We have our home back!

Work is all done. Drywall. Painting. Flooring. Kitchen appliances and cabinets. All done! Yes my heart jumps every time I hear a crazy loud thunderstorm or see a flood warning has been issued .... Regardless, we have our entire home back as of last weekend. We even got the TV connection. My back is way happier on a couch than sitting up on the red camping chair.

3 Months Later

This summer has been a whirlwind of emotions- shock, fear, anger, slowly moving toward relief, happiness, fun and a lot of excitement. Yep, I think that sounds about right starting with the events on May 2nd.

And now 3 months later we are  |   |  <-- this close to re-construction being complete. The first sheetrock went up end of June and since then things have progressed quite nicely though not as quick as I had initially hoped. Maybe too optimistic? Possibly. I think we are looking at the last week of work here. Flooring is complete and appliances are installed. Now that we are getting ready to move back down, the "upstairs" looks more like a storage area of new stuff (and old). I love to live clutter free. So for me, this is taking some effort to live like a pack-rat  :-P

But, not for long..

Progress is a good thing :)

It's been a month since that day.

A lot has happened since. In a way I am slowly getting into a "routine" of living upstairs.  We have picked a general contractor who will be taking care of the majority of the rebuild. There are SO many parts to the whole rebuild - it's an educational process. I never knew how many sheets of drywall it would take to rebuild till recently. Nor did I have a clue how what a float stick (in the air conditioning unit in the attic) does.

We've got a few components figured out- the cabinets have been ordered (I managed to find the maker of the existing ones, so I just ordered the lower), appliances picked out and we think we know what kind of flooring we want. The jury is still out on paint colour. Something interesting though. :-)

We've gotten so much help from family and friends (real life and "imaginary") we are so lucky.

I'm headed to my parent's later on this month for a few weeks. DH will join me later for a few days. I'm uber excited about seeing them and meeting up with friends and of course seeing the lovely and grand Canadian Rockies.  And I will get to celebrate Canada Day in Canada. Now that rocks!

Homemade dinner this evening in my makeshift kitchenette-

Flooded out...

I've been absent from here last little while.... A lot has happenned in just the last one week. Here's the run down

May 1, 7am- I'm suppossed to run a 5K as a way of celebrating my birthday but the weather Gods had other plans. Pouring pouring rain. Race gets cancelled due to tornado watch, thunder, lightning and heavy rain reducing visibility to near zero.

May 1- rest of the day- rain rain rain rain, want to go out to Birthday Dinner but entrance to our community is blocked off by cops due to flooding. The golf course opposite is flooded.  water water everywhere.....

May 2 - 3am - DH wakes up to check the water levels, street looks dry

May 2 - 7am - We wake up to find water 5 feet from our doorstep. The whole street was a freakin river.

The rest of May 2 went by as a blur. We spent time trying to rescue what we could from the ground floor before water got into the house. Several attempts to call 911 and reach friends and have them call 911 on our behalf. If you were lucky you actually got to speak to 911. If not tough luck, we kept trying. Power went out at 9am and our cell phones started running out of battery. More rain more rain. It did not let up one bit. The water level inside the home started rising and soon maxed out at near 5 feet.  With each inch of water rising, I was panicking. Did anyone out there know this was going on? Were we going to get help on time? I yelled out through our back window facing other homes for help. Occasionally I heard someone yell back.. that made me feel better to know there were people out there in same "boat" so to speak. There was quite a bit of praying involved. I kept thinking I was in a bad nightmare. The pictures tell the whole story.

May 2 , 3:30pm - Got rescued by 3 guys in a boat. The sound of that motor boat was such music to our ears. They volunteers in the boat were shivering in the cold as they had been doing this for some time.  They "docked" the boat just below our second floor window where the water level had reached near our front door level and we jumped out of the window.

We checked into a friend's house right after we were rescued and have been here since.

May 3, 4 and going forward  -  the recovery process has started...... when will it end?


Soon. I hope.

Start of a new life for DH and I....