Let's Destroy All Upstairs Neighbors
When we left off, I’d figured out the source and turned off the water to the culprit. The neighbor was supposed to call his landlord and I got busy with a borrowed shop vac to clean the mess up.
After filling up the vacuum multiple times, I could see that the damage was bad and still happening. The lower part of the walls were bubbling, I’d had some expensive oversize books leaned against the bookcase but on the floor that had not only been ruined but wicked water up onto the actual shelves, and the ceiling where the water had initially come through was now bowing.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures right then because I was, ya know, busy. Also, I was trying to get a hold of both my next-door neighbor and the owner for the unit upstairs. The insurance hassle was a big mess that would take weeks to unravel, and it didn’t help that Mr. Toilet-Running Dude decided to go AWOL for the next 24 hours. He was taking, and I kid you not, a nap.
Eventually, we got people in here and the damage kept mounting. Also, I had to leave because they put over a dozen fans around to try and dry inside the walls. That took a couple of weeks, the house where I was staying was also in the middle of a kitchen remodel, so as soon as I could I moved back. Yet my house looked like this.
This all happened on December 9th and my house is almost back to normal (livable? Not a construction zone?) more than three months later. Half of my furniture had to go because it was moldy within a couple of days, so I’m still living in boxes for the most part. Mind you, this is all out of pocket so far as the insurance companies duel it out. But hey, I’ve got walls and ceilings now.
Of course, the other night I had a knock on the door. It was the contractors that were working on the next-door neighbor's downstairs repairs, they had another water leak that has hit the only other area that wasn’t messed up in December. Sigh. Here we go again.
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