Finally Making Good on My Promise to Update...

Well, as I stated in some reallllly old post, our house flooded the downstairs floor back on June 7th, as I was getting on a plane to go visit my lovely daughter and her hubby in Phoenix for her baby shower... (More on that in another posting).

When John got back from the airport, he was welcomed at the front door with water that was coming from underneath it... The water filter on the back of our refrigerator had split open and water was gushing out of it. He got the water shut off, and realized that the water was already seeping into every room in the downstairs portion of our home... Lucky for us, our bedroom is 3 steps higher, so that was the only room downstairs that was spared...

He grabbed the water vac and sucked up something like 30 gallons of water. We have no clue how much was still in the carpeting of the living room and piano room, as he could only get so much of that out... (The padding was sucking it up faster than a sponge...)

He called his son Joseph to see if he could come over to help get the furniture off the wet carpeting before it soaked into it... He came over with his girlfriend Emma, and for the next 5 hours they moved furniture, filled boxes (and didn't label them, which meant it is like Christmas every time I open a box... as I have no clue what is in them...) I was very lucky Emma had come along as I have curio cabinets full of goodies, (lots of Boyds Bears, Fire Department mementos from both John's and my careers... and more things that u would even want to try to guess at) as she took every item out of the cabinets, lovingly wrapping each item in tissue paper, placing them in boxes, and actually labeled each box as to which cabinet it went in, and even which shelf... for that, I can never thank her enough...

I opened 8 of those boxes tonight, and not one thing, (knock on wood) so far has been broken... I even found things I had forgotten I had... Such as a metal slotted box holding the tuning forks that I used back in the day, to tone out my first structure fires and medical aids... (NOOOO, I'm not THAT old, but Barstow was slow in getting a new fire station and actual electronic equipment which meant pushing a button instead of grabbing a tuning fork for each piece of equipment that was needed, banging it on the desk then clicking the mic open to hear the tone to open the radios so that I could put out the call.. (Hmmm, sure makes me sound old doesn't it?) A couple months later, we moved into a brand new fire station, with push buttons, and the tuning forks retired... They were given to me several years ago... Wow sounds like a WHOLE new blog story, huh??? Anyway, back to the flood...

For 5 days, John worked on ripping out carpeting, pulling off baseboards, and moving all furniture into the garage, upstairs, or outside under the porches, or under tarps... Little did we know that for 23 weeks, the only flooring we would know would be concrete, as they had to tear out all carpeting, and a company came in to tear up all the tile, as water had gotten underneath, and in areas where starting to buckle...

In a way, I'm glad I was in Arizona, and away from having to see my house being torn up. Holes were drilled in walls to help the drywall dry out, (even though some of it had to be cut away) around the base of all the wooden cabinets on the kitchen floor, so as not to ruin the cabinets... Big dryers, fans and dehumidifiers were brought in, to dry everything out... When after almost a week had gone by, and drywall was still wet, they just took hammers and banged bigger holes in-between each stud to help the process along...

John sent pictures to my email which I pulled up on my laptop that night. Believe me when I say, I didn't know which was worse, not being able to try to save what "I" felt needed to be saved, or being there watching my house being under siege by men with hammers and large LOUD equipment, that made our house almost impossible to carry on a conversation in.. Then again, maybe it WAS better that I was away...

Here are a few of the pictures that John sent me that first nite...



Moving out furniture...



Pulling up the carpeting...



Notice the concrete?? Yeah, that was our flooring for 23 weeks...



Stairs are a great place to put things to keep them dry, especially when all the furniture is gone...



This was the picture that made me cry.... (Note where they had to drill nice big holes to put the hoses in to dry under all the cabinets???