Day 44 - Cabinets, Crises, and Cash Flow

Things are moving along ever so slowly at our place these days. The moldy wood floor has been removed. The base, chair rail, and wainscot have been replaced and primed. The frames for our kitchen cabinets have been built. We are at a stall until the cabinet doors are complete, but then we will have a flurry of painting and staining. Once all of that is done, I will have my kitchen back and life will be much more like normal.
We hit a roadblock shortly after my last post when our house was taken over by a poltergeist. It was either that or the neutral wire from our house to the transformer failed from water plus time. Lights in part of our house were barely lit while others were too bright to look at directly. Circuits and bulbs blew, and all things electrical quit working. There was this crazy fluxing thing that happened when the refrigerator kicked on. I had to pay some guy with all kinds of meters and gadgetry who spoke to me through an intermediary a ton of money to fix it all. I say all signs indicate poltergeist, personally. The repairs were expensive and probably not covered under our policy, but our electric company and the electricians/ghost busters really came through and got us back to normal as quickly as possible.
We received our payment from the insurance company on Friday. The “contents” part of the check was made out to us, so we opened a new checking account to make the accounting easier and deposited the money there. Then we went on a shopping spree and purchased our new dryer, oven, and dishwasher, as well as a new vacuum cleaner. Everything has been delivered now and will be installed as the cabinets are completed. New everything is a definite silver lining of this process.
The “dwelling” part of the check is more complicated. It is made out to the mortgage company and has to be sent to them for endorsement. They require inspections and all sorts of rigmarole to give us the money back. I googled “Chase Loss Draft Department” in search of forms, and found out that the first twenty websites are all just people complaining about how terrible this process is. I am super excited. After filling out an insane amount of paperwork, including a document (notarized, no kidding) that I will not take a lien out against myself if I don’t pay my construction bill, I mailed the check to them yesterday morning. I’m just going to pretend that this will go well until they prove me wrong, because I really can’t take another battle right now.