The House Situation.

A lot of you have been asking me lately about what is going on with our house, so I figured I would give a little update on the blog and fill everyone in at once.

At the end of March, we had a toilet with a tank-flowing, flap-sealing problem. Every once in a while it would not seal all the way and a small stream of water would just continually flow from the tank to the bowl until we went in and wiggled it. Well, when a certain child tried to flush their poo down, it clogged and said child went on with their bedtime routine without noticing. The toilet flap didn't seal and water continued to flow from the tank, into the clogged bowl, and over the precipice onto our bathroom floor. It kept going for several minutes (or maybe 10? 15?) and long-story short, we discovered it after "black-water" was covering the bathroom floor and running down a light fixture through the ceiling beneath it, onto the downstairs floor.

Black-water is just water with human waste, so don't fret, it was all very clear-looking. But anything black-water touches has to go. And anything that gets damaged by replacing those surfaces also needs repaired too. Mark has worked with a disaster restoration company in the past, so we knew who to call ASAP.

This was our immediate solution...

This is how it looked after taking out all the damaged materials. Sorry, no pics of the bathroom - it's small and there is a lot of stuff in the way.

Because of where the water damage was, insurance will cover new floors in most of our home. We chose to go ahead and have them re-carpet the other two bedrooms and office, plus make the other two bathrooms match (new floors in one and counter tops in both). Because the damage touched surfaces that connect to around 2200 sq ft of the house, it requires all our furniture to be moved out, which also required us to move out. Thankfully, insurance will pay for our hotel stay too!

You can see our paint color experiments!

Looking empty.

So far, we have been in the hotel a week. The house was fully packed out by Tuesday, and hopefully some demo and potentially some of the new carpet will already be done by Saturday. They have a bunch of drywall to repair, paint to do in much of the house, some trim and then LOTS of carpet and a bunch of hardwood floors. We are praying it will only be three weeks, but it could be up to six if there are too many scheduling issues or other problems that come up.

I cannot wait to see how it will all look! We picked out some great new surface materials and will likely get a few new light fixtures as well. We also chose to repaint with a better shade of grey, something more "greige" than the blue-tinted grey we originally chose.

Main wood flooring plus carpet, counter surface, and backsplash. So nice!

This is the countertop surface plus the laminate that will go in the upstairs bathrooms (don't worry, none of the laminate will be in proximity to the wood floors). 

We have debated selling the house afterwards, but I don't think we will, even though it's tempting since the market is hot and most of what we own is in boxes! It's hard to pack almost everything you own, knowing you will just be unpacking it in the same exact place. It was a great excuse to purge though, and we hope to really get rid of our excess stuff and only unpack things into real places. At first we were going to use our tax return for new kitchen counters, but have since decided the risk of having cabinets damaged was too big (for our sanity and our budget) and instead we will make sure we get things like bookshelves, homeschool organization, and closet storage all figured out when we move back in.

So, ask me again in a week or two how we are doing. And PLEASE pray for me. The last few days have been good, but today I am weary (which I always am on laundry day). Some of the things I am weary over are not new (never being able to just leave my kids to pursue something on my own) and other issues are because of being in this small space and not being able to just turn the kids outside while I work or read. I feel the familiar spiral of my thoughts beginning to compound and make me long for a different life, but I am fighting hard to trust this path of mine to God. He knows. He sees me. He has good things for me (which are usually borne through challenges and struggles). It sure it a battle!

Thanks for stopping in and hearing me out. And if you're local, invite us over for dinner ;)