Part Two
As planned, the water mitigation folks from Servpro arrived early Monday morning, June 25, with water testing devices in hand, which they scanned over all walls and floors to determine the extent of the damage. As they found damage, they marked the areas with dark blue masking tape. By the end of the day I saw dark blue masking tape in the kitchen, the hall backing up to the kitchen, parts of the dining room, and essentially the whole first floor, including Bob’s office, the laundry room, the bathroom, and my office. The only room not affected downstairs was the guest bedroom down at the end of the hall.
That meant they would need to pack out all our stuff from our kitchen cabinets, the china closet that stood in the upstairs hall, and everything from the laundry, bathroom, and our two office closets downstairs – including removing our closet built-in cabinets and shelves.
The next step was taking the affected walls and ceilings down to the studs and pulling up the rapidly buckling wood floors. And as soon as that was completed, they masked out most areas with plastic, providing zipper openings so we could move uncomfortably from room to room. They also brought in a total of thirty dryers that emanated 100-degree heat for four days to dry everything out. When the heat came on I moved out.
[Bob was working in Colorado during this time, so I moved to the local Residence Inn on June 29, and I have not lived at home since. (Thankfully, Bob ended his Colorado job early and came home to help me work this problem on July 9).]
However, that only covered the areas affected by the water. Other areas were also affected. Our insurance adjuster determined that the hardwood floors that were the same color as the kitchen floor had to be sanded and stained to match the new kitchen floor, so our living room and family room were packed out as well. This was also the case downstairs. Both our offices (the workers called them Office 1 and Office 2), had to be packed out so they could sand and stain those floors as well. Now I have sleepless nights thinking about how I’m going to put it all back together. Supposedly the Servpro people took photos of everything before they put all our stuff in boxes. Maybe the photos will help later on.
What was left unscathed were our bedroom and bathroom and the guest room, though the guest room was piled high with boxes from some of the other rooms with things like our artwork and computer equipment that we didn’t want to go into storage. Otherwise, all our other possessions from the vacated rooms are now in storage.
We picked the curved cabinet hardware
When the deconstruction, dry out, and storage processes were completed, our contractor began reconstruction. The plumbers, electricians, dry wallers, and flooring guys began to work. And that necessitated some decisions: picking out a new refrigerator and dishwasher, deciding on what kind of cabinets to install, cabinet hardware, whether to paint affected rooms the same colors as before the damage, looking at floor stain colors, and something I never expected – picking out a new counter top. Up until the last moment, our contractor tried to save our beautiful dark-red granite counter, but that was not to be. With so much work being done in the kitchen, the counter began to break and there was no way to save it. instead of a red counter with light mustard yellow cabinets and walls, our new kitchen will be white – counter, cabinets, and walls – definitely a big change. Our contractor has also made sure the kitchen will have safeguards against this type of damage ever happening again:
- A copper tube instead of plastic connecting the ice maker to the refrigerator
- Pans under the refrigerator and dishwasher with outlets to the outside. In case anything breaks again the water will drain outside instead of through the house.
Granite counter on its last legs
Of course, work is still in process and is expected to go on for another two or three months. In the meantime, our insurance adjuster has found us a fully furnished house a half a mile from our home to live in from August 1 through September 30. That is the exciting part. The house is two blocks from the beach with ocean views from all windows and the outside deck. A great way to withstand a disastrous and very stressful time in our lives.
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