water leak and mold oh my

Well the two of you that may or may not read my blog are probably wondering where I've been and if I've had the baby yet. Well I can tell you where I've NOT been, and that is in my own home. In early April we had a water leak. We had a plumber finally come out on April 15th and they told us that the leak was under the slab that our house was built on and that they would have to tear up the floor to fix the problem. We called our insurance company and they said to get a 2nd opinion, which we did, and turned out that the leak was in the wall between our bathroom and kitchen so it wasn't going to be too horrible to fix and not cost $3000 like the first company said it would. We also found out that we had Quest pipes also known as polybutylene pipe in our home, which there was a lawsuit years ago because of the failure rate of these pipes, and they should have been replaced. When we had our home inspection 2 1/2 years ago, the inspector only saw PVC pipes and didn't find the Quest pipes, which from what the plumber explained was that they were replaced in parts that were visible and could only been seen if cut into the wall. Well the leak was fixed, and the company (Paul Davis Restoration or PDR for this post) that our insurance had sent out to do the restoration found out that we had mold.  They set up a containment area, and cleaned and took out the drywall and took up the floor and proceeded to dry the walls so that we could have an air quality test done so that we could move back into our home. Well it seemed to take a very long time for the walls to dry, and then there was another leak that was found, which Hubs fixed, (along with trying to fix another leak that was found but we called a plumber for that) so we had to wait even longer for them to even come in and test. The air quality test was finally done on May 3. We were told by the company that they would have the results in 48 hours. On Monday when hubs called the results were still not available, but the PDR said they would start some work so that we could get back in our house as soon as possible. They kept saying this each day that week but nothing was done. Finally on Friday May 10 we learned that the house did not pass the air quality test and the company would have to do some more cleaning and there would be a retest. At this point we had been out of our home for 3 weeks. We had been told by PDR that we could keep our cat in the house, which should not have been allowed, but we had no idea this was our first experience with anything like this.

Well we felt that we were not getting taken care of appropriately by PDR, it didn't seem that they were keeping us informed and that they were telling us things that were false and not happening (like the cleaning and repairs while waiting for the test results), so we contacted the BBB. Hubs command even got involved at this point and emailed the company. On Friday May 17, we received an email from the company saying they were upset that we had filed complaints on them and that once the mold part of their job was done, they would be finished and would not complete the work to restore our house, even though they had been paid by us already to do the work. We had paid them for the mold work and also for the part of our deductible that we owed for our insurance, but PDR said they would have to reevaluate what we owed since the cost would be more, but that they would give us a refund of whatever they didn't charge us.

There are so many things that went wrong with this whole process. I wasn't able to be an active part of it because I gave birth in the midst of all of this. But it seems like if you don't want to have some negative comments about you then you would want to make your customers happy and finish the work, not just say we are going to finish because you "told" on us. There are many things that we have learned from this, and will know for the next time we have any issues. But needless to say, 33 days later we are still not in our home, our floors are still torn up, the walls are open from where the dry wall was removed and we are awaiting the second set of air quality results. We have been trying to get help during the whole ordeal but seemed like we weren't able to get help. We were able to contact the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society and they gave us loans to pay for the work to be done (and we also had to repipe our house since we had the faulty pipes and it would have had to be done anyway), but now we have a large loan payment that is going to wreck our already tight budget. I just want to go home and be in my own house. I want to take my daughter, who will be 4 weeks old tomorrow, to her room and have her in her own bed. But this horrible ordeal is still going on and who knows how much longer it will continue.