Well, it's been a very busy couple of months since I posted here. This is just a quick post while I have a little time. Will post more when I have more time.
We finally got the house "water disaster" fixed up and the last tradesperson finished up last Monday. I had no hot water in the kitchen for six weeks and no dishwasher for two months. Wah!!! Amazing what we get used to. The good news is that we have a new bathroom, a newly-painted laundry room with new flooring, dd's bedroom has been re-painted and the carpeting replaced. I also got new countertops in my kitchen. It was a very stressful time, but it's done now. Many thanks to OnSide Restoration, who saw us through it all.
The bad news........the reno set us back about $16,000! With no insurance (we DO have insurance, but they don't cover water damage over TIME), and the black mould a possible health risk to everyone, we had no choice but to go ahead and get it done. With DH working a new job, it wasn't possible for him to do it, so we had to just bite the bullet and have it done.
I do have pics of the renos, but my camera is missing in action right now, so will upload when I can find it. I'll try not to be such a poor correspondent. It's just been a whirlwind time of late.
So, here it is June 5, 2011 and I still have no hot water in my kitchen from this unplanned demo. It's sure a lot of work schlepping hot water from the bathroom to fill the kitchen sink to do dishes by hand. AND still no washing machine either. I've been taking loads up to my Dad's place (he's in a modular home on our property) to wash and then drying them in my dryer. DH hooked the dryer up again, so that is nice and makes it a wee bit easier. The good news is that we will have a new hot water tank this week sometime. Things are being REconstructed now and the tearing apart part is over. Thank goodness! Will try to get some pics up when I can.
My washing machine and upright freezer are in the family room. The big wall shelving unit sits in our foyer. Boxes of cans from underneath the counter are sitting in the living room. Contents of the laundry room are in our bedroom.
My personal favourite (speaking of laundry room contents) is having the cat litter box in our ensuite bathroom. Amazing what we have suffer with during times of upheaval!!!
I am not complaining, though. I know that this could have been MUCH worse and we could have lost everything to a fire or something similar, so this is nothing, really. I do still have hot water from our other tank that feeds the bathrooms. All this makes me realize how much we have and that we take for granted. Think of the old days when everything was done manually and water was heated on the stove. Those poor women with lots of children and all that laundry. Can't even imagine doing that all by hand. Mind you, they wore clothes a lot longer than we do nowadays. I am grateful for what we have. The final tally for cost is not in yet, but that, too, could have been much worse. Of course, it would have been nice if insurance covered all of this, but we can't have it all, can we???? LOL!
The weather has been absolutely gorgeous the past couple of days. We haven't seen weather over 20 degrees (Celsius) since October 1st - heard that on the weather yesterday - can you believe it!???? October 1st, by the way, is my and my sister's birthday (no, we're not twins, but she was born 5 years before me), so I remember just how long ago it was. Hard to believe!
On the hockey front, our home NHL team, the Vancouver Canucks, won the second game of the final series (against the Boston Bruins) for the Stanley cup last night. Woohoo!!! What a game! The score was 2-2 and Alex Burrows scored 11 seconds into the first O/T period. The Canucks have NEVER won the Stanley Cup in their 40-year history, so it would be nice. They are playing well this year and quite consistently. They've battled hard to get this far. Go, Canucks, go!!!
Have a great week, everyone!
There is no end in sight to the water damage in our house. The demo crew (might as well give them a plug) were here on Friday to start, then the Project Manager came back on Monday morning to have a look, and then the crew were back again today. They uncovered more floors and found more water (sopping WET floors). Obviously, we have to find where the water travelled to and everything to that point needs to be replaced. Can't remember if I said in my last post what it was - it was a very slow hot water tank leak - probably over about 10 years or so. We are on a concrete slab, so it's not just an easy fix with going into a basement and doing it from below.....there is no BELOW here.
So, because the hot water heater was sort of centrally located in the house, it has spread in almost EVERY direction! It's wet in my kitchen, in one of the kids' bedrooms and in the computer room and laundry room. Before we can start REconstruction, the DEconstruction has to take place, and it's VERY stressful. That's not even to mention the MOULD that has begun to grow - don't even want to go into that.
I had to leave today when they were tearing out my kitchen cupboards or I would have cried. So, I took Dad out for his daily Tim's, and a nice hot cup of coffee sure made me feel better AND I didn't cry. Not too good at dealing with stress since the cancer thing - something to do with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I think.
Did I mention that this is NOT covered by insurance? Nope. Nada. Not a bit of it. THAT is the part that really makes me want to cry. There is no end to the scope of work that needs to be done, so that means there is no end in sight yet to what it might cost. I know it could be worse, and I'm trying to keep that in my mind. I've been feeling sorry for myself, but I realize that it just needs to be DONE and I need to grin and bear it. Here are some photos of the computer room with all my appliances in it, and the hallway/bathroom areas.....
And my poor KITCHEN....
Hmmmm, I DID want the bathroom remodelled, but this was NOT what I had in mind!
Other than that, I had a quite uneventful day. LOL!!!!!
