We are pulling from our personal flood experience to share with others that are dealing with disasters now. Jay and Katy sit down to get the word out to anyone suffering through the unimaginable aftermath of a natural disaster. In this bonus episode of Hustle Humbly, Katy turns the microphone on our podcast producer, Jay, to pick his contractor brain. In 2016 our area experienced devastating floods that resulted in 110,000 homes being damaged. At the time, Jay was a licensed contractor with a remodeling business. He quickly became inundated with customers needing help to renovate their flooded homes. Based on that experience, Jay is sharing the tips you need for dealing with clean-up, avoiding being taken advantage of by contractors, getting a fair insurance settlement and rebuilding your home. Please email any additional questions to team@hustlehumblypodcast.com. We are happy to help in any way we can!

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The following is a rough transcript provided by Otter.ai.

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hi, Jay,

Jay Caldwell 0:00
hello, Katie,

Katy 0:01
welcome to the studio. It’s just you and I today. Yep. Are you nervous

Jay Caldwell 0:07
little bit?

Katy 0:08
You look a little nervous. You look a little uncomfortable. We’re getting our gills out early, because this is not actually a laughing matter. I’m going to give a little light back story, and then I kind of want you to do, I’ll have ask you some questions about your backstory on this. Okay, okay. So for anyone who doesn’t know or remember, we had a flood in 2016 so eight years ago, it was in August, and it was due to a tropical storm. It didn’t get to tropical storm. Yeah, it didn’t get to tropical that is very relative description. Yeah, it didn’t get to tropical storm, like named storm or hurricane level, because the wind wasn’t bad. But what happened was it sat on top of us for like, a couple of days and dropped 36 inches of rain in like 48 hours, I think something like that. So everything, all of our rivers, are getting a bunch of rain for weeks before that. So very similar to what I’m hearing, I think sounds like what happened in Atlanta, like the in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, these areas were already getting a lot of rain, and then Helene, hurricane. Helene comes through Florida and then up through those areas and then caused a lot of flooding. So point being, we had a flood in 2016 110,000 homes were affected, and you, at the time, were doing renovations, you had your contractor’s license. So tell them what you like, what? How, the how do you have a point of reference of this? Like, what were you doing? So

Jay Caldwell 1:44
at the time, I was remodeling several houses, and then this flood happened, and all of a sudden there was just my phone was ringing off the hook, yeah. Like, you had to change your number, change my phone number, and give this phone to an assistant, just so it wasn’t ringing all day. It was pretty chaotic a little while.

Katy 2:04
And what happens is, immediately, everyone needs the contractor, right? Yeah,

Jay Caldwell 2:08
everybody starts trying to find the first contractor they can get on, get on

Katy 2:11
the list. Okay? And I think we’ll just stop there for a second, because I made a note that what up? Why we’re recording this bone. This is a bonus episode. Y’all, obviously, Alyssa is not here. It’s just, we wanted to make just a really quick, some timely information for anyone who is impacted. Because as of this recording, it is Tuesday. This happened on, you know, Thursday and Friday, I guess Friday and Saturday of last week in some of these areas, some people are still being rescued, like the water, I don’t know if it has receded in most places, so no one’s out there running to do any of these things yet, but they will be in the next couple of days. And it’s the desperation level of the people affected that will cause you to just maybe take any contractor, right? Like just anybody who comes along bad

Jay Caldwell 3:00
decisions, yeah, and without thinking long term or even short term, you know, right? So

Katy 3:04
we’re going to try and give you some tips, if you were affected, or if you know someone who was affected, to not make bad decisions, correct, right? And to tell you maybe what you can do yourself while you have to wait in line for that contractor. Yep, right. Okay, I’m sorry. So continue people were ringing you off the hook. So if people

Jay Caldwell 3:21
were ringing me off the hook, and I had never done any insurance claims before, so even that was a whole new world to me, trying to figure that out, and then read how they did their their bill of work and all, and how detailed it and way overly detailed I’ve ever seen anything before. So we had to learn all that and then start using that in, you know, putting that into our system. And

Katy 3:45
what you were used to doing with, like, just a regular renovation, yeah, yeah,

Jay Caldwell 3:49
yeah, just not nearly as detailed as writing, you know, 16 and a half foot of baseboard on this wall, and then, you know, five feet on this wall, and, you

Katy 3:56
know, right? And you hired an insurance expert at some point in this process.

Jay Caldwell 4:02
And yes, I had hired someone who had done it a lot more,

Katy 4:05
yeah, and had he been an adjuster before Texas? Yeah, he had been an adjuster. Yeah. Okay, we’re gonna come back around to that. First things first, someone is listening to this whose home has flooded. What is the very first thing they should do? Maybe, what if they haven’t even gotten back into their house yet?

Jay Caldwell 4:25
I’m not even sure. I don’t know what you can do without actually getting into your house. Contact your insurance company, of course. Okay, ball rolling there. Get on their list with your insurance adjuster. You know that’s number one. Okay, get the adjuster to your house so you can get money.

Katy 4:40
And we’re not insurance experts, but if it was a flood rising water is not covered by your homeowner’s insurance. Got me right. So make sure you call your insurance agent and find out what kind of insurance do you have, and does it apply to this? Because if the insurance you have does not apply to this, then. Then you’re going to need to apply to FEMA to get some type of relief there. And when it was eight years ago in our market, that ended up being like, I feel like $36,000 for some reason, is stuck in my head, but there was a number, and you would apply and show the proof of your damage. So call your insurance company would probably be the thing you want to do if you haven’t gotten to your home yet, correct? Also, I know a lot of people here, like, we have pods, so a lot of people called and reserved a pod to be delivered so they could the things

Jay Caldwell 5:31
that they were that can be salvaged and get it out the house as fast as you can.

Speaker 1 5:35
Okay, right? So tip number one, get the stuff out of your house that can be salvaged as fast as you can. What are some of the things that can be salvaged, anything that didn’t get touched by water. So just the stuff that,

Jay Caldwell 5:46
if it did get touched by water, like clothes and stuff, they can be clean. There are a lot of laundromats in town who actually did it for free during that time. Yeah, they did it for free for a little while. Yeah, during that time, I

Katy 5:57
also remember a lot of churches or other charity organizations had volunteers who were just doing laundry for people. That’s right, like you could drop off your your clothes, laundry. Yeah, someone would do it for you. Someone who wasn’t affected had power, all that stuff. Okay, what are some of the construction components that maybe someone would think couldn’t be saved, that can be saved? All right? So

Jay Caldwell 6:21
Well, we’re going to come back to that in a little. A little bit. So I was going to say, first, you know, get out the stuff that you know, your belongings that you want that can be salvaged. Okay, leave the construction stuff for later. Just your belongings that can be salvaged. Get all that stuff out. Okay, then you want to start gutting the house. I tell people all the time, three inches of water in your house is just as bad as three feet of water in your house. Okay? Why? Because water gets in here and touches three inches of water is the flooring, the baseboard, the cabinets, the doors, your door frames. I mean, it’s a lot, right? So then you have to go and cut the base while your your sheetrock up. You want to figure out where the water level stopped, and then measure up at least one foot above that, and then cut that right there, okay,

Katy 7:06
and the water level typically, typically, you can see the line where the water was right and but the sheetrock, am I correct that it pulls the water up,

Jay Caldwell 7:16
it does suck up. So you got to find where the water level, where it stopped being wet. So also, one of these things you need to do is get a moisture meter. A moisture meter, yep, get that Amazon Home Depot Lowe’s whatever. It’s got two probes in it. It’s got a nine volt battery in or something like that, that you stick the probes into the wall, and it tells you how much moisture is in it. Okay, I think most anything, if it’s sitting in there, it’s gonna your wall is gonna be wet for a little while. But anyways, you want to figure out where that is and then cut up a foot from

Katy 7:44
wherever the last high moisture reading was correct. So maybe the water line is here, like at two feet, but though it has wicked up to two and a half feet, you’re got to cut it three and a half feet.

Jay Caldwell 7:55
Yeah, and I say, if it’s under four feet, just go to four feet and cut right there, because the sheet of because it’s going to be a full sheet of sheetrock no matter

Katy 8:03
what. Yeah, it’s not where it’s actually making it more costly, right? Okay, so let’s, let’s say that one more time,

Jay Caldwell 8:09
the insurance adjuster is not going to ding you for cutting four feet and not three feet,

Katy 8:14
but Right? Because it’s then you’d have to be cutting all these pieces of sheetrock. You have so much extra just be wasted. Okay, so if it’s if you’re cutting, if you’re up, if you’re gonna cut to three, you gotta just cut to four. You might as well just cut to four is there, and you don’t have to bend over. So basically, like, even three inches, were people here cutting up to four, like, even if they had three inches of water. Well, I

Jay Caldwell 8:34
remodeled the house that they only cut one, but if they had just done the Ford, like, again, the insurance adjuster wouldn’t have dinged them for it. I see, okay, can we because at that point you have to mud that spot. You have to, you have to mud up so far, and then the insurance company is not going to pay you to just paint right there. They’re going to pay you for the entire wall, right?

Katy 8:53
Because you can’t paint half a wall. Paint half a wall. Okay, that’s a great point, but let’s okay. We need to back up again before you start cutting this out? You have to take pictures of everything. Yes,

Jay Caldwell 9:03
yes. Go back take pictures of everything. You want to just take pictures of every single wall, every single room. Do you know if they have to be you want to take pictures of the model numbers of your appliances that, okay, attached to the house, refrigerator, washer, dryer, your water heater, if it happened to get

Katy 9:19
wet. Do you remember if these photos had to be date and time stamped? It

Jay Caldwell 9:24
would be best if they are so is that cell phone there’s a setting on the setting on your phone is date and time stamp sort of thing. It’s on here. And just being like the metadata, you could also make sure your metadata on your phone is also turned

Katy 9:36
on, but you got to be able to prove the photos were in your house, yeah? Or what when they were taken? Remember that really being a big thing? It wasn’t like a red flag, who knows, eight years later, take it

Jay Caldwell 9:47
with the film. And you know when

Katy 9:49
a film camera, yeah? But those put the date on them. It’s in, I think it’s just printed on them, yeah? Regard, no one’s taking film camera photos, fine. Okay, so take a picture of. Everything inside, outside, yeah, inside and outside. Okay. Did you ever have any pushback from insurance that were like, Oh, well, if you had a picture of this, then you would have been able to get something else covered. Or was it think

Jay Caldwell 10:15
so, because a lot of stuff is just they also got to the point where they’re just understood that it was there. Yeah,

Katy 10:21
okay. What about if they’ve already started getting it like I remember when we had the sink overflow, when we had our flooring damage, so you want to salvage a piece of the flooring, but we had a pile of basically debris. We had to get out the wet stuff, yes, but the insurance adjuster didn’t come the next day. And when you’re in a situation like this, you’re in line. Yeah, there’s a lot of people waiting for their insurance adjuster to come. So you are going to be gutting your home prior to your insurance adjuster getting there, absolutely

Jay Caldwell 10:50
so that’s why you want to take pictures of everything,

Katy 10:53
because the key is to get it out quickly, correct. What happens if you take long if

Jay Caldwell 10:57
you’re listening to this now, you should go ahead and take pictures of your stuff while it looks nice and just for future use, for insurance purposes. Oh,

Katy 11:05
if you’re not flooded, if you’re not if you’re in a non effect, if you’re a non affected person. Just listening to this for information, you should, but that’s the case for if you your house caught fire or like you should have a video or a photo of everything in your home probably updated once

Jay Caldwell 11:20
a year. Yes, especially if you have contents coverage on your insurance.

Katy 11:23
Okay. So they go in, they take their photos. Let’s go back to the gutting. I guess is that what’s next? Yes, do people need a power if it’s not already? Oh, turn off. Turn off the power. Turn off the water. Turn off the water. Yep, because somebody cutting in the wall is going to cut your water. Oh, this is a good point, so we don’t want to flood it again, correct, well or more or in a different place, yeah, and gas, so turn off all your utilities. Now, what if the utilities were out due to the storm and you still

Jay Caldwell 11:53
need to go? Probably want to go cut the breaker off anyways, just in case. Okay, keep going. Yeah. So you cut up, you know, four feet on the drywall. So when you get in water in your house, your doors are gone because they’re going to swell. Your door frames are going to swell. So you take the door frame off, the header, all, all of that as well, cabinets, any cabinets that got wet. So

Katy 12:17
what about if it’s a real wood cabinet, like, like, it’s all

Jay Caldwell 12:24
part, yeah, okay. But you also want to take pictures. So while you have pictures of everything, you’re going to know that you can’t cheat the insurance company and say, Oh, I had stained cabinets before, but when your pictures say you actually had, you know, painted cabinets. So okay,

Katy 12:41
I brought up visual aid. This is from one of the houses I think that you went through, because it was in your photos. But we’ll, we’ll post it. But it’s like, what does the room look like after you Yeah? Gut it, yeah. It’s like, this is literally

Jay Caldwell 12:53
walls gone. Both sides of the walls, insulation is gone. Do you

Katy 12:58
end up having to replace these outlets? Like the outlets are still my list

Jay Caldwell 13:02
here. One of the things is, if the water got up and touched your outlets or your switches, replaced them all, insurance company will cover it, every single one in the whole house, every single one in the whole house during Katrina, they did not replace them all, and it’s a big cause of fires, really. Oh, okay, because it’s corroded, because they’re corroded, they just rust

Katy 13:22
over time, over time. Okay, and so 20 years ago, so now it’s causing house

Jay Caldwell 13:28
fires. So also, same thing that they’re not going to cause fires, but your coaxial, your cable lines and internet lines and all that, same thing, they’ll just rust over time. So just so even though

Katy 13:37
it’s just got to go, it’s just got to go, anything that touched the water has to go correct.

Jay Caldwell 13:43
And this is just a little bonus. Being a previous contractor, I would say any water valves coming out of the wall, go ahead and replace those two. They leak all the time. They end up leaking with age upgrade that sucker. Because the wall is open. What walls open just is there anything

Katy 13:57
else you would recommend to do while the wall is open? I mean any changing

Jay Caldwell 14:01
of your run some extra internet lines or anything extra electrical while your floor is up. You could run some outlet into the floor or into your island or something like

Katy 14:11
a moment, yeah,

Jay Caldwell 14:12
it’s like a mobile filler right in your kitchen.

Katy 14:15
Okay. What about tile floor? You can leave it down, ceramic tile floor. You can’t get down anyways. It will dry. Yeah, now it will take time, but it will dry. You got in, you took the photos, you brought in the dehumidifiers, which you can rent those too, like you don’t have to get a company.

Jay Caldwell 14:32
You can rent them do it, but, I mean, you need several. It’s a per square foot sort of situation, and it’s a matter of, you can get by with fewer. It’s just going to take longer, but you want to try to get as many fans and dehumidifiers as possible. Okay, it was the biggest thing. Get the air in there, get it flowing. Box fans, whatever you can,

Speaker 1 14:51
I guess, and open to like you leave the doors open, open to the elements, like getting the flow, getting the flow in there, okay, but there are companies that will come in and DEhU. Minify, correct? Yeah. So you’re gonna

Jay Caldwell 15:01
find a lot of people are just gonna, they’re just gonna find a neighborhood. You’re gonna have contractors flood in from all over the place. These are not all dirt bags. A lot of these people are actually good people. You just kind of to sort through them. Sort through some of them are dirt bags. Some of them are dirt bags. Yes, you know, hell, make sure they have a social media account or something like that, a reference of some kind, reference. But a lot of them just travel around from disaster to disaster, and they just, that’s their lifestyle. I

Katy 15:30
understand it’s a viable business, yeah, okay, well, you had a note. I want to make sure we hit it. They’re not all dirt bags, but

Jay Caldwell 15:37
what? Yeah. And so in that they also, you know, they always tell you to get a licensed contractor. And while that is all in good, there’s not enough licensed contractor in your area to service everyone.

Katy 15:49
Okay? And this is my question, the gutting and dehumidifying part people have to do right away, like we can’t wait for our insurance adjuster. You’re not gonna find a licensed guy. This is the most important thing we’re going to say right now, insurance pays more for that than it actually costs

Jay Caldwell 16:07
to do correct, in my experience, the amount of money that I saw people charging to gut these houses, I’m like, Y’all are robbing

Katy 16:15
it’s inflated, right? So it’s way more than it should be. Because how long does it take to gut a 1500 square foot house, six,

Jay Caldwell 16:22
maybe eight guys. It’ll take them maybe a day, right?

Katy 16:26
So it should, because they’re coming in there, they’re

Jay Caldwell 16:29
not being nice to your stuff. So you want to make sure you get out the good stuff before they come, because they’re just

Katy 16:33
like their tornado, yeah. Okay, but the point is, they’re going to tell you it costs x you won’t have talked to your insurance adjuster yet, and then later on, the insurance adjusters are gonna be like, yeah, it cost x, but now we say you only get x for the sheetrock, and it’s not enough. Yeah? Like, the numbers don’t make sense. Yeah. The important part is try to compare prices. I know that you might not. It’s gonna be hard to get on list for somebody, but like, can you at least see what is your neighbor paying their crew? Or what is the your person across town? What are they paying their crew? Like, yeah.

Jay Caldwell 17:05
So another thing is, you get on the list by who he, who has the money, gets almost first, you know, gets the attention. Yeah? Because a lot of people in these times, if you’re relying on insurance money, you’re waiting on insurance, yeah, and you’re not going to have that to do the flooding. So if you have the the opportunity to pay it up front or get a HELOC, maybe, until your insurance money comes in,

Katy 17:25
you know, yeah, even, right, right, right. So if you have some equity in your house, you saw a lot of people do that, yeah? A lot of people, they were taking the equity out of their house, because at

Jay Caldwell 17:33
the very beginning, Yeah, everybody’s gonna be gutted real quick, and then all these contractors gonna be waiting for who’s got the money to move on.

Katy 17:40
Okay, wait, that’s a great point. All right, so we’re moving away from the gutting part. Basically, everyone’s paying cash, though, for the gutting, because no one has insurance money at that point. And the faster it

Jay Caldwell 17:48
takes, like two, maybe three, four weeks, it depends, the faster

Katy 17:52
you gut your home, the less mold you’re gonna have. Yes, that’s why we’re doing this speedy. Got it as fast as you can. Yeah, it’s the mold that we’re worried about. Okay, obviously it’s going to dry up, but okay, so that makes a great point. Insurance is going to pay you? What insurance are going to pay you if you plan to continue to live in this home, and you have the ability to get a home equity line of credit and and start doing that renovation, you’re going to get in line in front of these people. You can get for the you can get the contract, right? This makes sense, though. So if that’s an option for you, your insurance is still going to come back and pay. Then you pay off what you got out of your home, like you pay back the key lock, correct? Yeah, genius. You saw a lot of people do that absolutely because that. Then you jump in line, and you get the good contractor, and you get back in your house faster, yeah. And you get, also, these

Jay Caldwell 18:47
contractors aren’t banks, so, you know, we take deposits, right, right, right.

Katy 18:51
Okay, and, and all of this, it was hard to find appliances. It was hard to find you’re gonna be all of the building materials are gonna get bought

Jay Caldwell 18:59
up That’s right, right? The drywall you’re if you have the ability buy your drywall as fast as you like, order your drywall

Katy 19:05
immediately. Yeah, okay, once you’ve gutted, let’s just say, I mean, are you able to get your AC back on? Like, what’s the story with that? If

Jay Caldwell 19:16
it’s running, turn it on, because once you order the drywall, even if your condenser unit outside was in water, most of them. I heard lots of people with generators said their their condenser unit was still running while it was in water, with the water, like submerged in water, because it’s just a motor with a fan. It’s nothing special. Well, that

Katy 19:34
means nothing to me, but it’s very interesting. Yeah, I don’t understand like that, and all the

Jay Caldwell 19:39
other components are up in the I mean, yeah, where y’all live, it might be in the basement, yeah? Because some of these houses are in the mountains, so I don’t Yeah, if it’s in the basement, you’re going to rip the AC duct work out. Anyways. Okay, interesting. So, yes, so if you have a basement, and they got down in there, rip all that out,

Katy 19:54
yeah, you have to get it all out. Yeah, the key is, the faster you get it out, the less of a problem. Molded some pump. Stop it. You gotta rent a bunch of those there. Yeah, okay, so interesting. So again, we’re at sea level. We don’t have, we don’t have all the knowledge you need. We’re just giving you some of the things that happened here. What else do you feel like you want to make sure they know?

Jay Caldwell 20:13
So I wanted to say that insurance adjusters are, you know, they’re just people with a job. This is they also go from disaster disaster working with people in their lowest point in their

Katy 20:25
lives, and it’s sort of a thankless job, because they’re like, staying in a hotel. Yeah,

Jay Caldwell 20:29
yeah. They make money by how many they process, not how accurate it is, or how profitable it is, because they don’t, they don’t mess with the profitability. They’re just there to measure

Katy 20:40
it there. That’s it. They’re into quantity, not quality, correct? Yeah,

Jay Caldwell 20:45
or speed. So that being said, just assume it’s wrong and it needs to be adjusted the first time. Don’t be mad about it. Just say, I know there’s going to be an adjustment. This is not going to be final. There’s going to be mistakes. Just assume it’s coming and roll with it. So

Katy 20:59
then you need to, like, go through their their adjustment report with, like, a fine tooth comb, correct, like, check their measurements. They’re going to come

Jay Caldwell 21:06
in and measure everything, the linear square footage of all your baseboards, or, you know, your your square footage every flooring and all of your your walls and your doors, just make sure they actually measured everything and accounted for everything. Okay, don’t sit there and go through the house with them at all, because

Katy 21:24
it won’t change how they do their report. Yeah, okay, but you can ask for corrections to the report

Jay Caldwell 21:30
correct. So if you want, you can pre measure the house yourself and give it to them.

Katy 21:35
So the first answer is not necessarily the answer yes. Some mistakes

Jay Caldwell 21:38
all the time. Just things get left off, like, oh, we put baseboard in this house in this room over here, but they accidentally uploaded out this room over here. I see they accidentally put tile over here when it was supposed to be carpet or something like that. It just happens, okay, because it’s just a bunch of check boxes and fill in these numbers and the software and right,

Katy 21:56
yeah. Do you think it’s okay for someone to gut their own home?

Jay Caldwell 21:59
Absolutely.

Katy 22:01
What are the supplies you need to do that,

Jay Caldwell 22:03
whatever kind of knife you want to use to cut the drywall, and

Katy 22:07
as long as, like, the power is off, even if you cut through, like, a, yeah, you

Jay Caldwell 22:11
can wear a dust mask. Is really just for the dusty part of it. But if you’re, if you’re getting it in there while it’s technically still wet or something like that, mold takes time. I know doesn’t

Katy 22:21
take time. They’re already seeing reports of that, that bacteria in the water. Oh, yeah, wear a mask. I mean, I think the I would wear a mask and like, yeah, heavy amounts of bleach. Like, just coat yourselves in bleach. Okay, mask. No. Mask. That’s fine. All right. A knife. Keep going. What else do you need to gut it yourself?

Jay Caldwell 22:40
Hammer pry bar, a lot of elbow grease.

Katy 22:43
Hammer pry bar, friends elbow grease. Like, do your do your neighbors together. Like, go to one house, do the next Absolutely.

Jay Caldwell 22:49
Help your neighbors, and they’ll help you. Do yours, because some of it is, you know, it was nice to have one person ripping things out while another person is just carrying out to the street, right? You take a lot of walking,

Katy 23:01
yeah? And then, I guess a wheelbarrow would help a wheelbarrow, we had one, yeah? All right,

Jay Caldwell 23:06
so that’s where a lot of the hired labor is strictly just walking into the street, because it’s, I mean, by the time you’re carrying it all, 1000s of pounds of material. Because,

Katy 23:15
right, what’s the whole Yeah, okay, so if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna tackle, what if you’re, what if the water was higher than just under four feet? What if it went up

Jay Caldwell 23:26
to you’re just going higher? What

Katy 23:29
if it went up to yours, like, then you got to do the ceiling. Yeah, you didn’t have, you didn’t do any of those.

Jay Caldwell 23:35
I mean, we had some houses that flooded the ceiling. It’s up to the ceiling. It’s your entire house. You just gotta, you gotta call the drywall has to go all insulation. Oh, So, speaking of you need to make sure that you also get behind your tubs, your fiberglass insert tubs. There’s drywall behind there, and insulation so

Katy 23:53
it’s been wet. Yep, gotta

Jay Caldwell 23:54
come out. Lots of houses here did not correct same pull those out bricks on the fireplace or tile in the fireplace

Katy 24:02
gotta come out. They’ll gonna pay you the tile in the fireplace, drywall, insulation

Jay Caldwell 24:07
behind it. And if you cut right up to that edge, it is very difficult to make that look nice again as well. Yeah, it’s

Katy 24:15
hard to redo. They’re

Jay Caldwell 24:15
gonna pay you to replace it.

Katy 24:17
Just do it. Yeah, I didn’t think about the fireplace. Okay, what else you got? I think I got it all. You got all your notes. So, okay, I am going to take a second to say Alyssa and I are going to come back and likely do a second bonus episode that talks more about the impacts of the market, like from a real estate perspective, and like what we saw and what we still see eight years later, and like you know what that means and what you might want to look out for as an agent. So we will come back and talk about that maybe in a couple of weeks. Right now, it is just more like we urgently wanted to help anyone who maybe could avoid losing money, could avoid being taken advantage of, could get in there and potentially even help themselves. Themselves, and if, if that is you and you’re confused by something that we said here, by all means, send an email. We would we’re happy to assist you with our knowledge base as much as we can. Jay, would love to answer your emails. Share this with your friends. It’ll be okay. I’m like, so traumatized from what we saw that. And if you

Jay Caldwell 25:23
are in one of these flooded houses, you can technically live in the house after it’s gutted and dried. Seen many people do it, yes,

Katy 25:31
as long as it’s not growing mold, it’s as

Jay Caldwell 25:35
long as that growing mold, you just put your, you know, your bed back in there, and they’re washing dishes in the tub, you know? Yeah, we’ve seen it. Can do it because you can’t find hotels a lot of times, and if you’re doing any of the work yourself to fix it up. Okay, while we’re on that, don’t, don’t ask your contractor to fix it, room to room. They’re not going to do it.

Katy 25:51
Yeah? Well, it’ll cost more to take longer the mold. Let’s just talk about the mold really quick. Companies came in here and posted signs everywhere. Mold treatment and certificates? Yes, you do not need that garbage. Yeah, and a certificate does not change anything. Most what we saw and Alyssa and I’ll talk about this in the next one. Buyers later on are still going to want to get a mold inspection, a Mold Test done, like during a purchase. So you having a certificate. Certificate now doesn’t mean, it doesn’t mean anything. No, it doesn’t mean anything. So don’t waste your money on a certificate. But you do. There’s

Jay Caldwell 26:28
all if, also, if you’re gutting it before it’s mold is even happening. You know, if the water came and then it went back out and it’s just wet and you’re gutting that there’s no mold, you don’t need to go spray a mold aside, not a mold aside, whatever the Oh, yeah, you know what I mean, fungicide, something like that. Yeah, we spray it on an oil and lots of stuff. But you’re just nervous. Can you sure people spray of what? Also yourself out? Yeah, just can’t hurt anything.

Katy 26:53
What about open the windows and ventilation? Yeah? Please don’t, yeah, don’t. Don’t, literally, knock yourself out, correct?

Jay Caldwell 26:58
If you’re living in the house, don’t, please don’t do that.

Katy 27:01
What about like, I know here, do people have to redo their termite treatment? Because they treat the when a house gets built, they treat the studs. I don’t know if that applies.

Jay Caldwell 27:13
It would be a good time to redo it, honestly. Yeah,

Katy 27:15
anything that happens during the construction phase of a house, when the when it’s just studs, it’s, this is your moment, right? Is your moment. This is your moment to make a change. Also, this

Jay Caldwell 27:26
is not the time when you think you can get away with upgrading your house on their dime

Katy 27:30
perk, no, but you could put your but I think that’s a great point. You can put your own money into it and make changes or upgrades, correct, or do some of the work yourself, right? Yeah, right. So there’s a there is an opportunity there. I mean, I think it’s so hard to be patient when you’re dealing with this and you’re like, in an uncomfortable living situation, and you want to just hurry, hurry and get it done. But we see so many houses now, eight years later, where you’re like, it’s obviously from the flood. The finishes are not, probably what these people wanted or wanted to pick and make it harder to sell later. So it’s kind of like, I mean, dealing with a little bit longer of pain or maybe putting a little bit more of your money into it, if you can, is worth it for the value of your house. Later. Okay, you got it all.

Jay Caldwell 28:15
Think so. Thank

Katy 28:16
you for coming here and letting me interview you. You’re welcome. I can’t wait to see how you edit it again. If anyone needs anything, please send us an email. We’re happy to chat about it, or give you any resources we have or can find. Yeah, you good. Okay. I hope everyone is safe out there and you get back in your home really quickly.

Alissa 28:37
Thank you so much for tuning in to the hustle, humbly podcast. If you

Katy 28:40
enjoyed this episode, please go to rate this podcast.com/hustle. Humbly, and leave us a review or drop a comment if you’re listening on Spotify,

Alissa 28:48
if you have an episode topic or someone you’d like to toast on the show, please email us at team at hustle humbly podcast.com, find

Katy 28:55
us on social media at hustle humbly podcast, don’t forget to find all of the free resources at hustle, humbly podcast.com/resources,

Alissa 29:04
see you next week. This is the good life you.