I don't know very much about insurance rules, so hopefully someone here does and can give me some insight. H and I started noticing brown spots on our ceiling, so we called our insurance company who sent an adjuster to inspect our roof. The adjuster told us then that he was going to recommend that we get a new roof and we'd be hearing from them.
I just got the estimate from the insurance company, and they're giving us way more than we thought. It was written up that we get an entire new roof, and then have the brown spots cut out of the ceiling, patched, and then the ceiling of the entire upstairs is to be painted so it doesn't look like a patch job. It was itemized to include things like $40 for removing and rehanging each light fixture and vent cover and things like that.
So is it insurance fraud if we don't have a professional come in and paint our ceiling? Would we technically be supposed to return the money we don't spend if we used a less expensive contractor or DIY? Or is that money still "owed" to us for our own time and resources?
I'm not asking because we want to keep the money, but if we're getting a new roof, we want to paint the outside trim. So it occurred to me that we could paint the ceiling ourselves and use the rest of the money from the insurance company to go towards painting the exterior. But I totally won't do it if it's illegal!
Abigail Rose, EDD 6/8/13
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