Putting Our House Back Together, Part 1

Well, it's been two, almost three, weeks since the tornado dropped a tree on the end of our house, and, not surprisingly, we have been crazy busy since then! Jimmy has been running around dealing with insurance adjusters, contractors, and the many kind volunteers who helped us clean up all the mess in our yard, while I've been focusing on watching the kids, trying to keep them up on their schoolwork (rather hit and miss, I must admit!), and packing up over 2/3 of our house to be moved into storage.

The tree that fell into the roof over our bedroom closet caused a good bit of damage, breaking the ridge beam and some of the rafters and letting in so much water that the carpet started to mold in that end of the house. It didn't help that underneath all the carpet was not plywood, according to modern-day standards, but particle board from the 1970s. 😒 Needless to say, our adjuster declared all of the flooring a loss.

The weight of the tree also put cracks in all the door frames and corners of the bedrooms and living room so our contractor is going to be doing some drywall patching as well as new flooring. There were even leaks in the kitchen, and--you guessed it--there was particle board under the linoleum in there, too, so that will be replaced as well. In order to replace the flooring, all the cabinets are going to have to come out, and since they were built in place, they probably won't be reusable afterwards, so I'm going to be getting a new kitchen as well! I never imagined that one tree on a house could cause that much damage!

Ironically, this whole mess occurred right as we were on the brink of starting a little remodeling on our own. For the last two years, we've been saving our money and buying supplies--plywood, laminate tiles, a bathroom vanity, etc.--with the intention of putting a second bathroom on the back of the house, so that we'd have more than one bathroom. The plan has been to enclose our current back porch and transform it into the much-needed second bathroom, a mudroom, and a new laundry, leaving my current laundry/pantry room to be just a pantry. With the rest of the house now being redone, we decided to go ahead with our original plan and work on that project right now, too. Might as well get it all done at the same time, right?

So, in addition to dealing with insurance paperwork, nonstop phone calls, and random contractors and adjusters, Jimmy has been working almost every day on framing in the back porch. He has been helped by our amazing fathers, mine and his, who've come whenever they have free time to help with the construction. Together, they ripped out the old deck floor, framed up the exterior walls, and put down the plywood sub-floor that we'd already bought and which had, amazingly, escaped the storm unscathed.

They've wrapped the exterior, and now, we're just waiting for the vinyl guy to come and put new vinyl on the entire perimeter of the house--the insurance adjuster wrote that down as a loss because of all the hail damage to it. Yesterday, they got the new back door put in, and installed the new shower. The back porch no longer resembles itself!

As for the rest of the house, the roof was repaired last week, and we finally got power turned back on last Friday.

Once the roof was fixed, the contractor came in and ripped out all the old carpet, which helped tremendously with the smell! Our house seems very empty and echo-ey now. I have a feeling our cats don't know what to think of it! 

Long-term, our plan is to move back into the house as soon as the second bathroom is up and working. The playroom and dining room sustained almost no damage, so with a little clean-up and reorganizing, we can live in there while the rest of the house is being finished.  We'll get some bunk beds for the kids (it was about time, anyway--Curly's growing out of her toddler bed), and I'll cook our meals in my Instapot, crockpot and electric griddle. It will be tight, but manageable. It might even be fun! At the very least, as I told the kids, we're having an adventure. And, as everyone who's ever read or watched a good story knows, the purpose of every great adventure is to get back to the normal. Otherwise, we'd never appreciate it. 😉