.

Here's the really cool part. We were able to pay for the whole roof without having to go into debt and without depleting our savings. We are completely overwhelmed and humbled by God's loving provision for us in all of this. It just so happened this came at the one time of year when we get 3 large extra checks, which all turned out to be almost to the penny the amount we needed for the roof. God is good!!!

We were hoping that once the roof was done all of our interior water problems would be solved, but no such luck. With this last rain, which actually hit just before the roof was done, our roof proved to be water tight, which was great! But then we started to see water seeping in on the chimney walls, and also in the windows, neither of which had EVER been a problem before. Arg! Now we need to make sure those problems get solved before we can finally close up the wall. Are we ever ready for all of this to be over!

Storm Watch 2010

We had been hearing about it for about a week. January 21st was supposed to be the worst storm the Phoenix area had seen in recent memory, bringing more rainfall than all of last year combined and nearly hurricaine force winds. When the fateful day came, we found out that they weren't kidding! The rain kind of piddled all day until later in the afternoon but then really got going. We had heard on the radio on the way home that the winds in Chandler had gusted at 60 mph. Our first thought was "Oh no. Our poor roof!" And we were correct. When we got home, we found this:

In the house we could hear sections of loose shingles beating against the roof. The sound was sickening because we knew what was going on up there! But all we could do was ride it out and hope for minimal damage to the roof and pray that we didn't get any leaks. We did have one spot that started leaking, but overall we felt like we weathered the storm pretty well.

After some deliberation, we decided to go ahead and make a claim on our homeowner's insurance for the roof damage. After calling the insurance company to schedule the adjuster, Andrew, with the help of our neighbor, climbed up on the roof to attempt to tarp over the damage to prevent any more water getting into the house, since more rain was expected that night.

Since he had stayed home for the day to deal with all of these joys of home ownership, he took some time to really survey the house, and noticed that there was about a 15 foot stretch of carpet along the south wall of our living room that was wet. Because this wall borders our covered patio which didn't get wet in the storm, we figured the water was getting in through the walls, but didn't really think a lot about it.

When the insurance adjuster came out yesterday afternoon, he told us that they would replace the entire back of our roof, and he asked if there was any damage inside, so we showed him where the carpet was wet (it was STILL wet on Sunday afternoon). The adjuster (who is so super nice!) called out a company called Service Master to come and inspect our drywall and carpet to make sure it all dried properly. They had a little machine to measure the moisture in the drywall, and whenever they touched it to the wall, the thing would light up and go crazy, meaning the wall was plenty wet inside. What happened next, we never would have expected... I'll just show you.

Your eyes are not deceiving you. About 50% of our drywall is missing from our living room wall! They also ripped up our carpet, took out the pad, removed our baseboard and all of our wall insulation and set up some high power fans and a dehumidifier to dry out the wall. Holy crap! Fortunately (although that word doesn't seem to adequately express how we feel) our homeowner's insurance is paying for EVERYTHING to put our house back together, minus our deductible. If we wouldn't have torn out the drywall and mold would have grown, that would not have been covered which is a whole other nightmare, so we're happy to be inconvenienced for a time now, at no significant cost to us! In addition to what is shown in the picture, they will also have to remove a 15 foot section of our ceiling along the wall, which means they will actually end up scraping our entire ceiling (the "lovely" 80's popcorn) and redoing the whole thing, as well as painting our entire living room. While all this work is being done, we will be put up in a hotel room for a few days, but it sounds like they will put us in an extended stay apartment type hotel, like a Residence Inn or something so we should be okay.

So our adventure over the next couple of days is to live in our house without using the living room, as it is pretty much uninhabitable right now with the fans blasting (quiet it ain't!) and furniture moved about to make room for all the equipment. Hopefully everything will be dry by tomorrow and so we can at least have our house back (for now) and so we can try to get our roof replaced before we get too much more rain. In the meantime our roof will be professionally tarped, but that doesn't really give us the peace of mind that an actual roof would! I'll continue to update on the progress. I still can't believe that this is happening! But thank God for insurance, and just for His overall protection over our family. This may seem like a big deal, but at the end of the day, we're all safe and that's what really matters. Everything else is just stuff!

Refi-asco

We bought our house 3 years ago as the housing market was starting to cool, but before the bottom totally dropped out of it. Since then the mortgage rates have come down considerably, and there has been a new program instituted to allow homeowners a better opportunity to take advantage of the lower rates, we decided to see if we could refinance our house and lower our monthly payment. We started the process back in April. We had to wait a few weeks to order our appraisal because the comps in our area weren't high enough to bring our home's value into the right range. Between the time we signed our loan application in April and had our appraisal done in early May, a new rule concerning appraisals went into effect where all appraisals had to be ordered by the lender and private appraisals were not acceptable. But, since we signed our application prior to the new rules taking effect our appraisal was supposed to be grandfathered in. So everything was submitted to the lender and there it sat for over a month.

Finally we were contacted that the bank was working on our loan and they started asking for all sorts of things from us, making us jump through one kind of hoop after another. But nothing was too difficult and we were able to give them everything they needed.

Then last week I was contacted by our broker who told me that they bank had approved everything, and that they were just waiting for copies of our tax returns from the IRS. The problem was that the IRS couldn't find our tax returns. So of course I had to call the IRS to try to get it straightened out, which I think must have been hoop number 87! But we got it done and should have been sitting pretty to close.

That brings me to this week. I was contacted by the broker on Monday who told me that AFTER approving our appraisal and supposedly being ready to deliver the documents to title to sign, the bank decided that our appraisal was not sufficient because it was not ordered by the bank, so we would need to get a second appraisal and spend another few hundred dollars, and most likely come back at a lower value (I just tend to get suspicious in situations such as these). So after trying to fight with the bank over the rules of the program, the bank told our broker that they were not going to budge on this issue. So in the end, I told her to forget the whole thing. We did not want to be bound for 30 years to a bank that uses these fishy business practices! What have we learned from this? Don't associate with certain banks who shall remain nameless but who use the initials WF!

To top it all off, our homeowner's insurance is coming up due at the end of the month. Last week we received our new policy and declaration page showing that our mortgage lender had been changed to WF. I called our insurance carrier who told me that WF had contacted them and said that our loan was going to close on June 29th... a week BEFORE they decided the appraisal was no good. Give me a break! It really burns me that they would change our insurance and then pull a stunt like this. Absolutely ridiculous. So of course I had to cover our butts and make sure everything got switched back to our current lender so that we know our insurance gets paid for the year. In doing that I got some new information from our current lender that could hopefully benefit us. We can attempt to refinance through them, and they might be able to use the appraisal we already have, and it would cost us close to half as much out of pocket as it was going to with WF. So we'll see where this goes, but we're getting the process started!

Is this all God at work? I think so! Even if we can't refinance, we are so thankful that He answered our prayers. Whenever making a big decision such as this our prayer is always the same. "Dear Lord, we believe that this decision is the right one and what You are calling us to do. But if it is not right for any reason, Father, please intervene and put a stop to it. We welcome your roadblock if we are heading down the wrong road." God is good and faithful all the time! It's strange because we were SO wanting this refi to go through and save us some serious money every month. But as we continued and the costs continued to rise, we were both growing increasingly uncomfortable with it and now that we have pulled the plug we feel absolutely nothing but relief. No disappointment, no regret, no "maybe we shoulda..." Just pure relief and peace with our decision. We know we've made the right choice and we continue to pray for God's direction in this and everything else!