Home Sweet Home?

We’re home!

Sort of… we’re actually staying in a hotel and at my mom’s house.

The day after we arrived in Australia we woke to frantic emails, voice messages, and facebook messages from my mom. She’d gone to check on our house the day after we left and found a flood. Miles’s toilet runneth over, and over, and over. The hose or float or something in the tank broke lifting up the lid so that water poured out into our house for almost 24 hours. Our whole house was filled with 2 inches of water that raced out of the garage and down the driveway.

I’m sort of glad I wasn’t there.

I couldn’t do anything from my vacation halfway around the world. I got to live in bliss for a week.

We called a friend that operates a restoration company. They pumped out the water and ran fans and heaters for a few days to dry everything out. They had to pull up all the carpet to remove the ruined pad. All of our baseboard had to go. Our IKEA master closet system was pulled out and is now sitting in my bathroom and bedroom. The new floor to ceiling bookcase Luke built for me in my office was detached from the wall so that our office wood floor could be removed. The girls’ wallpaper is toast as well as the wainscoting in Miles’s room.

I’m happy to be getting new baseboards and new paint. We’ll be repainting floor to ceiling almost every wall. They’re telling us that after another cleaning and stretching my carpet can be reinstalled. I’m having a battle with myself whether to fit the bill for new carpet since my insurance will cover the new pad and installation. The tile that is throughout most of the house will be ok after they clean the grout.

From the little we’ve gone through things, it seems all of our furniture will be fine since the water didn’t sit for too long. I’ll have my piano looked at, but I think it was saved because it sits up on little wheels. I worry a some because of the temperature changes in the house going from so much humidity to over 86 degrees when the heaters were drying things out. I haven’t yet turned on my desktop computer that sat on the floor, but I’m sure (fingers crossed) it will start up fine. I’ve got to catch up on business things today, so I’ll soon find out.

The overwhelming and exhausting part is the mess. There is no organization in how the cleanup crew took everything out of all the rooms and threw it in the family room or the master bedroom or boxed in the hallway. There are heaping mounds of drawers, clothes, dishes, toys, and anything else that was in the way of cleaning up the water that went to almost every corner of the house.

We’re hoping that our insurance company will go after the toilet company, so that we won’t have to pay our high deductible. We’re waiting for an estimate on damages.

I’m so grateful that my mom found the flood before it got any worse. She and our neighbor helped immensely. We are so fortune to have their help and support.

The source of all my troubles:

My office without flooring and the detached bookcase with my belongings removed:

 

Girls’ room with no baseboard and carpet pulled up with no pad:

Kitchen with base of cabinets taken off and master bath with closet system that should be in my closet:

Some of the mess in family room and master bedroom:

 

I’ll post some beautiful pictures from our fun time in Australia in a few days.