Building plans and specifications of the original home and a detailed estimate for repairs. The damage inventory mentioned above. Receipts for additional living expenses and loss of use claims. A pre-fire inventory along with a videotape of all your property could prove to be a valuable record when making your claim. When adjusting your fire loss or in claiming a casualty loss on your Federal income tax, you will have to deal with various viewpoints on the value of your property.
Personal items have a certain sentimental value.
This term is not meant to belittle their value to you but is used to separate feelings about the value from objective measures of value. It will be objective measures of value which you, the insurer, and the Internal Revenue Service will use as a common ground. Receipts will help verify the cost price. This is what you could have gotten for the item if you had sold it the day before the fire. Its price would reflect its cost at purchase and the wear it had sustained since then.