Tree damage....

As I posted a while back, we had a big tree fall over on our house. At the time, we thought the damage was minimal. However, as time goes by, the cost of the repairs is sky-rocketing. Luckily, we have good homeowner's insurance, but still...it is more than a little bit overwhelming.

On the day the tree fell, we paid $500 to have someone come out and cut up the tree and haul it away. At the same time, we paid $1600 to have our electric re-done since the tree pulled all of the electrical off the back of the house. Our insurance reimbursed us for both of these expenses. In addition, they paid for us to get a new gas grill and new adirondack chairs. Both are much nicer than what we had before. In addition to that damage, we have a small dent and small hole in the siding on the back of the house. The dent and hole are only a few inches wide. Because the insurance company cannot match the siding on our house to patch it, they are paying to have the entire house re-sided. The remainder of the tree needs to be cut down because it is rotten. The insurance company will not pay for the that. However, unless we want the remaining four trunks to fall on our garage, the neighbor's car or our fence, the tree has to go. So we are paying $1800 of our own money to remove the tree.

All in all, the damage from the rotten tree in our back yard will total over $14,000. Crazy! In the end, we will pay a total of $2800 (our $1000 deductible and the $1800 to have the tree removed). For our $2800, we are getting our entire house re-siding (Yea! No more ugly, dull yellow! I am thinking a nice taupe....), the electrical re-done and brought up to code (apparently, we were not up to the current codes), a brand-new shiny four-burner gas grill, new adirondack chairs for our back yard, and a dangerous, rotten tree removed from our yard. Despite the obvious pain-in-the-ass aspects of a tree falling on your house, I think we are definitely getting our money's worth for our $2800. I have become a fan of Farmer's Insurance now.

On a somewhat related side note, I have yet again been amazed by the neighborhood I live in. We discovered shortly after moving into our home that we can put absolutely anything in our alley behind our house with a sign on it that says "FREE" and someone will come and take it. Last weekend, we put our old gas grill in the alley. It had been crushed by the tree falling on it. The side burner was hanging off. The wheels were gone. The top cover had been smashed. It looked as though a tree had fallen on it...obviously. Within a day, someone had taken the crushed grill. It's freaking amazing!! Our alley is like the Bermuda Triangle...you can place anything you don't want out there and...POOF! It disappears. Cool, huh?