And so it continues...

If you recall, I wrote a while back about the big tree falling in my back yard. The tree ripped all of our electrical off of our house and smashed our grill, but managed to do minimal damage to the house itself. We have one spot in the back where the siding was dented slightly. Because our insurance company was unable to match the siding exactly to repair that dented piece...and because state law requires an exact match...our insurance company is paying to have our entire house resided. We received a check in the mail for well over $6000 and a letter stating that we would receive the remainder when the siding job was completed. Our options were to take the $6000 and call it quits, or actually find a contractor to reside our house and have it covered in full by the insurance company. I am beginning to think we should have taken the pay-out and called it quits. We could have taken a nice family vacation to some distant tropical destination (Hawaii perhaps? Tahiti?) for $6000. But did we do that? No....we decided to be responsible homeowners and accept the new siding. The damage to our siding is barely noticeable, but new siding will increase our home value. So it was the responsible thing to do, right?

So we were supposed to have the work done next week. Last week, the contractor came out and measured our house. At the time, they noticed that we have shakes underneath our current siding. Unbeknownst to us, they took a sample of those shakes to be analyzed. On Tuesday, I received a call from our siding salesperson explaining that there will be a bit of a delay in the residing of our house. It seems that the shakes that are under our current siding are tainted with lead. State law prohibits companies from siding over lead shakes. Therefore, not only will they have to tear off all of the current siding, but the shakes must be removed and they must do a full lead abatement on our house! The insurance company will be paying for this in full. However, it will be delayed significantly because the insurance company, of course, wants to take their own samples and have it analysed by their own lab. The whole thing is very CSI-ish. In the meantime, we sit and wait. I guess all in all, it is a good thing. However, it seems like a ludicrous amount of work to repair a dent the size of a quarter on the back of our house. Especially when I have visions of us sitting on a beach in Tahiti sipping fruity cocktails.....