Nonny wrote:

Again, thanks for the words. In fact, the house was totally destroyed
by a fire that began outside the shop, in an adjoining garage. Within
about a half hour, it was a smoldering ruin. We had good insurance and
I had many documentary photographs, since I came from a profession that
had to deal with insurance matters for borrowers. We knew that while we
would have the insurance proceeds to rebuild the home, what were we
going to put on the shelves or hang on the walls. If you have a library
with around 4000 books, what books do you buy to replace the burned ones?

We felt that the most simple and emotionally favorable solution would be
to simply NOT rebuild, but to sell the lot. We'd never lived in the SW,
so Las Vegas was a good candidate. We literally. . .literally. . . put
every tangible thing we owned at the time into half of a small U-haul
trailer, hooked it to the new van (the cars were burned in the garages)
and pointed the nose west toward the desert.

I enjoy writing, and now that I think about it, I think I'll write a
monograph about some of the insurance issues we faced with the many
things I'd built that were lost in the fire and how we worked it out
with State Farm. It just might help you or some of the other good folk
here in the newsgroup and r.w.w. if they get into a similar bind, have a
tornado or other insurable disaster.

Sorry to the hear that, but know the feeling ... we lost our previous
home, and all but a few possessions, to flooding in TS Allison back in
June 02. Like you, instead of rebuilding in the same place, we sold the
lot and basically started over from scratch. Dealing with the insurance
was indeed a trip, and we could probably compare stories. Fortunately
I'd been insured by the same company, USAA, for 40 years, and did have
flood insurance, so, other than ineptness of some of the younger staff,
there was no one overtly trying to screw us, AAMOF, just the opposite
.... although I did catch them in a quite a few errors, strangely all in
their favor. In my usual manner I had unimpeachable documentation,
including photographs, to the point that they ended up using my
spreadsheets as the basis for the settlement. We came out almost whole,
but I'll never have another ACV policy on my home contents ... live and
learn.

I would not wish the experience on my worst enemy, but we made lemonade
out of the lemons and actually came out stronger overall ... we all
probably need a shaking up on a regular basis to appreciate life, as
much as the process may hurt at the time.

Good talking to you, Nonny ... you guys have a good holiday.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)