Monday, August 29, 2011

Our Visitor, Murphy

Some mornings I wake up and have NO clue what I’m going to blog about that night. I rarely schedule posts ahead – I’m a fly by the seat of my pants kind of blogger.

This morning I was thinking of the projects I could complete to blog about, and was trying to figure out what I’d have the time to finish up.

Well…I got some blog material. Just not the kind I wanted. ;)

If you follow me on Twitter you’ve heard some of the goings on around here over the past few days. It started Saturday morning when we woke up to a puddle of water in front of the refrigerator.

Turns out the computer on the fridge had died, so everything inside (including a huge ice bucket) had melted, and then spilled out onto our floor. AWESOME, letmetellyou.

Long story short, the repair guy couldn’t fix the fridge with the parts he had, but he did fix the one in the garage that had been broken for months (we got it free from friends, so it was worth fixing, considering we had NOTHING otherwise).

Because we’ve had so many issues with our kitchen refrigerator (GE Profile) we decided to purchase a new one. I was annoyed and upset, but after a while was a little excited to get a new fridge, I’m not gonna lie. :)

But then we noticed the floors…the laminate was bubbling and buckling and all those bad “B” words you don’t want to use to describe flooring. ;)

Our insurance company sent someone out today to see how bad it was, and within a few hours of him arriving, this:

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Had turned into this:

image(Different angle, bear with me.)

Needless to say…it was bad. :)

We have no idea how long the water sat on the floors – we figure at least six hours. Because our laminate is “floating” – not glued or nailed down, the water traveled under the floors throughout half of the kitchen.

It also reached the basement, but luckily we got to it before it got too bad. They had to cut a huge section of the floors out – the laminate, underlayment, original vinyl floors and plywood under that all had to be pulled out.

So for the next few days, we have four blowers and an industrial dehumidifier in our kitchen, and three blowers and a dehumidifier in the basement:

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I was doing OK with everything, considering, until they had to move the kitchen island.

My lovely beadboard island had to be taken apart so they could move it. It’s now sitting in the office:

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And I was actually making progress on that office. ;) I had hoped to finish painting it today.

HAR. That so didn’t happen. :)

Because they had to remove the island, they took the trash compactor out too – it’s now in the garage. So this is our trash can for the next week, two weeks…month?:

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We have no idea what the timeline will be. Because our flooring goes throughout the kitchen and family room, it’s ALL going to have to be pulled up and replaced.

For now, we will be living upstairs for the next few days. You can’t hear much over the blowers. :)

Our trash can is a chair and our refrigerator is in the garage (opposite side of the house from the kitchen, of course). Good thing I’m not a cook!!

That’s a joke Dad. ;) (Kind of.)

I’m not good at having our house turned upside down – messes and toys I’m OK with. But this…this is going to give me hives and I’m well aware of that. I’m trying to fight them off by at least cleaning up the kitchen. It’s been a disaster all day, so I tried cleaning tonight:

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It’s just a MESS. And the blowers send all the dust back onto the surfaces all over again, so I’m not sure why I’m even trying…but I’ll keep doing so. I must. :)

Tomorrow the insurance adjuster comes out to check it all out and we’re hoping for good news. We’ve never had to file any claims on our house, so we’re kind of learning as we go.

This has been an eventful summer around here – first the back door disaster, then we had some siding fall off in a storm, then we realized a couple weeks ago that our back door frame is rotting away (like, crumbling) and needs to be replaced and now we need a new fridge, new flooring and let’s not forget a whole fridge full of food. (Of course I had gone grocery shopping just two days before.)

We’re rolling with it though, and I’m reminded again how thankful I am that we are all safe, happy and healthy. That’s all that matters to me, and I am certainly counting my blessings tonight, even while the hives form. ;)

Soooo…Murphy has been hanging out around here fo sho and we need to kick him to the curb. He’s been sleeping on the couch waaaay too long. Gots to pack his bags and GO. He doesn’t have to go home but he can’t stay here. ;)

Any recommendations on flooring? We’re looking into engineered wood this time. Seems to be a good in between option – better than laminate but not as expensive as hardwoods. Because our kitchen and family room is one big space, we won’t break it up with two different types of flooring (like tile and hardwoods). If the kitchen was a separate room I would use tile for sure.

The guy overseeing all of the clean up said they have special mats that soak up any water damage from engineered flooring now, if it’s caught early. (Crossing my fingers and toes we’ll never have to find out how that works!!) Any thoughts? Anyone have them and like them?

That was my exciting weekend…how was yours? ;)

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