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The adjuster stops by

News ·Tuesday January 2, 2007 @ 21:56 EST (link)

December 27: We called the City of Duvall planning department (425-788-3434) about a building permit, since we heard they're being fast-tracked, and they eventually got back to us but we need to know our contractor to apply. We've heard since that the contractor can handle permits and that's how it'll probably work out. We're living downstairs on our air mattress in the corner of the rec. room.

December 29: We heard from MetLife that they're changing our adjuster; they'd contracted out to an independent adjuster (James Davant), who had taken photographs and talked with us, but now they're taking it in-house and the case will be handled by a large-loss adjuster, James Feather. We left him a message and he eventually arranged to drop by on Wednesday January 2 and expected to be here for several hours.

New Year's: We spent a fairly quiet New Years, stayed up most of the night. We tried to go to Avondale Bible Church Sunday, but they'd changed their times and failed to advertise it on their site, so we were late.

Via The O'Reilly Factor: Wisconsin official gives illegal alien (alleged) child molester $5000 bail, surprisingly he skips town. He'd already been deported once; we need a fence with land mines, and for the Rio Grande, sharks with frickin' laser beams.

January 2: The adjuster stopped by just after 0930 as promised (I worked from home so I could talk with him); he was from Mississippi, just across from Memphis where we used to live, and seemed to be an upstanding guy (final report comes when all the claims are settled!) The contractor, Jim Cameron, stopped by while he was there and they talked about the work required. The adjuster reviewed our claims and took copies of receipts and an Excel spreadsheet I'd made at work, paid the contractor for temporary repair work done so far, gave us a bank card to pay for the tree removal, gave us a Home Depot card to compensate us for the work we'd done, and a check to cover our hotel stay. Which was all very relieving; the papers about potential construction liens that the contractor had been required to give us by state law were making us nervous.

The adjuster arranged for a structural engineer to come out from Case Engineering (he'll be here next Wednesday, January 10), which will let him and the contractor write up estimates; MetLife has a program they used for it, Xactimate, which calculates based on work required and local prices. We're pretty sure we'll go with Cameron Construction for the repairs; I emailed the MS home owners list and got a second good recommendation. So the engineer is the next thing we're waiting for.

The way we'll get paid is somewhat complex; first, the checks will have the mortgage holder's name on them too, so they'll get them and release them to us in various percentages, pending their inspections; MetLife pays full replacement cost, but will withhold depreciation until we demonstrate that we've made the repairs or obtained replacement items. We still have some claims to make—more items from the destroyed rooms, and we don't know how much the gas and electric overages will be due to the hole and running the fans and dehumidifiers. But we're feeling much better after the adjuster's visit; it's just going to take a long time to get everything back.