On October 5, 2010, central Arizona got hit with a tremendous hail storm. Take a look at this amateur video captured by a homeowner in Phoenix.
I was at work at the time, and we stood near the windows and watched in awe. When I got home that evening, everything looked okay other than some plants and tree branches down, and a lot of water around the neighborhood.
About three weeks later, I started finding business cards on my front door from roofing companies saying I had hail damage from the storm and telling me how much they would love to repair that for me. I tossed a number of cards in the trash can thinking everything was fine since I didn’t have any water running into my house or portions of truss and shingles all over my yard.
Then about three weeks ago, I started noticing several of my neighbors getting new roofs. I’m talking at least a dozen right on my street and the next one. So I got to thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see if I had some damage that I hadn’t noticed. So I contacted a roofer who had done my neighbor’s home and had them come out and take a look. They said I did have damage and should contact my insurance company.
The insurance adjuster came out last Monday night and approved a new roof, as well as many other repairs: paint, wood trim, screens, code upgrades and even a brand new air conditioner unit. And best of all, storm claims do not increase your premium rate. (However, both the roofer and the insurance adjuster said the whole region will see an increase due to the number of claims and future risk. That’s all the more reason I should go ahead and get my share!)
The insurance will pay for painting both the east and west sides of my house, but he said there was no storm damage to the north and south, so I have to pay for those. (Who wants to put new paint on two sides of their house and have old paint on the other two? That would be crazy!) I have had some ugly peeling under my front and back porch ceilings for a few years, so I’m going to have that scraped and re-textured before they paint. The breakfast nook ceiling has some water spots from a leak, so the insurance will pay for scraping, re-texturing and painting that.
With the new carpet I got last fall, I will feel like I have a new house when it gets done. I suspect the next major expense for me is going to be a new stove. One burner is out, and a second one is giving me trouble. Looks like my income tax refund will be just about gone by the time I get done with it.
Pictures to come as the work gets done!
Lucky you! Fixing up the house is always fun, especially if you don’t have to pay for most of it.
You didn’t realize, when that storm was pounding down, that it would be a blessing to you by the time it ended.
Donna – It’s a good thing I didn’t do too much work for you. I may have messed something up the insurance wouldn’t cover:). That Michel post sounds like spam. Do you know who it is?
That video always impresses me, though I’ve seen it before. It wasn’t that bad at my house, and the tiles probably were less likely to break than shingles.
By the way, you have a couple of spam comments that got through your filter.
I’ve been getting some spam lately. I really need to upgrade WordPress to the latest version (3.1), but it’s such a hassle to backup the files first.
Donna: If it’s a hassle backing up the files then you’re doing it wrong. All you need to do is go into the Tools/Backup and select “Download to your computer” then click “Backup Now”. It’s just like saving a file.
Yeah, that’s what I did. Seems like the first time I upgraded, it was a lot more work, but it was pretty easy this time. I just had to tweak some of my plugins.