Helquist.com

The Great Flood of 07

It has been a long and strange (and painful) journey this past week... so I thought I would share the news for the 2 of you that haven't already heard.

Last Saturday evening, we decided to take the girls swimming. We had a glorious time at the pool and playing at the playground after that. We returned home just after 8pm. I opened the door to the house and was greeted with a swamp in our entryway. Definitely not a good feeling or something one should ever get to experience.

Our washing machine somehow got stuck on the rinse cycle... and kept rinsing and rinsing and rinsing. The water kept running and it overflowed. Everywhere. We started with the mop and shopvacs thinking we could tackle the problem. It soon became apparent that bigger guns were needed in this shootout. I called up the 24 hour emergency flood cleanup people and soon they were at our house.

The next thing I know, we are transporting everything out of the house into the garage. Everything from the office, the girls room, the bathroom, and the living room. I sat on the big rock in my front yard and watched as the cleanup guys soon lit into ripping up nearly all the carpet and padding in my house. The only carpet that was spared was the master bedroom.

The carpet was not the only victim. The cheap laminate flooring we put down in the entry and in the kitchen were soon demo'd as well. Reliving the lovely linoleum was a breath of fresh air.

The cleanup lasted until about 2am Sunday morning. 19 very loud fans and 2 de-humidifiers were then placed all over our tiny house. It was extremely loud and hot! Our poor A/C ran pretty much around the clock to try to keep the place at 90 degrees. I am anxiously awaiting our next utility bill :) The fans were in place until Tuesday morning.

So we all hunkered down in the master bedroom for a few nights while the fans roared around the clock. However, this is not the end to the story. Sunday night featured two additional surprises. First, Ashlyn proceeded to start throwing up everywhere on Sunday evening. Ah, all of us living in the master bedroom with one of us throwing up. Good times. That lasted for just over two days. I'll knock on wood that we are done with that now. If you are looking for the silverlining, cleaning up her mess is a lot easier on concrete slab than carpet ;)

The second surprise was the discovery of some apparent fungus growing underneath the linoleum. This was not from our current flood but instead was a surprise gift from the previous owner (along with other water related problems we had to fix). Anyway, long story short, home owners does not cover the cleanup and testing to make sure it is all clean. So, back come the cleanup people, setting up a CSI-like clean room in our kitchen, rendering it completely off-limits for the next week. I always thought access to the microwave, dishwasher, and range was overrated anyway. I think I'll be fine until Sunday... that is the day for me to savage the kitchen trying to quell the munchies.

Friday the mold inspectors come to give us the clean bill of health. The results won't get back to us until next week... at which time we get our kitchen back! After that, we get to have the contractors come in and refloor, paint, and assemble our house back together. The real kicker is having our house off of the market for a month when the housing market is already so slow.

It has been very frustrating but I've come to terms with it, finally. Maybe in a little while I'll be able to look back on this and laugh. At least everyone is fine and the house will one day be back to its fine looking self... not that I don't looking like a shelled out house in Beirut. It just saddens me that my D80 money has just gone up in smoke... err, down the tubes with the water. Time to start selling plasma on the side.

Some not-so-exciting pictures can be found here:

http://helquist.com/gallery/flood07

Graduation Pictures

Hi everyone,

It has been a long time since the last update. So, I went ahead and compiled a bunch of new pictures taken over the last however long.

http://helquist.com/gallery/spring07

It was a lot of fun to have Mom, Dad, and Mike come down for a few days for graduation. The girls were very sad to see all their entertainment leave. Thanks to Mike for bringing the camera and providing the photography for us.

Last night was Alia's preschool graduation. Wednesday is her last day and she is really going to miss it. She has loved being able to go play with her friends and participate in the many activities they do. Each age group got up on stage and performed a few songs. She really enjoyed it. One thing was clear by the end of the performance, Alia was the tallest person (boy or girl) in her class. How long until we start honing basketball and volleyball skills?