Don't wait, do THIS TODAY!!!

[Flathead Youngin']

Don't wait, don't think about it, don't make excuses. Spend 15 minutes, TODAY, and go take pics of everything in your garage. Open every drawer, take a picture. Take pics of all your storage cabinets, tool boxes, work benches, EVERYTHING.

I'll post more later, but Saturday, I lost all of my tools and everything garage related to a fire. I can't believe what vaporized- simply gone- and I'm having to recall all of it. 12 and 16ft aluminum ladders, vanished. Dewalt angle grinders, only the cut-off wheel, a few gears, and the safety shield, gone. You think you know what all you own, but you won't remember until you need it a lot of times. I'd give a thousand dollars+ for detailed pics of my stuff right now. I did it years ago, back when I lived in a different location and when it wasn't as easy as it is now with cell phone cameras. So, this might help a little. However, I've spent the last few years getting rid of "cheaper" stuff and buying quality stuff.

No excuse after you read this, you've been told. If you love your tools, go do it......

 

[driftpin]

Sorry about the loss, I hope no one was hurt. The first memory I have of losing someone I knew to death was a single family residential fire where a kid down the street was the only victim in his family's house fire. He was a couple years older, but his younger brother and I were friends, playing together. I wasn't yet age 10.

And a secure copy of the files in another remote location, so if it's a house fire, where the living quarters are also involved, you don't lose them. I think we've finally found a use for "the cloud."

 

[Flathead Youngin']

No, no one was hurt fortunately. It's just stuff, as painful as it is, that can be replaced. We have a roof over our head and our health.....

 

[glentre]

Same goes for the contents of the house. I've been meaning to do this for some time. Your urging will get me to do it now. With so frequent advances in technology and so many ways to lose your digital information, it may be best to also use the ancient technology of real printed photos stored at a friends house or other remote location.

Glen

 

[Boilerhouse]

Agreed it's very important and you will never remember everything. Digital is cheap, easy and convenient. By coincidence, I took photo's of every owned tool 3 days ago. Two sheds, a few strays parked outside, and everything garage related. Roughly 140 photos. Most pictures had multiple tools in them, eg. one photo for roughly 100 metric sockets. Everything was then downloaded and titled.

 

[bherren]

Gosh I am sorry for your loss and thankful for no injury. Thank you for sharing the idea about pictures. You are correct, I never would have thought about this nor would I be able to remember in the event this happened to me. I hope you recover your costs and time. Again..sorry.

 

[ezover]

Don't wait, don't think about it, don't make excuses. Spend 15 minutes, TODAY, and go take pics of everything in your garage. Open every drawer, take a picture. Take pics of all your storage cabinets, tool boxes, work benches, EVERYTHING.

I'll post more later, but Saturday, I lost all of my tools and everything garage related to a fire. I can't believe what vaporized- simply gone- and I'm having to recall all of it. 12 and 16ft aluminum ladders, vanished. Dewalt angle grinders, only the cut-off wheel, a few gears, and the safety shield, gone. You think you know what all you own, but you won't remember until you need it a lot of times. I'd give a thousand dollars+ for detailed pics of my stuff right now. I did it years ago, back when I lived in a different location and when it wasn't as easy as it is now with cell phone cameras. So, this might help a little. However, I've spent the last few years getting rid of "cheaper" stuff and buying quality stuff.

No excuse after you read this, you've been told. If you love your tools, go do it......

do yourself a favor and look in to a public adjuster they make their money by finding all the stuff you missed. from my understanding car parts are not covered,

 

[Paperman]

Had an old workmate who’s home burned a few weeks before he was losing to the bank. Good thing he threw a wild Christmas party a week earlier. Lots of pictures of everything in the house, kitchen, living room even bedrooms by some weird happenstance. Everything in the house was impeccable, new looking and name brand. He was written a large check for all the contentS and he would have gotten away with it!! See, the issue was it was all a scam. He rented all the furnishings from a rent to own place, apparently his insurance figured it out. Never did hear of the outcome, only know he stopped coming to work shortly after.

 

[Richard Cranium]

I have not taken pictures in years, and yes I need to do it again. thanks for the reminder.

 

[Chaznsc]

A lot of folks use a video camera too.

 

[oldwino]

Thanks for the PSA to memorialize shop inventory. That was actually my garage project last week as we were only a couple hundred yards from destruction in the Sonoma County fires last month. Not so hard to remember large shop and power tools but it's all the small stuff that you only need when you really need it


Best of luck in your recovery

 

[GarageGuy89]

I will piggyback on this. We had our garage broken into a couple years ago and they took everything worth more than $5. No pictures, but luckily we had just moved...twice, so everything was fresh in my head, but to this day I am still looking for things I had forgotten about and kicking myself.

Hopefully your insurance is not a pain to deal with, as it becomes a full time job dealing with it.

 

[peter2772000]

Thx for creating this thread.

I took pics of my huge firearms collection, never thought to do the same with the garage or the rest of the house for that matter. I'll be correcting that oversight this coming weekend.

Thx again!

 

[Rc_Guy]

Had an old workmate who’s home burned a few weeks before he was losing to the bank. Good thing he threw a wild Christmas party a week earlier. Lots of pictures of everything in the house, kitchen, living room even bedrooms by some weird happenstance. Everything in the house was impeccable, new looking and name brand. He was written a large check for all the contentS and he would have gotten away with it!! See, the issue was it was all a scam. He rented all the furnishings from a rent to own place, apparently his insurance figured it out. Never did hear of the outcome, only know he stopped coming to work shortly after.

I helped with investigating fires when I was on the department, most times you can figure a cause, It's tougher to prove who might have lit it.

 

[EOC_Jason]

A tip... When you pay your homeowners insurance every year, take pictures of everything in your house / garage to keep records current.

 

[Benw455]

Sorry for your loss. I need to go take pics of all of my stuff. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[apollo11]

I took pics and a video and uploaded them to the cloud

 

[k-os]

Anyone have any suggestions for an App (Android or iOS) to do this that includes the option to scan a receipt with the item? Or are most people just doing an Excel Spreadsheet that references the picture?

 

[Farrier]

I've been doing this for years. As a career paid call firefighter, I've seen too many people lose so much.

Taking pics/video inside your home is also worth it's weight in gold when it comes to dealing with your insurance.

 

[James E]

Thank you for the reminder. A few years ago, we re-insured all of our property and during the process, the agent suggested just walking through rooms with a video camera. For anything particularly valuable, linger long enough to get a good shot of it along with the serial numbers or identifying marks, and any audio commentary you might be able to add that would help in that thing's valuation.

It sounded so simple...and I have yet to do it.

 

[bullnerd]

I'm pretty sure I know how you feel.

I lost my old garage/shop back in July.

Sheathing failed on an old power strip and arced under a work bench.

25 plus years of machinist tools and 35yrs of general tools, gone!

Still too hard to talk about.

 

[holdover]

I do a slow walk around with a video camera, as said open drawers cabinets everything. just think what your tools, spares, equipment is worth, as well as your vehicles and projects. It is good to take a PIC of the front page of a newspaper so there is no denying the date the video was done. And don't forget your home. heck if I was to replace my bolt collection alone there would be mucho $$$ And I keep the video at my sons house and I keep his.

 

[tim_]

Anyone have any suggestions for an App (Android or iOS) to do this that includes the option to scan a receipt with the item? Or are most people just doing an Excel Spreadsheet that references the picture?

I bought this MacOS app below. It has a companion iPhone app that you use to take pictures of everything. I haven't done it yet, but now that I've just moved, it's a good time.

https://binaryformations.com/products/home-inventory/

Here's an article about it, and right at the end there are links to free alternatives. (though this was only $20, if you have a mac)

 

[Flathead Youngin']

do yourself a favor and look in to a public adjuster they make their money by finding all the stuff you missed. from my understanding car parts are not covered,

good point, i did a quick search for one after reading an article but didn't see any locally.....

 

[Flathead Youngin']

Thanks for the PSA to memorialize shop inventory. That was actually my garage project last week as we were only a couple hundred yards from destruction in the Sonoma County fires last month. Not so hard to remember large shop and power tools but it's all the small stuff that you only need when you really need it


Best of luck in your recovery

...all the little packs of glue, extra cutting torch tips, misc. hardware...it's crazy how much you can accumulate!

 

[Flathead Youngin']

I'm pretty sure I know how you feel.

I lost my old garage/shop back in July.

Sheathing failed on an old power strip and arced under a work bench.

25 plus years of machinist tools and 35yrs of general tools, gone!

Still too hard to talk about.

This was all my personal stuff that I had spend the last few years purging down to only the things I really liked or quality. It also had all her papaw's and dad's stuff from back to the 40's...copper apple butter kettles, her dad was a machinist, tools to work on bulldozers, you name it.....

 

[oldwino]

during my inventory I found a lot of stuff that I was able to donate to Habitat for Humanity as I would never need again. Also found several items I had forgotten I had (sometimes two or three) that I bought replacements 'cause I coldn't find the original when I needed it.

It's a lot of work, but a rewarding, worthwhile project even if you're not doing it for protection, but to just find out what is out there

 

[chruler]

Hey, same goes for robbery, flood, tornado, etc. Always good to have pictures of your stuff.
Put them on a USB drive, make a copy, and put that in a safe place.
Came in handy when my music gear was stolen.

 

[gumbellion]

I REALLY want to echo this post!

Don't wait either and say you will get around to it. Stand up from the computer right now and hit record on your cell phone and walk through your house and garage. Its not so much the exact photos of every item that are required, but something to help you remember what all you had
I wish i had done this

Right now we are still working though the process of itemizing everything we owned. Unfortunately it was the house and the attached garage

This picture is our old place on November 1st 2017. There was nothing left to even sift through to help get ideas of what was in there

 

[bullnerd]

Wow! Sorry for your loss Gumbellion!

My 3 kids and myself stood and watched our garage burn. Crazy what goes through your mind. I cant imagine it being a home!

On the bright side (not that there is one!), that's a great pic!

 

[Rusty Bolt]

do yourself a favor and look in to a public adjuster they make their money by finding all the stuff you missed. from my understanding car parts are not covered,

The public adjusters I talked to weren't interested in less than a $250K loss. My mere $100+K loss didn't qualify. YMMV. I even offered to pay one guy his normal commission out of my own pocket. He turned down a sure thing to gamble on a commission!

Some people are successful in claiming the cost of a public adjuster as part of the loss (you needed to hire someone to help you get the insurance to pay up, so his fee is part of what you lost).

I'm not clear on your situation but calling Service Master to clean up the mess might be a good thing to do, if you haven't already. They work a lot with insurance companies and the branch I worked with tried hard to identify things I could claim.

I'm not sure this will help you but I had a large claim a few years ago.

I kept a Google Doc with notes on every contact that I had with anyone about any facet of my claim. Google Docs keeps a timestamp of every change to the document, so you can prove that your notes were contemporaneous.

There may be some helpful info in A Survivors Guide to Insurance that was originally put together by survivors of the Oakland Hills fire.

I had a large loss due to a broken pipe in my house. It ran for a month. I figure the real loss was almost $120K. Eventually settled with the insurance company for a little over $100K. At some point, you get down to keep splitting hairs or to get on with your life.

Insurance companies use Xactimate to estimate construction costs. It's probably not too bad for a garage but to take tile flooring as an example, Xactimate gives you $x for crack isolation membrane, $y for mortar, $z for tile. The tile guy bids $d. It can be a real PITA to reconcile the two to see if you're getting the right reimbursement. Sometimes, the prices in Xactimate are way too low, especially like now, when things are booming for all the trades (at least in my area).

It can be helpful to find someone who is familiar with Xactimate.

I was really clear to every contractor that bid on the repairs that they needed to bid repairing with like kind and quality, no upgrades, except for required building code upgrades. I also made sure those guys got to bid on the actual remodel and eventually hired several of them.

The independent adjuster that the insurance company hired made things much worse. The actual insurance company was pretty reasonable.

To take one example: the water ran into the furnace plenum and heating ducts. They rusted, which meant Service Master had the furnace pulled and sections of the duct work had to be replaced and reinsulated. I got a number from a HVAC guy and forwarded it to the adjuster and to the insurance company. The adjuster came back and disallowed ~30% for "upgrades". I pushed back with a demand for her to itemize the upgrades. She got pissed off and quit the job. After that, it was relatively easy to negotiate with the insurance company but I'd spent months working the issues.

Now in real life, I did upgrade the furnace. The old one was well, old, not very efficient (75%) and needed $500 in repairs. So, I bought a new furnace with my money but the insurance company paid to install it.

I could go on with more, but I'm not sure how applicable my experience is to your situation.