After nearly 2 months, we were able to sleep in our own room again. We'd been displaced after damage from a fire next door impacted our house. We were lucky to have a cinder block firebreak in separating us from the other semi. It could have been much much worse.
It's not like everything was hunky-dory. This was still a major disruption in our lives. I was already treading water on a project at work, Kieran was heading into final exams, there was university decisions, prom, graduation, residence applications, and the list goes on. My plan for this year was to work on the backyard garden wall. So it was still a big deal for us.
We were displaced in a hotel for a week, the strong smell of smoke, water had come in through our ceiling and rained in our master.
The next few weeks we involved sleeping somewhere other than our bedrooms and dining out. It seems like fun times. But I still had work to do. It wasn't a vacation. I was now dealing with insurance adjustors, evaluators, and the emergency clean up crew they sent to remediate the impacted areas to get us back into the house, so they can stop paying for hotels and take out food.
Sure they got us back in, but we couldn't sleep in the bedrooms. They were still a mess. There were big openings directly to the attic! They had removed all the wet insulation, installed big ass fans to dry the attic out. The only thing separating the attic was a thin piece of plastic that was taped and stapled to the ceiling. It was the summer solstice weekend, and it was hot out, so that heat from the attic was also coming into the bedrooms.
Once that was done we had to wait for a couple of weeks until both the adjuster and contractor were back from vacation to get us an approved estimate of the work that was required to bring our home back to the way it was.
I wanted to get things back on track sooner rather than later. Do I do this work or do I trust someone else to come in and do it better than I could do. I had been told I'd be waiting a lot if I went down this route. I kept looking at the openings. Shaking my head that there will be a noticeable big massive patch there. It wasn't going to look very nice.
The other dilemma I was having was that I had 2 big holes to patch. One in our master and the other in Kieran's. I was hoping they would use the attic hatch to remove all the wet insulation, but that'd be not as efficient. And then it gives them more work to bill for later. It's a WIN-WIN. In any case, I couldn't have both rooms out of commission at the same time. But I needed to get our master done because the replacement bed was going to be delivered in a few weeks.
I ended up putting back the insulation in the attic and sorting it all out from the master bedroom side. I was trying to avoid bringing all that attic dust and fibres in to K's room. But I didn't want the insulation to fall through the plastic on his side. My bro suggested a brilliant idea to install some rigid styrofoam over the opening in his ceiling and put the bat insulation over that. It allowed me to remediate the attic and I could work on the master ceiling.
What I didn't factor in was how strong the smoke smell would. be and how incredibly hot it was up there. As soon as I removed the plastic barrier, the smell of smoke bowled me over. Even masked I could only stay up there for 20mins tops. It was brutal. Before I started I assessed everything and the roofed looked amazingly good. Then I suited up and got to work.
I had to make my way carefully on the joists across to put the insulation back nice and neat. They had piled it up to remove all the wet insulation. It seemed so much easier in my head when I envisioned it. It felt like I was up there for hours as I had to keep coming down and outside to hose myself down to cool off, but I got it done. I didn't want to have to go back up there another day!
I didn't waste any time, and immediately cut my drywall piece and after some frustrating efforts in trimming to get it to fit and getting all the support pieces up. The first hole was up and ready for the next stage of taping and mudding. Drywall is dirty dusty work. The dust goes everywhere. It's also very hard to make it look seamless. Mostly cuz there are seams!
And that's what was bothering me so much. It was work that didn't need to happen. But it did. What can you do except do the work. I'm no pro so this was a slow process. I don't like rushing things, cuz bad things happen when you rush. But I was under a lot of pressure to get this done. We were going on vacation very soon and I had to prep a back up to take over for me while I was away, and then there was Kieran's grad and the grandparents were staying over. Needless to say, there was a lot on my mind, and plate. I tried not to let it get to me, but it did at times. At least I wasn't alone in all this, that helps.
Kieran had been sleeping in his room and it was important for me to close up his ceiling to protect him from the dust and fibres. He already suffered from asthma, this wasn't a good thing. So the day Kieran left for Europe, I worked til midnight and managed to patch his ceiling and tape and mud it, it's very close to being done. I just need to wait until he's out of his room and in school to finish it and repaint his room. At least he's not exposed to the crap in the attic.
Tresa wanted to repaint our ceiling and walls. When she asked the contractor they said they would only paint the patch. Like WTF? Really? To be fair, their job is to put it back to how it was. Not make it better. It's a restoration, not renovation.
In any case. That wasn't good enough. So I got to work. And it turned out really well. Better than I expected. I need to give myself more reno DIY skills points. Many thanks to my contractor buddies. It wouldn't have turned out as good without their guidance and advice.
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