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Friday, August 7, 2009

Update on family stuff

My mom is apparently going to be living at the hotel (with my two brothers, my brother's daughter when he has her 50% of the time, and the dog) for a month. The inspector from the City and an electrician came and looked at the damage and said she is lucky the whole house didn't blow up.

Her house is about 5-6 years old, and they used this flexible piping for the natural gas. Apparently, had it been built today, they would have used a different system. With the newer system, her house would have filled up with natural gas and all that it would have taken would be for someone to turn on a light and the whole house would have blown up. With the "old" system, it sparked a fire which set off the smoke detectors, so my mom was able to get everyone out safely. They are just damn lucky.

I took some pics of the damage, which I will upload as soon as I can (probably tonight). It really stinks in her house, especially in the basement. It smells like a campfire, but really strong. Ew.

All of her carpeting will be replaced downstairs, the walls will have to be redone (drywalled and painted), the ceiling will have to get redone, and then what burned was the space between the two levels, so there is a lot of ductwork to be replaced, as well as all the natural gas lines involved. It's going to be quite the job, but a family friend has agreed to do it. He was going to get a dumpster delivered yesterday and go to town. Yay!

We already had a pool party at the hotel with my aunts and cousins, so we're trying to just make light of the situation. My mom is hoping to come out ahead. She had just cashed out all of her PTO to pay for the rehearsal dinner (to the tune of $700) for my brother's wedding. She has no money right now.

1 comment:

nancy said...

holy moly. crazy.

i didn't read the previous post first, so when i saw your mom was living in a hotel, i wondered what the drama could be!