Fortunately, my neighbor, who has had her house up for sale since July and whom I hadn't seen since then, happened to be passing by to pay my other neighbor for taking care of her yard. Seeing smoke come out of the house, and knowing we had pets, managed to get the dog out before the firefighters arrived. She then alerted the firefighters to our four cats.
Long story short, the house is uninhabitable. The kitchen and downstairs bathroom and laundry room took the most direct damage. there was some fire damage to a couple of beams in the roof and water damage over a slightly larger area and some smoke damage throughout.
For about two weeks we stayed with the gf's brother. Now, we arranged to rent the neighbor's house, conveniently empty. I'm typing this out while looking out the window at my wounded house. I'm reminded of a passage from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, The Empty House.
So now we're settled in. The insurance company and my home contractor are close to establishing a scope of work and are scheduled to start demolition next week. Next week, we will also meet with the contractor to lay out what we mean have done otherwise. Restoration involves taking care of the number two and three items on my long term home renovation list: Re roof the place, next year's scheduled upgrade, and redo the kitchen, the project for two years from now. I've been assigning value to the items in the total loss list and hope to have that done this weekend."Do you know where we are?" he (Holmes) whispered.
"Surely that is Baker Street" I (Watson) answered, staring through the dim window.
"Exactly. We are in Camden House, which stands opposite to our own old quarters."
"But why are we here?"
"Because it commands so excellent a view of that picturesque pile.
It could have been a lot worse, but all the animals were rescued, and everything that was lost can be replaced.
