Ahhh, much better! All sixteen or so commercial squirrel cage fans, and six huge dehumidifiers are now out of our home. Destined for another poor soul’s water damaged house. Good riddance. We almost wondered if we were deaf once they were removed due to the absence of any noise.

Now that I can concentrate without my head buzzing, I can build the damage list:

1. Possible foundation damage between driveway and house… something moved an inch or two, and I don’t think it was the driveway
2. Maple flooring is buckled in places, and almost all joints have raised edges… hopefully it can handle another sanding
3. Kitchen ceiling still has a hole in it…
4. Kitchen walls that face the exterior are going to have to be gutted due to insulation that got wet
5. Stove is DOA
6. Refrigerator works, but who trusts something that was rained on for hours?
7. Lower cabinets in the kitchen are shot… high quality Menards stuff
8. Wainscoting is in pretty rough shape, but might be able to be put back together (not original, so don’t shed too many tears if it has to be gutted)
9. Bathroom in the basement will need the walls facing the exterior with insulation gutted
10. Vanity in bathroom in the basement will most likely be scrapped due to the (once again high quality Menards stuff) laminate peeling off
11. Furnace has been replaced (~$6000)
12. Water heater might be replaced as it was rained on
13. Washer and dryer in the basement might be replaced as they were rained on
14. At least 10% of the paint in the large living/dining room is separated from the plaster and will have be taken off… no idea what the contractors will do
15. Our main sewer drain line seems like it might have plugged up as the toilet and tub downstairs barely drain at all… really sucks when they are the only working toilet and tub in the house
16. Upper bathroom is most likely a complete gut… tile floor is buckled which means it will most likely be pulled. There are a couple large holes in the drywall from trying to quickly fix the leaks. We will replace the fiberglass tub with a cast iron that we purchased a couple months ago
17. Upper kitchen doesn’t have water as there is a small leak (which plumbers apparently do not carry PVC parts to fix). Was fixed today!
18. Our garage is still leaning… any ideas on how to blame that on burst pipes?

Now, why couldn’t a pipe in my basement crack like over at bungalow23? No, it needs to crack in the top most room in the house, above the most critical rooms in the house.

One of the things that helps ease the pain, a new furnace:

Here are some “calm after the storm” pictures of our kitchen:

This is what happens to cheap cabinets when they get wet (sorry for the terrible quality, the light is quite dark and was hard to get a picture at this time of night):

And our living room (not quite positioned how it will end up, just a rough, get it out of the center of the room setup):

Yes, that is a huge area of missing paint. A good chunk of the room could be just like that with a few strokes of my hand, but I’m going to let the pros deal with the lead dust since they are covered by insurance (hopefully).

And here is our terrible back entry way. I’d love to find a way to make this not suck, but nothing comes to mind yet (once again, sorry about the quality, its dark and I’m lazy…):

And here is the room I’m in right now, with the ugly paint and peeling wallpaper border:

As it looks, it is very temporary. I have a nice oak desk (from 1909) that we refinished two years ago that will go in there once the floors are refinished. I have no desire to put it together and then have to disassemble in a week or two.

I need to get back to working. I’ll save the upstairs and basement photos for tomorrow. Hopefully they’ll look better than these as well…

Does anything look wrong with this?

If you said that the garage looks to be leaning to the left, you win. I am going to guess a bit on the history of the garage. I’m thinking that it was built either at the same time as the house, or very soon after. The stalls are just big enough to get our two Pontiac Grand Ams into it, with about a foot of space all around them. It probably would have fit a car built around or before 1928 with no problem at all. However, to us, it is beyond usable. We are most likely going to tear it down.

I rather despise having to destroy or tear down original items to the property, but, as I said above, the garage is just too small. Not only that, but I’m sure that ten years from now, it will have fallen down itself. Back to guessing again, I’m pretty sure that when it was built, they only poured concrete footings around the walls, but left the main are dirt. At some point, it was filled with concrete to form the floor leaving a crack between the footings and the floor. Anyone who lives in an area that spends half the year below freezing would know that cracks in concrete are usually a bad idea. In our instance, the top of the footings have tilted away from the concrete floor. The side that happens to be the worst is the left side, which has 2-3″ of a gap. Hence the leaning.

While I’m pretty sure there is little we can do to utilize the existing structure, we are all ears. Either way, I’ll be saving as much of the wood that is in good condition for future uses. I need an excuse to purchase a planer anyways

Days until the Penske truck arrives at our new (old) house: 4. Days until I can start getting detailed pictures of what I am talking about to make it that much easier to understand: 4. Tick, tock, tick, tock…