What a guy does with his money when he's not spending it at Disney

FYI if you basement floods, flood insurance will not cove the cost to replace your finished basement. I bought my house with a three bedroom apartment in the basement. Sandy took that away from us and FEMA did not cover most of what was lost. I asked if I could have bought better Insurance to cove the basement and the answer was NO all flood insurance is the same.

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Wow, that’s terrible! So sorry to hear that. The basement in our current residence was flooded by a “100 year storm” but we weren’t eligible to buy insurance anyway. Did they not pay for anything below grade?

Only the basics the electrical, hot water heater, and freezer. The bedrooms, bathroom, and kitchen were not covered because it is deemed non livable space. My homeowners would not cover it either because it was clearly flooded. It was not a big concern because we did not use it much and no one had lived there for several years after my father in-law, who lived there had died. We live upstairs and that part of the house was still ok for the most part (after a new roof and new windows and doors.) We had only used it as a summer rental to exchange students and them my father in-law. After he left us we could not bring ourselves to renting it out again.

Huh. I wonder why they thought that? But I’m glad it worked out all right. There are sure a lot of loopholes when it comes to storm damage.

The city ended up paying for ours because it was due to runoff from poorly maintained city property. It was a miracle that it worked out that way, but my neighbor is the best neighborhood watch person EVER and she videotaped the whole thing. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. A video is probably worth 10,000! We didn’t even have to hire a lawyer, once they saw it.

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That’s good. We still have people who are recovering from sandy over here. What gets me is that I pay for flood insurance and my neighbor does not and FEMA still helped her out for free while I have to pay. Mind you she only got about half of what we got but she lost about the same except she did not have a kitchen in her’s.

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Lately it has been suggested I get a new car (well a new to me car) all I can think of is alternative ways to spend that same money at Disney (even though I swore we were done for a few years after our latest trip!).
I refuse to do anything to our new house as I did so many things myself to our old house: repainted kitchen cabinets, painted all the rooms, tiled the porch. I had more energy than skill. Sometimes I just sit and admire the paint lines here because no matter how well-intentioned I was my painting was not perfect. I don’t even love the actual colors but I have banned myself from redoing them!

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My sister once said that it is not how much you can do as you get older but the recovery period afterwards!

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As promised, a couple pictures. I finished flooring and quarter round. Still have touch up of the nail holes and painting the quarter rounds.

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Looks great!

Thanks! We’re really pleased. We were nervous. In fact, it took us a couple months to finalize on the flooring. We had about 50 different samples, ranging from light and modern, grayish, dark walnut, rustic, etc. Plus, we needed to make sure it coordinated with the carpet (which you can see on the bottom photo in the corner leading to the stairs). Our kids were so sick of us going, “Which do you like better? This one, or this one?”

When they saw us come home with more samples, they would suddenly disappear, never to be seen again until bedtime! :wink:

But we really like the final choice. A nice balance of everything we were looking for. Not too dark, not too rustic, not too modern.

(It is weird how much the lighting in the two photos changes things. The bottom photo makes it look very yellow, but the top photo is more true to color.)

Looks fabulous. I love the paint colors, too.

Looks really nice!

Looks awesome!

Wow! Nice job!!

I have a friend who is an interesting combination of being a lovely person and very successful businesswomen. She always says, “The main thing about growing older is that you spend a lot more on R & M.”

That’s “Repairs and Maintenance” :rofl:

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Very nice! Benjamin Moore Timson Green?

(I clearly have spent too much time looking at color chips).

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That’s a fantastic job amigo!

Didn’t we agree Disney trip beats new cars amiga??

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Great job only thing is you should have painted the 1/4 round before you installed it. That is a lesson I learned the hard way. My brother in-law installed our wood floors and I had to paint the 1/4 round I got paint on the new hard wood. Paint the 1/4 round wipe the floor and repeat.

Before you can paint the quarter round, you have to fill nail holes and caulk the cracks between the baseboard. So, painting ahead of time only means you go back and paint again. But that’s what painters tape is for. Keeps the paint off the floor. :slight_smile: