A week ago we had a flood. This is not something that we planned for or worried about when we went to bed. We have a sump pump. It saves us ALL of the time. But this time was different. There was a power outage with a HUGE storm that had an ENORMOUS amount of rain fall. This was happening at 1:00 to 4:00 in the morning while our family was fast asleep. It was only a matter of time before water would begin seeping up from the ground into our basement. And all while we slept only a few feet above it. Our little one woke up from the storm around 3:30 a.m, and when we hopped out of bed to help him to the bathroom, we splish splashed in the dark through our entire lower level. We still had no power and used the lights from our cell phones to find our way. After getting our little guy back to bed, we stood there wondering what to do. It was the middle of the night. There was no power. We felt helpless.....
My husband works at the school district and got the hook-up on a huge industrial carpet cleaner which had a water extracting option. After hours of running the extractor over the whole lower level carpeting, we started feeling a sense of denial, saying, "We can do this, we can save this!" yet within minutes of thinking we had dried out a spot, it was back to sopping wet.
It was time to make a decision. It was time to start looking at the real severity of the situation. It was time to wake up and face the awfulness that had been happening the measly few hours we were trying to save our basement. I started to take a closer look. I wasn't happy with what I was finding. Our baseboards were all swelling and corners were splitting. Doors were swelling. Furniture was cracking. Our fireplace was expanding. So was the rest of the furniture. It was ALL splitting and expanding! This was bad. Real bad.
This is when help started coming in. This is where the gratefulness also came in. We had family members taking our clothes to their homes to wash them. We had people putting all our furniture up on wooden blocks to try and prevent further damage. We had a support system and a shoulder to cry on when our insurance company denied our claim, due to the "flood" and the fact they don't have any type of coverage that would have helped us in that very situation.
And then it got worse... the decision needed to be made to pull the carpet. To say goodbye to half of our home's living space. Safety is number one to us. Our family comes before anything. And carpet can very quickly be a sponge for mold in these situations, and with the amount of water that had come in, it was necessary for us to take the carpet out. Which is exactly what we did that afternoon.
Here are a couple of shots of the damaged woodwork....
Fast forward one week. A lot has been going on to reconfigure our life as a family of five, back together all on one level of home. It took a lot of work to go from 2400 square feet to 1200 in the matter of a day. How was it possible? It was all about picking our most favorite things, and condensing the contents of both the upstairs and downstairs. It was about imagining our daily routine, and planning to lay things out accordingly. It was about knowing that since insurance wasn't covering our loss, that it is going to be quite some time to recover and regain our space.
As I mentioned we had some help. Like a TON of help. Our extended family really came through. It was an overwhelming feeling of love and caring that just made my heart flutter a happy beat through the sadness. It showed me that regardless of the loss we were feeling, we had more than we could ever imagine.
Those helpful hands forced us to make a lot of quick tough decisions about what to keep around and what to load up on the lines of trailers out front, which were heading to storage. We are talking furniture, accessories, games, toys, rugs, files, etc...
Once all the condensing was said and done, everything had to be put back together. This took two days and lots of muscles, but I am confident in all the decisions we made, as the last couple of days have been very comfortable in our newly shrunken abode.
Now it's time to open our door to you and let you in to take a look at the aftermath of the flood, a week later...
The first and biggest change that was made was to our living space. We went from two fully furnished family areas down to one. A lot of things got moved around, a lot was taken to storage.
Before included a large old entertainment center, a cozy couch, a glass coffee table....
Now we have our larger family sectional that was downstairs, upstairs! This piece of furniture is by no means small, but it does comfortably seat us all, so it was necessary for this to remain and the other to leave. It was also time to say goodbye to the previous TV and entertainment system and use the kiddie storage bins as our new media center, and to bring up our larger flat panel.
I kept only my most favorite accessories, since the new space was quickly eaten up by the large sofa.
When picking what was to stay and go, I went with my gut and kept the items that would offer the space the most texture and function. It is the first room anyone sees when they enter our home....
I mixed our cozy furry pillows with the hardness of the leather. We also added the white club chair and took out the brown chairs, to ensure things didn't feel too heavy.
The bin unit previously resided on the opposite side of the room, and was used to hold personal items for the adorable little daycare munchkins I spend my days with. The bins were condensed to the bottom and the top row is now used to hold our media items {along with my most favorite stack of books}.
Toys, our charging station and extra blankets for our nights cuddling up, were also a huge necessity! So they stayed, tucked on the other side of the room!
When figuring out the new layout, it was important to maintain safe and spacious flow to the heart of the home, the kitchen.
The kitchen saw the smallest impact, as we didn't loose one of those downstairs. It just basically got an accessory switch up do to all the other movement going on!
And of course, the downstairs is where the biggest impact is.
Right at the bottom of the stairs is where our family room was located.
Now it is acting as a temporary dumping ground for all that has remained as an onsite need, and has no where to go.
Most of what stayed were the items from our playroom. This is to ensure that not only my little ones, but also the sweet daycare kids, all have things to do to keep them happy and busy throughout the day. It's just a matter of me running up and down the stairs to snag something for them to play with upstairs.
Speaking of playroom....
It's kinda more of a rug drying zone at the moment...
The rest of the lower level holds the same story.
Our game room before....
And after....
Master bedroom before...
And after...
And office before....
And now....
Of course seeing side by side before and afters like this:
... is enough to drive an organizing addict a little batty!
In all honesty, I contemplated sharing this story. But this is real life. And the storm impacted our whole town along with surrounding towns, and a large amount of our neighbors are currently finding themselves in the same bummer of a situation as this.
Is the sadness still there? Absolutely, I would be lying if I were to say we weren't still finding ourselves with tears now and then. However, we are so very grateful. There are no words that I can find to explain our extreme gratefulness. Grateful for our friends and family. Grateful it wasn't worse. Grateful to have one another and to be given this wake up call. It's a true picture that it's not what you have, but who you have. That when I wanted to curl into a ball and feel sad, I instead was able to look at my strong little Preston, Peyton & Parker and run into their smiling arms for unlimited amounts of hugs and kisses, and all the sadness was gone.
We have a long road ahead of us. Fans and dehumidifiers have been running for the last week straight. All is dry and there is no more avoiding. Trim and doors will be pulled and the remainder of our items will be sorted and then the rebuilding process will begin. We will be looking at all of our options to prevent this in the future and make new decisions based off of what we have learned this time around.
And boy oh boy... this is going to bring you all a lot more stories and content. Like where are Bryan and I living now that we lost our master bedroom? Where do we store our office supplies and print our spreadsheets? And what is going on with the boys bedroom switcharoo? That my friends will be shared soon, so stay tuned!
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