All Fixed Up

When we got back here and checked our place over, we realized that our repairs boiled down to two pieces of siding and a missing piece of soffit. We have some work scheduled to be done this coming week, and we thought about calling the company to see if they could fix those couple things while the other work was being done. But we realized that would probably add a couple hundred bucks to the bill for only a few minutes of work. So Harry decided that he would try his hand at replacing the siding. On our way home on Tuesday, we had passed a place called Mobile Home Depot, and Harry called them to see if they had siding. Not only did they have the size of siding we needed, but they sold it by the piece. On Wednesday we drove over and picked up the materials we needed, and even an extra piece of siding just in case, for the grand total of $46!

Yesterday Harry got down to business working on the repairs. The section of siding to go in the front needed to be cut down to size, but luckily the piece that was being replaced was still intact enough to use it as a template.

You can see the missing piece of soffit on the right side of the peak.

All done!

Harry also took the other awning down. It was bent and in pretty bad shape. Some of the slats were already half coming off.

I ordered a couple decorative pieces to go on the front of the house and add some color. Plus getting the grass in is going to make such a difference. Our grass had been scheduled for installation the Thursday before the storm, but the company cancelled. No surprise there. We were actually happy about that because we’re not sure how freshly laid sod would have held up to the winds. The sod farm is waiting for their fields to dry up, so hopefully by the beginning of October we will finally be getting some grass.

Taking a Deep Breath

Well, it’s been quite the few days. We spent from last Thursday through Monday at Harry’s sister’s place in Jacksonville. Despite the fact that we were ready to get home by then, it was nice to have a few days to visit with Linda. On Monday we went to Publix to stock up for a while. We knew that everything in the fridge would have to be thrown out, and we weren’t sure about the state of the local grocery stores. We had brought our cooler with us, so we were able to get all the cold stuff packed away for the night.

On Tuesday morning we left bright and early at 6 am! We were so ready to be home we didn’t want to wait a moment longer. We had an uneventful trip, and only hit a couple small slow-downs. It was good to see our place, and the whole resort, generally looking none too worse for wear.

I’ve spent the past couple of days getting some meals cooked up, restocking our freezer with spaghetti sauce and chili.

Last night I made a celebratory meal of stuffed pork chops and acorn squash, and we just took a deep breath, and had a nice meal while we enjoyed being home.

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I took this picture today. Harry has already taken down the awning arms that were left attached when the awning was taken by the wind. It tore out the piece of siding from above the window where the awning had been attached.

We lost one piece of siding at the very top on the right side. The awning is bent, and Harry is going to take it down.

We had some skirting out, but we were so excited to find it all laying around the house undamaged. Harry has already replaced it.

Today we took a trip to the Mobile Home Depot. I saw it on our way home on Tuesday and saw a sign on the building that said they had siding, skirting etc. We were able to buy replacement pieces of siding for less than $10 each. Harry has never put up siding before, but I guess he is going to give it a try!

(On an aside…when we bought our place, of course we had to buy insurance to cover it. We have all of our other insurance through GEICO, but they don’t cover mobile homes, or at least they don’t in our part of Florida. We found two possible companies to buy insurance from. One offers a higher coverage limit than the other, but of course is more expensive. Both of them cover hurricane damage, but the hurricane deductible is 2% of your total insured value. For us, that is over $1k, and thankfully we don’t have that much damage. To cover floods, we would have to buy actual flood insurance, but we didn’t as we aren’t close enough to water to be concerned about flooding. Our park model policy costs $463/yr. )

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Yesterday we drove over to the storage place. The rig looked awesome. We didn’t even lose our wheel covers as we had expected. I guess they came off but didn’t go far, and the owner put them back on.

The only damage we had were bolts pulled loose from the roof where the vent covers were attached. Harry has already gone over and caulked the holes. He will replace the vent covers before we hit the road again next year.

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Today, in other exciting news, our dresser finally arrived!

Just as a reminder, this is what the bedroom looked like when we bought the place…

And this is the finished product now…

I am so happy with the finished result.

Harry wants to get the repairs completed first, and then we will get back to working around here.

Hopefully we can just get back to normal life now.

What a Relief!

We have been so thankful throughout this whole experience to have such great park owners. The morning after the storm, one of the owners, who works in the office, took time first thing out of her day to drive around the park and post video of the park models. Even though our place was not shown, we were reassured to see what great shape the houses were in. A couple days ago I emailed her just to touch base, and yesterday afternoon I got a reply back, and she included pictures of our place.

The front awning is completely gone. We were going to have it taken down in October when we got the windows replaced, so that is no big loss. Harry will just have to take those hanging brackets down. He thinks he might be able to just snap that siding back together.

On this side we lost a little skirting towards the back. But it looks like it’s still there on the ground, so we may be able to just put it back up. And if not, it doesn’t look like an awful lot of skirting to replace. We are very blessed to have had hardly any damage from the storm!

We also found out that our power was restored yesterday! Harry signed in last night and was able to see the thermostat for our a/c. It is up and running. Another relief.

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We left AL yesterday morning around 8 and traveled to Jacksonville. Once we got to I-10, traffic was a little on the heavy side, but it never backed up at all. We had to stop a few times but the trip was uneventful. We are settled in for a few days probably. Now that the resort is back to normal functioning, we can go back anytime. However, we understand that the grocery stores here are still working to get stocked up, and we will have to buy food here before we head back to the Sebring area. From the updates we have seen online, food and gas continue to be in pretty short supply in Highlands county, so we don’t want to go back until we can bring everything we need with us. Hopefully by Monday we will be able to go home!

Good News

Well, we have had some updates from back home and so far all of the news about our property is good. The owner of Adelaide Shores put up some video on facebook of the park and while we didn’t see our place in it, we were relieved to see overall how good it looked. The major damage to the park models seemed to be shingle damage, so we are happier than ever with our decision to do the Roofover back in May. We heard through a friend that someone had looked at our place and said that we lost some skirting and an awning, so sounds like we fared pretty well. Then yesterday I got an email through to the owner of the storage place. She said that from the outside of the lot our rig looked good. She didn’t actually walk in and examine it, but at least it’s upright! At some point, soon hopefully, we will be able to get down there and see for ourselves. Right now the fuel situation is so bad that we could get down there, but then we wouldn’t be able to leave again.

The park itself seemed to fare pretty well also. They lost some fencing and there has been some damage to the sewer system. They will start repairing the sewer system as soon as they have power, which sounds like it might take a week or more. Highlands County was pretty badly hit with the storm, and the electric system has to actually be rebuilt, according to Duke. They aren’t even providing an estimate of when residents of Highland County can hope to have electric. Hopefully we will know something more next week.

We are still in AL. We were planning to leave today, but I-10 and I-75 were pretty jammed up yesterday, and with fuel still in such short supply, we are concerned about getting caught in a lot of slow traffic. So hopefully by tomorrow or the weekend, we will be able to make our way to Jacksonville to Harry’s sister’s place. A little bit closer to home!

Watching Irma

We traveled to Alabama on Thursday. We got up at 1:30 am and were on the road right around 3. It was very weird to be walking around trying to see if there were any last minute additions to throw into the truck just in case everything is gone when we go back.

We ended up not taking any highways until we got up to I-10. The secondary roads were clear and I could see many traffic slowdowns on Google Maps on my phone so we just stayed off the highway. Harry and I switched off driving  every few hours so the other person could nap for a bit. It was a really long day of traveling – a little over 12 hours later when we arrived at our destination in Cullman, AL. The cats were so good – hardly a peep out of them and no accidents. I wouldn’t have blamed them since they spent almost 13 hours in their carriers.

We are settled down for the weekend. The cats have somewhat adjusted to another new location. I feel sorry for them since they don’t know what’s going on, and just feel confused to be out of their normal space.

We have been watching the weather coverage of Irma. Now that the storm has shifted a bit to the west as opposed to going through the center of the state, we have a little bit of hope that our house might make it through. And maybe even the rv, although I don’t even want to imagine what 75 – 90 mph winds would feel like in an rv.  Just keeping up the hope and waiting to see where Irma ends up going tomorrow.

Hope For the Best, Plan For the Worst

For the past few days, we’ve been keeping our eyes on Irma as she has developed into what looks to be a major hurricane event for FL. When it became evident that FL was definitely in her sights, we started thinking about which direction we should head. We were very thankful to get an invitation from Phyllis (My Own Highways In My Mind) to come and stay with her and Len while the storm is passing through, which we have gratefully accepted. We have packed up some of our more important items, a few irreplaceable things - pictures and such, and will be heading out before bright and early tomorrow morning for Alabama. We are hoping that our home will be here to come back to after the storm moves through.