When it rains it pours, OT: House remodel hell Options

[Sparky]

Rant on!!
Murphy is a real mother... My wife and I bought a new house in June. before moving we have to remodel teh kitchen and two baths. I'm doing 95% of the work my self (once owned my own contracting company soi have the skills) to save a little dough. First the well pump failed two weeks after we got the keys. Then we had to add a full filtration system to the house. Then I found mold in the attic. We had no access to the attic during the home inspection, I pulled down the ceiling in the bathroom to replace the soft sheetrock and found lots and lots of mold. Then the building inspector figured out that since I had all the walls in the kitchen opened up I should upgrade the wiring to current code, OK no biggey I'm in there might as well. This Saturday after finishing up the final coat of paint in the master bedroom, the final mud in the bathroom and prepping the floors for new carpet I turned the heat up to 72 from 60 to help dry out the paint and mud so I could do touch ups, priming, and such on Sunday. I get over Sunday morning and can not see in the windows of my breezeway, full of smoke?! I check all the doors for heat, find none so I enter the house. I immediatley kill the emergency switch for the boiler. The whole house is filled with smoke and soot. I go room to room looking for hot spots and find none.
I venture into the basement, black soot and smoke pour out as soon as I open the door. Ok I see no flames but damn the chimney is hot. I let the house breath for about 40 minutes or so and even though it's clearing out nicely with a some fans and windows open the chimney is still toasty and smoking from the cap pretty good, I call it in to the fire department. They arrive and find nothing real, a serious blockage in the flue?! As part of the purchase and sale I had the sellers clean the two chimneys as the seller disclosed they had not been done in 12 years. So fire department leaves, furnace guys shows up and we find enough brick and liner blocking the flue to fill a 5 gallon bucket. Furnace is pretty much toast, not sure about the chimney yet, soot damage everywhere including my brand new solid maple cabinets. I'm grumpy, but the insurance company is handling most of this for me.

rant off

I should be thankful we weren't living there yet and that no furniture or anything else was in the house. New carpets were supposed to be installed this week. Thats on hold until ServPro comes through. The fire chief thinks that had I been another 10-20 minutes the furnace would have ignited the house.

So for the length I needed to vent somewhere.

My best to all,
Mike D.

Go hug your wife/SO and kids/animals

[Rhodes71/914]

First let me say that sucks but at least you didn't lose the house.

Second, did they fire up the furnace when doing the home inspection?

How come no access to the attic? Always crucial in a home inspection.

When the chimney's were cleaned they didn't notice flue blockarge, or did they cause it?

Hope all goes well from here on out.

[Evill Ed]

Mike, sorry to hear about your troubles with your new home. On the bright side, you made my last 2-weeks of bad luck seem trivial. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Hope things improve with the rest of the remodel.

Best Regards to you and your family.

Ed

[Sparky]

Sean,

There was no access to the attic at all, no stairs nothing, it's more of a crawl space then an attic. We did fire up the furnace during the home inspection, the blockage was probaby caused by the sweep when he installed the new caps for me a couple of weeks after we closed.

Ed,

Thanks for the kind words. My issues are trivial (in reality short of death aren't they all) and the house will get done. Behind schedule but done. Tell my buddy 'D' I said hello!

Now I just need to figure out how to convince the appraiser that I normally keep the 914 parked in the living room and that the paint fading is from the soot.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

In all seriousness aside from setting me back a couple of weeks to have the house cleaned I'm not really out anything. I'm still living with my mother-in-law but hey it could be worse.

Now where did I put that Valium.....

My best to everyone!
Mike D.