A little ceiling progress

I worked on the room with the collapsed ceiling today.

Here’s where I started:

After 5.75 hours of cleaning, here’s where I ended up:

Of course, there is no ceiling, so the insulation dust from the rest of the attic can still waft into the room. I still have to keep it sealed off from the rest of the house.

A helpful neighbor let me borrow his scoop shovel. I spent most the time just scooping all the insulation and sheetrock fragments into bags. This is the shovel on our couch:

The larger pieces of sheetrock are in three stacks.

About 20% of the ceiling was left. I knocked almost all of it down. It was behind the fan:

Here’s attic insulation where it belongs: on top of the remaining ceiling:

Even though our dining room table looks OK, it turns out the top layer is an imprint, so it’s not refurbishable:

If the table can be buffed, it may be salvageable. Otherwise, if it’s nicked and gouged, it’s not fixable.

I stuffed 28 42-gallon contractor bags:

It’ll take a while to get rid of those!

This roof vent’s squeaking is driving my wife nuts:

Without the ceiling and insulation, its squeaking is loud.

You may be wondering, “Aren, why are you doing this when the insurance company is paying to fix this?”

It turns out that the insurance company is cutting me a check for about 70% of its assessment of repairs. If I spend less than 70%, I can pocket the difference. The gap between 70% and 80% is my deductible, so I would pay that out of pocket. If I spend between 80% and 100%, the part they call “recoverable depreciation,” the insurance company will refund me for that part.

Ironically, this cost structure gives me incentive to hold the costs down for the insurer. If they had a rule whereby I had to hire a contractor, it’s likely they would spend all of the “recoverable depreciation” and then some.

I’ve run some numbers, and I think I can probably get the whole job done for around 35%-50% of estimated costs if I do it mostly myself and hire a handyman to help. That means I could pocket 20%-35% of the total estimated costs and in fact pay no deductible.

If I do end up going with a contractor, then all this cleaning is for naught. But at least I have the peace of mind of knowing the room is somewhat clean!