After The Storm
By Our Family
On the morning of May 5, we awoke to see that a large portion of our backyard fence had been transformed into a boardwalk overnight. As we slept, a powerful wind-storm had whipped through the Ottawa region. Gusts of nearly 100mph blew over trees, ripped off shingles and knocked out power to over 45,000 customers.
Apparently, our fence was not up to the challenge of resisting that kind of force.
The amount of damage we incurred was small, relative to some other people in the neighbourhood. While we lost only 5 panels of fencing, our next door neighbour had about 70% of his fence collapse.
Our first plan was to re-use the existing materials and re-build the fence quickly. As we assessed the damage, it became clear that almost all of the existing fence was garbage, as most of the wood had rotted through.
Our second plan was to buy all new materials and rebuild the fence ourselves. This idea crashed and burned when we took a survey of the fence building skills of the adults in our home. It turns out, Luc was the only one who had built a fence before and apparently Luc had done such a good job that it had, in Luc’s words, “had fallen down within a year.”
Furthermore, at this point we were getting a first hand look at the amount work building a fence actually took, as our neighbour had decided to repair his other fences himself. After seeing how slow, complicated and laborious that task was, we decided that the “do-it-yourself” path may not be for us.
Our third plan was for Michael to reach out to our insurance company. We were thrilled to hear that fence damage was covered under our plan and, as an added bonus, there would be no deductible. It seemed that we finally had a workable plan!
Finding a contractor turned out to be a little tricky, as the carnage of the wind storm meant that their skills were in high-demand. We eventually found a company that could provide service within a couple weeks and we put down a deposit to book them as fast as we could.
Insurance companies being insurance companies, our claim ended up not being as simple as they originally made it sound. After promising to cover the cost of the fence and waive the deductible, our adjustor informed us that the insurance company would actually only cover our half of the fence. Our neighbours insurance company would have to cover his half. Unfortunately, he had different coverage than us and his fence wasn’t covered.
We pushed back against the insurance company but they insisted that they wouldn’t cover the whole cost unless we got a survey done proving that the whole fence was on our property. This would have been cost and time prohibitive, so we decided to just accept the insurance companies offer to pay half.
In the end, we agreed to split the uncovered cost with our neighbour, which saved both of us a huge amount of time and money. At that point, I think our neighbour was just grateful that this was one section of fence that he wouldn’t have to build himself!
While our household lacks people with construction skills, there are no shortage of capable painters. Last year, Michael had stained our fence while he had some free time during his sabbatical. With a whole section of new fencing looking naked and the rest of the fence needing a second coat of stain, Michael reminded everyone that he was not on sabbatical this year and that painting the fence would need to be a team effort.
The result was that last Saturday the whole family found itself outside, paint brushes in hand, staining the fence. They say that many hands make light work and in our case, this seems to be true.
42 sections of fence needing paint + 7 adults in the house = 6 sections of fence each.
Pretty much everyone was done their section by lunch (Eric & Sarah left a few panels to complete as a “date night” last Wednesday) and the great fence adventure of 2018 was finally over.
We hope.
