If I do not promptly reply I am packing us up to move out or my Houzz app is not letting me reply...it does that...and need to get back to my laptop. Thank you again.

No laminate in the bathroom or laundry room.

How much of a rush are you in? Is there another bathroom with shower? Can the washer/dryer be used where they are? If you have workable shower and washer/dryer, you are doing fine and needn't sign up with the untried-by-you sister company contractors.

I would strongly recommend sticking with your tried and true flooring shop, plumbers, etc. Call them up, explain the situation, and check their availability.

Going into debt for new hardwood flooring through the upstairs doesn't seem attractive. Would you consider using the same new carpet in the one bedroom as you just got for the stairs? There's no need to match colors, strip and re-stain, and feather in new wood, (especiallly since you don't like what you have) when carpet is installed next to hardwood. Then when your budget comfortably permits, you can choose new hardwood flooring throughout that you actually love. Using a few hundred dollars for a room of carpet from the insurance payout is much easier to live with than borrowing several thousand dollars for new hardwood.

Tile for the bathroom and sheet vinyl for the laundry room sound like they'd fit your current preferences.

Oh wow, at Christmas, Jan?! You managed to find the silver lining, thank you. I appreciate your insights. Crickets from insurance so far so we wait.

Hello Apple Pie,

My husband likes your carpet idea! We have a remnant even, but it is just shy of the bedroom dimensions. I could use it to make a rug though and cover up any unmatched stop-gap flooring we put in that room. We've gotten rid of all our carpet and rugs for health reasons but the staircase was a no-go for hardwood even with a runner (too slippery and steep).

They have tape noting where the flooring must be ripped out in the hallway (about 75%) but it will be ridiculous to not do the entire hallway. Not doing the unaffected bedrooms and living with ugly for a few years is probably the grown-up thing to do.

I agree on the debt; this seems crazy to us too. It's tempting though to take advantage of having at least some of the flooring and install costs covered, since we will have to leave anyway. We will stay if insurance decides to be unreasonable, but I have documented lung disease so they'd have a fight from me forcing me to live through this in the next room. We have another full working bathroom but I will lose my washer/dryer while they remediate the laundry room (flooring and possibly sink cabinetry). We do laundry daily - it feels like I do enough for 10 people sometimes!

Insurance prices "replace" redo by sq feet/pricing per. Paint, carpet, hardwood you name it! It is , ( ask ANY contractor) an absurd method. As my client found out, it can take forever , could require tons of verification, and honestly... it was a ROYAL pain of paper and documentation, hundreds of emails, pictures, lists, that for me became a source of great irritation as "chief of the project" to restore to ready for summer living.

Is the laundry room usable in its current state? Will they have to rip out drywall as well as the old cabinets and laundry sink?

Yes for the moment, on laundry room, but not usable once they begin. I asked if they can prioritize the laundry room but who knows.

Here is the laundry room and hallway showing the hall bath and door to the affected bedroom on the other side of the wall. You can see that the laundry is tiny little slice of space so there's no way to keep the appliances functional and do any rip out. They said the sink cabinetry needs more investigation once the get the toe kick off and a few tiles.

I have never dealt with anything like this as a homeowner, but I do know a bit about shady insurance claims practices through an old job. We are documenting, photographing, specifying key buzzwords in writing, saving detailed receipts, and beyond that I just need somebody TO CALL ME BACK and tell me if they will pay or not.

I want to go look at flooring options but have no idea how much $ per sq ft to even look at. Flying blind...wet and blind.

The call back with a hard number? Oh..........not happening.

You unfortunately decide if you will jump in, be prepared to take what you get, and pay the rest.

It took 6 MOS. to get the NUMBER. Actually, she got an attorney and I am not sure she has that yet. Date of flood? 12/26/2024.

Believe it.

Ugh. I do believe it. Our health and lungs are not worth the gamble so we will go forward with someone by Monday, but it is unsettling not to know if we'll be bankrupted by this.

Thank you both, Jan and Apple for all the comments.

If anyone else pops by, I'd still like to hear about flooring options. The wood and tile have to come up no matter what, that is very obvious, even to my untrained eye.

Sorry I have no suggestions. Only compassion for how construction impacts your lungs. I've been there. Putting your health above all else is the right thing to do though never easy and always expensive.

I would not simply listen to the advice of one flooring shop no matter how good they are. Great that you are getting advice here. Visit other stores if you have time. Also post on reddit. I sometimes post questions here and there to see which place I get the best info from.

Hey Kendrah, I appreciate the support. I can go down a Reddit rabbit hole with the best of them, but never thought to look for this type of advice there, so I will go lurk over there too.

We tried a different flooring shop for the carpet install actually, sort of a trial run, since it was only the staircase. If we go carpet replacement I wouldn't use them again, but maybe their hard surface team is better. I'm learning a lot for the future at least!

Including: don't paint your own laundry room Del Mar Blue just because you're bored during a pandemic. Especially when you are a terrible painter. :)

You need to write a professional - but firm - email to the person who has been assigned to handle your claim requesting answers regarding your questions related to the restoration of the damage in your home.

I have a question for you. I know two people who had water damage in their house which affected their wood flooring.

The first was a dishwasher leak that occurred when my friend was out of town (I believe he started the dishwasher as he was leaving to go out of town for work - which he did every week). He came home four days later and discovered what had happened. His basement was unfinished which helped limit the amount of $$$ related to water damage.

My other friend had a similar event like you did - a toilet overflowed - and they were out of town for the next week. It leaked down into the foyer + went into two bedrooms + part of the upstairs hallway.

Different insurance companies were involved for the two claims - however, both insurance companies included replacement (or restoration if possible) for all continuous (uninterrupted) flooring. My one friend had carpet in a family room that separated his kitchen from his foyer - however, he argued that it would look odd for all of the wood floors on the first floor to be refinished - except for the foyer. The insurance company paid to have the wood floors in the foyer refinished to match the rest of the hardwood floors.

My second friend had engineered wood floors that were 4-5 years old. They couldn't be refinished + the same engineered wood flooring was no longer available. She was allowed to select a new engineered wood floor to use for all areas contiguous to damaged areas. She basically was able to select a new engineered wood floor for her entire house.

So, if your bedroom flooring is contiguous to the hallway - and if you cannot purchase engineered hardwood that matches your current flooring, I would assume that the insurance company should be responsible for replacing all floors that are contiguous. I assume that your existing engineered wood flooring is no longer available (engineered wood flooring is constantly being discontinued + new colors/sizes are added). Based upon the posts on here where people are trying to find a few boxes of matching engineered wood flooring, it seems like it's unlikely yours is still being sold.

Wow, that would be amazing, Dani! The second scenario is exactly my situation. We placed our Armstrong Flooring (now defunct or sold off to I forget who) in 2013 when we purchased the house. It's running across the whole upstairs, with only the tile baths and tile laundry (my uncle, a GC, told us at the time to leave the tile - demo too dusty and better for moisture). I can't imagine there's something similar on the market today - 5 in plank engineered hw, handscraped, warm walnut chameleon that changes from red to purple undertones in the light? It was a Unicorn even then. The top layer is trash - super thin and can't be refinished.

That said, insurance paying to do 4 bedrooms when only 1 has damage? I'll do my very best to sell it and thank you so much for the idea, and the time to recount your friends' experiences. This all helps.

I'm posting a new thread to get help on wood flooring stains to look to. Our wood furniture is warm and bossy and I need help.

Remediation crew has removed "the affected areas", meaning, we have no floors in some places, half floors in a bedroom and hallway, and my toilet is resting in the bathtub. They've run the equipment 24/7 for a full week. Our upstairs thermostat hit 117 degrees yesterday. Next step is finding the general contractor and awaiting word from the bean counters at insurance. A third party adjuster came yesterday and took photos and measurements plus a sample of the flooring to be tested - this all goes into the estimate and takes a minimum of one week to report back.

Just detailing my experience here in case others end up in the same boat, sans paddle...

My oldest DD had a water heat leak in her house a few years ago. She had a split floor plan ranch with the leak in the middle of it. Carpet was damp in bedrooms on both sides of house, with one being just barely damp. All carpet was replaced in her house. Both beds on the same side got all new carpeting so they both would match even though only one barely had exposure to water.

She actually was just cut a check from insurance so she put down LVP in her bedroom instead of carpet. She remodeled her en suite this past week and put matching LVP down in the bath.

It definitely seems we will be getting all the flooring paid for, and I never would have thought they would do that, but luckily I posted here and got that info. Thank you for sharing! Now how much$$$ that is a different story. We are grateful for whatever we get but it is hard to be out of the house.