Living Conditions part 1

 Doesn’t appear that I have posted anything about the refrigerator or our disastrous issue STILL at hand. I had created a post about our situation – though not the fridge specifically.  It was posted on February 16, 2023.  I had it up for a day before I took it down.  The title had given away the name of our insurance company as well as their logo smashing a house.  But as they still hadn’t paid anything, I took it down temporarily. 

We have since collected a partial payment which is better than nothing but still not enough and we do plan on changing insurance companies (Richard thought he would save money by bundling, but I was happy with our former company and hope that they will take us back because I really am not impressed with the one that we are with currently) and also have a problem with the contractor – but that is another post of itself.

So let me now take you on the beginning of our “living conditions” journey:

We had purchased a brand new refrigerator probably ten years ago.  When we  moved from West Valley to Myrtle Creek we had brought our fridge with us.  When we lived on Jenny our fridge lived in the garage.  We used it but not the automatic water dispenser as it was not hooked up to the waterline. 

We did hook it up to the hose when we moved to tri city.  With each move that poor refrigerator seemed to take a beating.  We were looking at fridges in August of last year but were having a hard time finding one with the dimensions that would fit the allotted space.  Since the pandemic started companies have stopped making the smaller refrigerators and all fridges that are currently manufactured have are 36 inches wide.  Our allotted space is 34.  And we’d need it even smaller than that in order for the fridge to breathe – which the one we had was not.  That may have been what caused it to fail completely. 

The signs were there and we had been looking, but once Biff and his family moved in we had stopped looking – until the second Wednesday in January of this year.  Richard and I were already on our way to the big city of Roseburg when Clair called fearing her position of bearing bad news.  I think she and Biff had the worst of it as they were assigned clean-up duty while Richard and I diverted our plans and ended up at an appliance store that had some dated fridges that were less than 34 inches. 

Most of the items from the fridge itself cook be salvaged and had been moved into the back fridge (the one we had reserved solely for drinks because the fridge itself had only cost 5.00 and so we didn’t know how reliable it would be) but everything in the freezer had been left at a 56+ temperature and had to be thrown away.  They had filled a black trash bag with rotten food.  It makes me gag just to write about it.

A week later our obviously smaller fridge arrived and Richard hooked it up – but couldn’t quite figure out the hose (though he had the ability with the old fridge . . . don’t understand what had happened) thus he called the plumber to assist.  But when the fridge was pulled away from the designated area it was discovered that there was a large area of water damage that had accumulated over the years (probably the source of the initial water damage found in this post) .  https://beneaththewraps.blogspot.com/2022/08/we-are-so-blessed.html

The plumbers called a company that had worked on our house prior to our trip to California.  They worked under the house to restore to being dry.  The insurance company told us that they do not pay for “under the house”; our initial one did.  Anyway, the source of where the water had come from remained unknown until the fridge incident – which was in the opposite part of the house; it hadn’t occurred to any of us to look there as the source.

Anyway, though we felt we had been cheated by the contractor I did like the employees.  We learned that the company had/had a new owner who may not have the experience needed to run the company.  I hear they are down to only three employees.  Everyone else who had worked on our house (and there have been A LOT) have quit.  Lack of communication?  I would highly suspect that has a lot to do with it.  I want our former insurance and their contractors to serve us again.

I never did feel good allowing them to do what they did.  Too late now.  Will post “progress” pictures tomorrow.  Meanwhile . . . well, you’ll see . . .