A number of years ago, something similar happened in an office I worked in. The people left town without letting the agency know (this was before scheduling companies). They had 2 indoor cats & they had had a big dog, but it had...something. died, kid took it to his new place, something. In-house agent shows the house one day & there's the cutest little dust mop of a dog inside, friendly as all get out, bouncing off the walls, wagging, etc. Cats are under the bed. Agent notices the water bowl is empty, so she fills it & writes owners a note, something like: "Congratulations on your new dog! showed house, filled water bowl, picked up pillows off floor." Homeowner returns, flies into a rage, demands agency pay for the damage caused by... somebody else's dog. That's right. The dog was a "neighborhood" dog, & of course after this nobody was claiming it. Broker declined, said homeowner hadn't even told her they were going out of town, & agent did not let the dog in. There was no way to find out who had let the dog in. Homeowner said her insurance company told her "they're gonna make you pay for it", especially since agent had written a note "admitting" that the dog was in the house. Broker contacts liability carrier who says: no dice. Brokerage had no way of knowing that a dog inside the house was not the homeowner's dog. Adjuster said it would have been worse had the dog belonged there & the agent had let it out. What you have to do, I think, is communicate *everything*, even if it seems like you're overcommunicating. Tell agent you're going out of town, post placards on doors ("Dog in backyard is friendly but jumps on people" etc). & realize that sometimes stuff just happens, & nobody's going to pay you for it. The cats walked in like they lived there. The dog walked in (probably) like it lived there. Everybody lived over it. & we did sell that house.

Well this is AMAZING. I don't believe any one can top that !!! You must have breathed quite a sigh of relief! Mine is nothing compared to your find, but, I had a dresser in the storage part of the basement from my first apartment in NYC... I always liked the dresser which is why I never got rid of it. Somewhere in our moves a knob from the bottom drawer came off. I remember it was always loose, but now it's been M.I.A. for years. We recently moved the dresser to the main floor guest room ~it's a long story but it's there in plain sight and I still like it but it was missing a knob. I kept thinking about changing out all the knobs and was starting to look for something that I would love. that wouldn't be too pricey.. glass? porcelain? more wood?....... Well, I went to our upstairs guestroom and started looking through drawers there in a different dresser, and there, along with photos and papers from my long deceased dad, was the knob. I almost felt like I won the lottery. But not a diamond! Props to you!!!!

Cover if with thick paper like Recommended by others and taking lots of pictures. Our stupid contractors did the same -but I guess it was our fault for not putting our foot down and telling him no. He was being kinda of aggressive and we were like - ok whatever - would be nice to have floors even if contractor told us that would be last! Learned our lesson. They didn’t do the best at covering and we had several big scratches on our new wood floors. After they pulled paper up we noticed more things but i do not know if that was there before or not. So taking pictures is a great idea. We did have our cabinets installed before the floors but some do have cabinets installed on top of cabinets from what i ha w learned. Our floors looks ok in the places where they covered with some thick brown paper. They doubled up on it . But i. The areas where they used thinner brown paper is where we have the problems Make sure it’s covered !! Our contractors workers started walking and Working on our newly installed floors!!! I could not believe it. They installed floors and didn’t even cover them!!!

On Friday, my SO called and said, "The Smiths are having an estate sale." The Smiths found themselves in a position of needing to move to a smaller home near one of their grown children. The house was full of half-hearted collections of random stuff: two dozen teapots, Beanie Babies, three sewing machines, 50-year-old children's books and toys that had never been passed on or jettisoned. it was depressing and enlightening. I got rid of a bunch of things 25 year ago: bagged up things in garbage bags, when I hadn't looked at or for them in a year, put them out with the trash without looking at them. A few years later, we moved, and another batch was gone. Two summers ago, a 'friend of a friend' needed a place to stay, and ended up at my house. To make room, some things had to be cleared out. The problem: the 'friend' portion (my consort) had moved in with me, and brought almost the entire contents of his 2500 sf house with him. He did find a junk dealer who brought a trailer over for us to fill, but other than that, pretty much refused to participate in any way. That left me to decide what stuff of his got pitched. He's a fine man in many ways. But as an example: he has six Rubbermaid-type totes of photographs of people he doesn't know. They had belonged to his mother. I can only guess: His mom thought these were important, so he feels he *ought to* feel they're important. After the estate sale, I took a seventh tote, full of pictures of his kids, his parents, holiday cards, newspaper clippings; threw out the duplicates and cheap frames, and put what was left in one average photo album. No kidding, I didn't even have to buy the album. It was already part of the stuff.