Ice and more Ice

Well we broke snow records this fall... so that means once it warmed up that we would be breaking records for the amount of ice. On Sunday Heather and I were driving back from the store and we saw lots of houses with broken eaves troughs and roof damage and I thought... man that sucks.

Well Sunday we went to bed, and a little before midnight... Heather and I were actually sleeping (yeah!) and we got woken up by a huge CRASH! It sounded like a car crashed into the house... so I ran downstairs and looked around... wasn't sure what happened. I thought the noise was by our bedroom and so I went to that part of the house on the lower level...

Our house is a two story house, with a one floor addition on the back of the house. The addition to the house is only one story and has a flat roof that buts up to the original brick house. The guestroom, first floor bath, and family room are the addition to the house.

I started by looking in the guestroom... at first I looked at the ceiling as I walked in... didn't see anything... but then I turned to my left looking towards the bathroom and saw all the cracks. The ceiling had cracks, the wall had cracks down it and even a split in the wall. Whew... then I walked into the bathroom and the walls were cracked all over, the door frame was cracked really bad and paint flakes and chips all over the floor.

What happened is that our eaves trough gave out on the back side of the house. So a HUGE stretch of ice fell onto the flat roof. It was about 10 inches in diameter, like a tree trunk... no wonder it made so much noise when it fell.

Luckily our roof isn't leaking so we aren't under an emergency. Our insurance is going to cover the repairs. The decision for us right now, is do we follow through and do an insurance claim or maybe repair it all ourselves and save ourselves doing a claim (which raises our rates, we have a deductible, etc.).

I have tons of pics, but for insurance reasons I am not going to post them here until we decide what we are going to do. Luckily like I said the damage isn't critical like leaks or something not usable in the house. So we are safe, the house is warm and we are enjoying Mr. Cruz... and the warm weather got us a chance to take him outside in the stroller!