happy new year.

warning...this is long and there are no pictures yet.  i feel like we've been in our own little world for almost the last 6 weeks.  we've had some unexpected changes to the house, inside and out. Many have mentioned that i need to document all these things cause though it is incredible all the things that have happened in such a short time, i'll soon forget.  but at this point, that seems kinda nice...  this is meant to be a record of the past few weeks we've had.  it probably doesn't make a lot of sense, i guess it's more for us that for you. :)

11.25.2011: day after thanksgiving.  

i wake up at 4 to be one of the crazy black friday shoppers. as i walk around the corner into the living room, i hear the sound of water. my feet get wet as i walk to the kitchen. water is shooting out from under the sink.  i hurry back to the master bedroom and tell cory, "we've got a big problem! there's water everywhere! long story short, the hot water hose popped off sometime in the night and was spraying water for 4-5 hours.  we called anna (with whom i was supposed to shop) and asked her to bring a shop vac and come help.  looking at our huge mess, we didn't even know where to start!

we assessed the damage.  we had water all through the kitchen, dining room, around the wall from the kitchen, all through the entryway and a little down the hall.  now for the downstairs, water is dripping from the ceiling in many places, part of the ceiling fell through, paint from the walls was peeling off, the air ducts were filled with gallons of water, insulation in the laundry room was soaked, the pool table was drenched, the red felt bleeding through the pockets and leaving red stains all over the carpet, water was everywhere.  down the hall, into the bathroom, furnace room, along a bedroom wall, and inside another bedroom's closet.

it took 7 adults about 6 hours to get all the standing water out.  we had at least 5 large shop vacs, 1 small shop vac and 1 carpet cleaner going all at once.  we called our insurance and they said they would send out the dry-out crew.  they showed up about 5 hours later, so we were grateful to have gotten out what we did.  anna and i laid all the toys, tools and camping equipment out to dry in the backyard, until it started to rain and we had to move them around front to the garage.

finally the dry out crew showed up.  it was a holiday weekend, so only 2 guys came.  at our max we had 40 industrial fans and 3 de-humidifiers going throughout the house for the dry-out process.  they took all the carpet from the downstairs except the bedrooms, took all the drywall down along the duct work that runs across the ceiling in the greatroom downstairs and all the drywall around one of the windows.  they removed some drywall upstairs in the eat-in area of the kitchen and then around the wall from the sink.  all the linoleum was removed from the kitchen (thank goodness, i never like it anyway!), part of the carpet was removed and all of the wet carpet pad. any of the baseboards that were wet, were removed also.  they put up 3 plastic tarps to keep the area contained and help speed up the process.  we felt a little like on e.t. at the end of the movie.

the whole process ended up taking about 6 days and costing over $5g's.  thank goodness for insurance.

wed 11.30.2011

the last of the fans and dehumidifier are taken out of the house.  even after they're gone, our ears were still ringing.  we leave the plastic up to keep the dust down for when we have the drywall fixed.

thurs 12.1.2011: day of the crazy wind storm in davis county.

we woke up about 6 to howling winds.  power was out.  it was garbage day so everyone's garbage can was out on the street. that means that garbage was being blown everywhere.  shingles were flying everywhere.  cory's poor car was sitting in the driveway being hit by shingles from every direction (remember those toys and camping equipment drying in the garage?  the last of them were still drying inside and pushed his car outside.  sad, i know).  kids stayed home from school as the school was out of power.  about noon, the winds die down some so we can assess the damage.  it literally looked like a tornado had been through our neighborhood, only the houses were still standing.  we had debris everywhere, garbage, shingles, branches, garbage cans, the list goes on...  sometime during the afternoon the power came back on.

after seeing our insurance adjuster the next saturday, we need to have replaced: the roof, 3 outside  window panes, the garage door, 2 new lights, all the gutters, 2 downspouts, 1 fence gate, some of the fence in the back, the vinyl fence has tar marks all over it (from the shingles) that need to be cleaned,  and our house needs to either be repainted or restucco-ed (once again, thanks to the tar from the shingles).  

we then saw the adjuster for cory's car the next week and it needs to be sanded and painted all over (again, the tar).

cory went up and put tar paper on the roof to protect the exposed wood.  then he spent the next 3 days helping around the neighborhood with cleanup and covering roofs.  our church was cancelled, we went to tiff's baby blessing and then cory went right back to work helping prepare for another nearing windstorm.

the next few weeks are a little fuzzy.  trying to get things situated, we moved all the kids into one room and the other bedroom became the playroom/christmas area of the house. we took advantage of the exposed walls downstairs and had a fireplace put in, cory and i wired for future surround sound speakers and cory and dave put in recessed lighting.  these were things we'd talked about doing in the future, so we took advantage of the drywall being down. 

can't remember the days, early december

a breaker blew causing our freezer downstairs to turn off for 36 hours.  luckily we didn't have a ton of meat/food we needed to waste.  and thankfully, it plugged back in, no problems.

underneath the sink has leaked 2 more times.  plummer called out both times.  

cory replaced the insulation and air ducts.  we've also put some baseboards back downstairs.  heidi painted all the doors and trim and repainted the repaired walls upstairs.  luckily, the wall paint, the second time around, matched perfectly!

12.24.2011: christmas eve

on christmas eve morning, we woke up to a cold house.  the electrical circuit on the furnace went out, rather than waiting a few days to fix a 12 year old furnace, we decided to just replace it.  it was a blessing that we were able to have it replaced that day and they every gave us a good deal on it. 

later that night, i went to get something out of our freezer and everything was thawed.  so now our fridge is gone.  seriously.  i can't tell you how defeated i felt.  luckily we have the freezer downstairs and it's cold enough outside to have a fridge in the garage.  we lived without a fridge for a few days.  thankfully, rcwilley has sales on that sort of thing right after christmas!

12.26.2011

start laying new wood floors for the upstairs.

12.31.2011

after 5 long days, we finish the floors about 8 o'clock at night!  we felt like it was “loaves and fishes”  we were sure we’d run out of wood with 6 rows left but miraculously, we finished without a single full board left.  seriously, incredible.  happy new year to us!!

1.4.2012

plummer comes again to replace all of our valves in the kitchen and bathrooms.  peace of mind, people!

we still have lots to do, but are grateful for the progress we've made.  it's been a long 6 weeks, but we feel very fortunate that things were not worse.  throughout this whole process, we've recognized many tender mercies from our Heavenly Father.  it made our holiday season different this year, definitely memorable and very special.  it's been fun to pick things out and make our home truly ours.