So, I haven’t been able to log on to the forum for over a month; nearly two, actually. In the meantime, I discovered that the water that got in my studio was high enough that it got to the fiberglass wool insulation and there was mold growing on the sheetrock, wood and the paper on the wool.
I decided that if it happened once, it could probably happen again. This is my old garage and about 8 inches lower than my house’s slab. So I cut out the sheetrock and insulation 16” up and replaced it with Styrofoam insulation and concrete tileboard instead of sheetrock. I used tile adhesive instead of plaster to tape, float and texture. Instead of using wood trim, I went with plastic trim.
Of course, everything had to be bleached repeatedly and dried out thoroughly before it got painted with mold blocking/killing paint. And everything had to be moved out. It seems that every piece of equipment I have weighs about 60 pounds. And then there were the rocks…so many rocks. Most of them are still in the backyard.
The flooding here in Houston was truly biblical. There are whole neighborhoods that are now ghost towns; I honestly don’t know if people are ever going to be able to rebuild. Last week I was driving through one and it takes a while to realize that there is no noise. They look okay; the city has picked up most of the mountains of trash and the yards have ugly scars curbside where all the trash was piled and the plants and grass died. But there are no cars, kids or animals or people going about their business.
My best friend has finally moved from a hotel to an apartment; it’ll be months before she’ll get her house fixed. There are just not enough contractors to go around. Another friend is living in a house with no sheetrock 4 feet up and no floors.
In view of all this, I still feel really lucky. My life and studio were disrupted, but my house was fine. I can’t imagine going through everything I owned that was waterlogged with mold growing on it and deciding what to keep and what to throw away. I’m sad that I lost all my goldfish, but my outside feral kitties are all okay.
I haven’t heard of anyone actually getting an insurance payment yet. Some have said that checks have been authorized; but, like I said, no checks have been received. I’m really interested in how the FEMA flood insurance is going to get paid out; they didn’t have enough money to pay all these claims and after this happened there were two other hurricanes…
The auto-insurers are paying. There were more than a half a million cars that were flooded and totaled; the car graveyards are amazing. Be mindful, they are starting to sell them. They’re supposed to issue a new title that states they’ve been flooded, but be careful. They’ll go all over the country
Just thought I’d update you guys.
Debbie K