On the Road to Recovery

I hadn’t written about this before because I was too emotional and I didn’t know all the facts. It’s a good thing I waited because the more I find out the better I feel about everything. In fact I feel very lucky.

When I pulled into our garage from the airport, at 9:30 at night,(after our Disneyland trip) I had a weird milky white drop of water hit my front windshield. It was coming from the INSIDE of my garage. My first thought was “what the heck?” but when I opened the car door and smelled the musty, wet, nasty air my next thought was a four letter word. I had locked the door that goes into the house and I was struggling to find the key when Paul walked up the driveway. I said “something is wrong”. “What do you mean something is wrong?” I showed him the water and then ran to the front door. Once inside I noticed that the house was stinky and musty too.

We went searching to find the problem. I was thinking bathrooms but Paul knew it was the swamp cooler. He ran down and shut off the line and then looked into Emma’s room. Her ceiling was bowed with water. There was a steady drip drip drip coming from the ceiling. When we stepped on her carpet the water pooled and puddle around our toes.

I called my dad and asked what to do. He said to take up the carpet and try to pierce the ceiling to see if it would relieve some pressure. We started removing furniture out and just piled everything into our living room. As soon as we could get to the carpet we started ripping it up and removing the pad. There was just sooo much water! We thought at first that it was just in a small area but the more we took up the more water we found.

We ended up taking almost everything out. We left one strip of carpet and her two bookshelves on the far end of the room. We had a fan blowing in her room.We had things under control for the night.

The next morning we called our insurance guy who was NOT happy with us for taking out the carpet. He said “we could have tried to save it.” Um NO! It was not going to be saved. No way, no how. The disaster crew came the next day as well as my fabulous parents. They were there for much needed moral support and also helped clear out the rest of Emma’s belongings.

The crew tried cutting down the ceiling in pieces but pretty much the whole thing came down on them at once. It was loud. I went to see if everything was okay and they were coughing and sputtering. They had to step out to let the dust settle and to clear their throats.

Here it is, wet insulation and wet sheetrock
The hole it left aboveGetting rid of all the debrisAfter they got everything cleaned up and removed they put two blowers in our garage, blowers and a dehumidifier in Emma’s room, and a blower in Andrew’s room. It took from Wed. until Sunday to get us dry.

We were told that we caught it (the swamp cooler line had broken) within hours of it happening because it hadn’t gone up the wall between the kids’ room. The only things we lost were carpet, sheetrock and insulation. There was some very minor water damage to the base of Emma’s furniture.

After we were dry we waited on pins and needles for the insurance adjuster to come. He was so kind. He reassured us that as bad as everything seemed we really came away with the best case scenario. He was more than fair and took great care of us. We were able to have a contractor come out and give us an estimate and Steve and Ian are here right now putting things back together.

What have we learned from this? A lot.

Emma has way to much junk (AKA treasures)
I don’t ever want all of my children’s belongings in my living room again
Be wise with your money, things can come at you unexpectedly
It could have been much worse
The Lord loves us and gives us trials so that we remember Him and turn to Him

We hope that in about a week our life will be back to normal. Emma will have pretty new carpet, new paint and fun flower decals for her walls. We hope she loves it!