biggerboat's building boondoggle blog

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Well, that was a decision we made 2 years ago. The cost of insurance is astronomical here. We figure it's cost us about three years of what we would have spent on premiums and there's no guarantee we would get much of anything for a claim. There are so many stories of people not getting anything or very little.

Our biggest loss was the cars and we both got paid some for those through our car insurance.

Closet finished. I'm really happy on how they turned out.

You got some FEMA money didn't you?

That closet looks awesome. Great job.

Yes. And they signed us up and paid for our next 3 years flood insurance with a national group plan. I don't know much about it. I need to research it.

Thanks. It's nice when a plan comes together.

Thats the question my wife and I keep asking ourselves. Our plan right now is to try and seal up the house if it looks like a storm surge is imminent. We figure we can do it in a day. We bought a bunch of window flashing tape and tarps and caulk. We'll just try to make it as watertight as possible. We dont have to stop the water, just slow it down. I figured we were getting about 50 gallons a minute in the last storm. If we can cut that to 5 we'll be ok.

Also, we got over 8 feet of storm surge and it was high tide. We know what that means now. That's quite a bit. We'll just monitor storms and take action if we need to.

Oh, yeah. Well take our cars to her dad's. He has an elevated parking garage at his condo.

We have a plan. Not sure if it's a good one but we'll see.

We just can't justify raising the house right now.

Closet looks great. Next time you want to escape Florida, c'mon up; I can put your skills to use. 😉

Hehe thanks.

It's been a LOT of work, but the house is in pretty good shape now. The only major things left are to put the bar cabinets in, finish up the kitchen facing, and put closet bifold doors in. We are waiting on all the materials to be completed/shipped. We have a lot of little touch-up stuff and some painting but the house is close to being finished.

We figure almost half of the houses in our neighborhood are still uninhabited. Our next door neighbors to the left were the first to get back in after us. They've been in for a couple months now, but just now have a working kitchen. Our next door neighbors to the right just moved back in last week. I'm not sure what the state of their house is, but they have 2 very small children and a newborn so I'm guessing they at least have a kitchen and bathrooms. They had been living in a camper. Yikes.

The neighbors across the street are still not in. One of them owns a rental property that also got flooded and they have been concentrating on getting that back so they can get income. They are living with relatives. Directly across from us, no clue. They don't live there full time so I assume they have another house. People are working on it. The people next to them were moving along until they got their cabinets. They sent the wrong cabinets so they have to re-order. It's been taking about 2 months to get cabinets around here. They are living in a crappy apartment, the fourth place they've had to live because they have a dog and people complain. Makes no sense because it's the most chill dog you could ever meet. Never barks, sweet as can be. But it is big and people complain. The people in the apartment above them are apparently very noisy at all hours so they are miserable. Plus, they had a murder in the complex parking lot recently. Not a great situation. The people next to them are going to bulldoze their house I think.

Anyway, the neighborhood is on one hand a bit of a ghost town at night, but on the other hand there's a flurry of activity during the day from contractors.

We hope we've put the big repair purchases behind us now. We still don't have much furniture. I guess that's our next step.

Oh, yeah, plumbing......

During the holidays when, of course, people were staying with us, the plumbing backed up. This is the third time it has happened. Fortunately, I was able to plunge the blockage out.

A lot of folks in the neighborhood have had to replace their sewage pipes. They are old iron pipes and have already exceeded their normal life span. The plumber that re-did our incoming water pipes said he would run a camera through ours free of charge, so I took him up on it.

A somewhat sigh of relief. He said there were no roots in any pipes, and none had failed. He said there is some build-up from the iron pipes corroding but it wasn't too bad. He didn't think we needed to replace them any time soon, but he also didn't think they would be good for a long time. He offered to run some sort of cleaning machine through them for four grand. Replacing them will be a LOT more expensive. I think I'll leave them be for a while.

We are still considering raising the house so if we make that decision, the sewage pipes will be a lot cheaper to replace. Our homeowner association is hosting a company that raises houses for a presentation and Q&A in a few weeks. Also, my neighbor is having another company come give them an assessment. I'm probably going to do that as well.

1) "Define long time. Maybe it's longer than I have left, and I won't care."

2) Misread the first paragraph initially as "razing". WTF, just put in that new kitchen....

If you raise the house, the parking is underneath like in the Keys, I assume. Is there any way to build in something like the boat lift, to keep cars (more) out of water if there's flooding again?

1) 10 years.......may...beee....

So, a lot of people raise the house enough to park underneath like in the keys. However, people are also choosing to raise it even higher, put a bunch of dirt down and raise the bottom level as well so you can drive up into the garage. The house two streets over is doing this (I think). I'll take pictures next time I'm over there.

Another day, another teardown...

I had a thought about all of this. We've gone through a lot of stuff with this. And, as long as we live here we'll be worried about hurricanes several months of the year.

But I'd still rather deal with this than live next to an airbnb.

Started back on my book again. It's probably good that I set it aside for a bit. Coming back refreshed.

The LA fires got a little personal.

My sister lives south of Malibu. She's out of danger but she can see the palisades fire from her house and the area is full of smoke.

Her best friend had to evacuate from the Eaton fire and is staying with her, along with her husband and his 94 year old mother. They watched the mother's home burn down on TV. The husband went back last night to try to protect their home. I don't know the outcome yet.

My niece lives on Hollywood Blvd and she had to evacuate as well. She went to my sister's but it was slow getting out of the area. She's safe and the apartment she lives in seems OK for now. It is so close that we watched one of the reporters reporting from the roof of her building.

I told my sister we all need to find a disasterless part of the country to live in.

My wife and I have decided to try to get only good wood furniture from here on out. Her old hoosier survived the flood without any evidence of water damage. On the other hand we tossed anything that wasn't solid wood. That compressed wood stuff just disintegrated.

We went antiquing last weekend. We found a great little bookshelf thing for her cookbooks. It matched the hoosier and it fit a space we had open. The store said it was late 1800s. No clue if that is true but it is solid as a rock and was cheaper than buying anything similar new.

Then we bought a couple of bare wood bedside tables that she plans on staining. Again, cheaper than any rooms to go tables.

I like that shelf. Very nice.

Thanks.

Here's the house by us getting raised.

jfc that looks like egypt

jfc that looks like a Tarrytown slab repair

I got an email from a recruiter today for a part time, 100% remote position at the state agency in Texas I worked at for many years. They are looking for someone with experience in the language and their systems.

I sent the guy my resume and he immediately responded. Turns out the manager making the decision is one of the people there I got along with quite well.

Not sure I'll like going back to work, but it will be nice to get some of this storm related debt paid off.

Um, congratulations?

Hopefully part-time really means part-time, and it doesn't become, "we're going to send a never-ending stream of issues to boat because he's reliable."

Yeah, right?

I honestly don't know. It's the state and in the past they were really laid back. "It'll wait until tomorrow" was the motto. Who knows.

If it happens I'll just work until I don't want to anymore.

I hope you're getting paid at least five times what you did before. There can't be too many people with the right qualifications.