A tour of Dr. Kelly Black's home in Little Elm in the 1900 block of Joe Pool Drive immediately evokes the question, "What happened?"
You see, back in December, a neighbor crashed a U-Haul truck through the front living room of Black's home, and three months later he's still trying to get it fixed.
"The front end of the truck, the bumper was about where the edge of the pile of bricks is," Black explained. "Up until two weeks ago, it still looked exactly like it did the day that it happened."
Black and his fiancé Amy Nicolas were in the home at the time the truck came crashing through. They said since they had always paid their homeowners' insurance on time, and the damage was obvious and significant, they thought in a month everything would be fixed.
"I think we've been patient enough, three months later," Nicolas said.
The couple has been haggling over damage estimates with their insurer, Allstate. Black said the giant insurance firm assigned a contractor to begin repairs less than a week after the accident, but that was it.
"In the first month after the accident, he didn't do anything and I mean absolutely nothing," she said.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
Furious, Black said he fired the contractor and Allstate told him he'd have to find another on his own. He did, now Black said Allstate is attempting to nickel and dime each damage estimate, from cleaning debris from flowerbeds, to replacing flooring, electrical work, even the cost of replacing mini-blinds destroyed in the crash.
"They didn't want to replace the mini-blinds which were parked across the hood of the truck after it finished," he said.
Black and Nicolas had hoped to have their home finished long before now. They will be getting married this weekend, but the honeymoon is postponed because they have to be around to continue the claims process. They said they have also sunk thousands of dollars of their own money into repairs because of how slow they said the process has moved along.
"It's not like we're trying to go above and beyond what we're owed," Nicolas said. "We just want it fixed and done the way it was before."
Spokespersons for Allstate Insurance acknowledged the claim, but refused to discuss it, citing privacy policies.
As things stand now, Black's living room is still under construction. Days from being married, Black said it was the last thing he and his fiancé ever dreamed they'd be thinking about.
"Every day you come home, that's what you see, the hole in your wall," Nicolas said. "You see debris everywhere. Every day it's a reminder of what happened."
The couple said while they continue negotiations with Allstate to get the repairs finished, they've already decided to switch home insurance carriers.
