Set Backs and Failures

Sometimes a little heartbreak is a lesson, and the best thing to do is just learn the lesson.
Jon Voight

 

 

We were making excellent progress, first stage of drywall was complete, siding had arrived, and the house was looking beautiful.  Should have known it couldn't last.

 

We had been concerned for weeks about a moat that had been left behind our house.  Our Production Manager said he left it this way to ensure the dirt dried out before he backfilled the foundation.
(See my very first post to read all about the foundation issues)

 But he assured us everything was ok, it was not hurting anything and that it was scheduled to be backfilled.

Well.....

Over the Labor Day weekend, Michigan got a lot of rain...

And the moat had not yet been dealt with. The rain water flooded the moat, which then flowed into our egress window and busted it.  This allowed all the water to have free access to our newly dry walled basement. And with the water came the mud.

So. Much. Mud.

 

 

I was actually up north driving home from a funeral when I got the phone call about the basement followed by the photo below.

 

I called our Project Manager who explained exactly what happened.  He was honest, that he waited too long and this was his fault.  While there was some solaice in that, it didn't fix my basement.

We took the next two days and talked it over with many people and we were encouraged by all to get ourselves out of our contract.  We could be looking at a really big mold problem. 

To say I was heartbroken would be a very poor word choice because I was crushed.  This was my house and now I had to give it up and possibly pay a lot of money to do so because someone made a huge mistake, again.

We decided it was time to call in the big guns.  We have a wonderful, wonderful real estate agent, who is really like a mother hen to us.  ( We didn't bring her in on this project sooner because we didn't know we could) but after so many issues and now this HUGE mistake we called her and told her everything.   While she is no fan of Allen Edwin, she did say we would be fine.  She gave us the exact verbiage to use when we spoke to them and gave us contacts to numerous people to help us should we feel we were not being adequately taken care of.  Armed with her guidance, The Knight sent a very well worded and stern email to our production manager covering all the issues to this point and the lack of communication and urgency in our project and explained that they no longer had our trust.  Then we waited. It was the longest 24 hours of my life.

The next day we got a phone call and spent over an hour being profusely apologized too and  hashing out all the details of what was going to happen and how we were going to get our house back on track.  Allen Edwin brought in a professional team that handles flood restoration and  assured us they would fix everything. They are gutting the whole basement.  Drywall, insulation, mechanicals, furnace, hot water tank, its all coming out.

 

A day later, we went to see the damages.   At first we were very angry, who wouldn't be once you see the damage in person.  But then the team that was pumping the water out came up from the basement and talked to us for a long time.  They were amazing!  They reassured us and promised us that this house would be beautiful and safe for our family. 

After the water was drained.

Finally backfilled.  This was hard to see.  While we were so happy to see it finally done, we couldn't stop thinking that if this was done right to start with, this never would have happened.

Our Heroes at work.

After I shot this photo they came and told us that not only was it worse then they thought (far more mud than expected) but it blew the motor in their van and if we wanted we could even speak with the owner of their company as he was on his way out to help out. Seriously! That's a great company if the owner is still that hands on.

Stairs to the basement.

So much mud.

Hoses and pumps everywhere. 

I wish I got a photo a bit later, they dumped 3 large trash cans of mud out the patio in the 20 minutes after I took this photo.

 

There was a silver lining in this mess though, we also go to meet our neighbor.  The restoration company had to ask to borrow his electricity to get the pumps going.  We went to thank him and ended up talking for about an hour.  He seems great and he had a lot of advise on the build process and the following year of warranty work. He also gave us the low down on the other neighbors. Good news, they all get along and are friends.  After meeting him and hearing about everyone else, I really cant wait for this to be our home and our community.

Please Lord, let it be smooth sailing from here on.