My house has a basement and under the basement there is a crawl space and in the crawl space there is a sump pump. The pump moves water from a pit to the outside of the house. Unfortunately the pipe between the pump and the outside of the house broke and the pump began pumping water into the house. Water damage occurred. The damage actually went much further than what the pictures shows. On the advice of my insurance agent I hired a damage mitigation company. That was probably a big mistake. They brought in fans and air scrubbers to dry out all the wet wood. The problem is that all the wood and drywall that got wet had to be replaced anyway. Drying it out was a waste. Cost to have fans in the house and to remove wet drywall was about $3000. Sadly that was about 70% of the insurance money. So with what little money I had left I replaced all the damaged sub-floor, the insulation under the floor, laid my own carpet, and replaced all the trim. I had to pay a contractor $1000 to fix the drywall. It took about 4 months to get everything repaired. I figure I saved about $3000 doing the work myself. Here are the results.
I'm in a similar situation. All of the plumbing in my house suddenly started exploding and springing leaks. We had to re-plumb the entire house. This was my living room: Have about 19K in insurance money. The plumbing was repaired and we repaired a hole in the outside of the house, but we haven't fixed the drywall or flooring yet. We ignored any advice from the insurance company and used our own honest, non ripoff plumbers instead of the ones they recommended so we still have most of the money. We may use it to redo the bathrooms since they were also affected, and they were awful and dated even before our plumbing disaster.
My Mom had several leaks in her house. The insurance wouldn't cover it because it wasn't "sudden" damage. Her total is about $10k. Did your rates go up? I'm kind of worried about that. Can you match the flooring or does it all have to go? Awh gawd. There is a battle going on for that space. The problem is that the whole room looks nicer now than before the damage. I should have made it look like crap.
Laminate and wood planks are the worst. Even if you can match the color they each have their own locking mechanism. I probably only needed 6 boards but i had to trash the whole floor. I ended up going with carpet tiles. I figure I can replace damaged tiles later if needed. I kept an extra box just for that purpose. I live next to a flood plain and there is water under ground most of the year. I figure I'll always have a elevated chance for water damage.
I discovered some tiles in my shower that moved when I pressed on them. From experience I know this is a bad thing. I decided to rip the tile off and I found some water damage. Thank goodness is wasn't very bad. The stupid builders didn't put down any moisture barrier or even use the right drywall for the shower. Failure was inevitable. Anyway, I had to take all the tiles down and of course I had to rip the shower enclosure out. Now I need to put up green board and then re-tile the walls. I'm still kind of stumped about the shower enclosure. Reusing the old framed walls wont be simple but new walls are pretty expensive. I'm considering using glass blocks, like in Minecraft, and then just buying a new shower door.
I'm pretty much done with the rock on the wall and tub. I just have to do a second coat of silicon around some edges and then a waterproof coat on the tub wall. The shower walls already have a rubber like coating on them.
Figuring out what to use for the shower walls was a pain. So many professionals have different opinions. Turns out it's really difficult to make a water tight shower. Pretty much every material you can use will absorb and pass water. Anyway, I'm really hoping I can start laying tile by the weekend. That's a whole other challenge. I'm thinking 12x24" tiles on the walls and matching brick sized tiles on the tub. I may also lay the tiles floor to ceiling across half the bathroom. I don't have any sense of art or design so I can only try to match stuff I've seen in pictures.
I live in an apartment that was probably constructed in the 1920s/1930s and the hexagonal floor tile and brick sized subway tile in the bathroom are still in good condition. It's the non-sealed plaster above the subway tile that's started to crack…and I'm sure that's not from the 20s/30s.
Is that pink area for a glass block? Are you still doing all the work yourself? My parents pipes burst 2 weeks ago flooding their finished basement. They live alone now, I look at it as a financial windfall, but they want to refinishing an area zero people will use. Any tips on cost or in general?
That pink area is where a special platform goes. A glass wall will sit on it. It's pink because it's got a sort of rubber sealant on it. I'm going to try and put the old framed shower walls back up. If that doesn't work I'll be looking at another $800 to $1200 for a new one. The wind fall is probably less than the remodel cost. The insurance agent will have a fixed estimate cost for the damage of the materials. The agent will then deduct a percentage of that value by the age of the home or materials. So they may say your carpet is worth $5000 but since it's 8 years old it's depreciated to $2500. In the end they'll get an estimated cost to fix everything. Then you get some bids and chances are they wont be anywhere near what the insurance agent estimated. At this point you can choose to work within the bounds of the insurance quote or start fighting with the insurance agent for more money. I suppose if it's a lot of money it could be worth paying for an attorney.
And here we are with the grout in and sealed. I have a little more caulking to do and some trim to put up by the ceiling. I also have to rebuild the shower. The new tile added 1/2 inch thickness to the walls so I have to do some cutting on the frame. I also have to order the glazing which keeps the glass in place and I under estimated how long it would take to get it. It might be another 2 weeks before I can put it together.
Didn't you say you're 7 feet tall... why didn't you put the shower head up higher? My parents ended up getting $14.5k in insurance money with a $22k estimate in damages. They haven't gotten a bill for the cleaning and boxing work though.