a mess

My last post was on our fabulous long weekend in Chicago for a hockey tournament and then on to Notre Dame to celebrate a birthday. Monday afternoon we left to make the 8+ hour drive back to Minnesota, and arrived home at about 9pm. We were all exhausted but hurried and unpacked the car, grabbed the dog from the kennel and just sat down to watch the Wild game 6 of the playoffs.

During a commercial I ran downstairs to bring something down to Jake's room and when I reached the lowest level my slippered feet went squish, squish, squish. It took me a second to comprehend what was going on...I peaked into the storage room. Standing water. I walked into Ty's room. Carpet totally soaked all the way to the back window. I walked into Jake's room. Carpet totally soaked all the way to the back window. In the 15 years we have lived in this house we have never had water problems and of course it  happens when we are out of town....

These pictures don't quite capture the extent of what we were dealing with; but Pete, Drew and I got busy moving things that we could, calling the insurance company, calling water clean-up companies, and shopvacing the standing water from the storage room-- but the carpet was way beyond what we could possibly vacuum up.

This picture shows the wet carpet and how the water was seeping into the drywall.

Our insurance agent gave us the name of this company who were able to be out on Tuesday to start the clean-up process.

They boxed things up and moved all the furniture out from both bedrooms.

Everything was moved to the lower level family room.

Taking in the mess.

Vacuums were brought in to pull up all the water.

Jake's room after it has been vacuumed.

Next, they pulled all the baseboards off.

And then pulled up the carpet to rip out the padding.

Then fans were put in each room to dry underneath the carpet.

A gigantic dehumidifier was centrally placed. (You can see how wet the concrete is here.) Now we were just needed to wait, with the fans and dehumidifier running for 3 days for everything to dry out.

They were back today to check on the moisture levels and said the drywall on the back wall was still very wet.

They would need to remove the bottom 20 inches of drywall and moisture barrier and then continue to let the fans do their work for 3 or 4 more days.

So now we wait. The basement is a mess right now, the bedrooms are getting worse before they are going to get better, Tyler and Jake are going to be home from college in just days and they have no bedrooms to come home to.....but we count our blessings and know things could have been worse. And so we just tackle what we need to and know everything will be ok.

a room re-do

Drew decided that he wanted to change his room around and wanted to make it more of a place to hang out. His room has always been great, but I think he was looking for more of a 'high school room' that he could spend time doing all the things he loves.

He asked me if I had any ideas and I came up with a plan that cost no money... but cost a lot of manual labor.

I wanted to take pictures before we started the big switch, but he was anxious! :)

His beloved 'Darby' that Grandma bought him way back in 1st grade.

Drew worked hard and did most of the work to do this big change.

But all the hard work paid off!

A room ready for a High Schooler!!!!

a new friend

I have wanted one of these forever but never wanted to spend the money on it... until I found this on sale a couple of weeks ago while I was doing some school supply shopping. I found this for a great price at Office Max and I just couldn't pass it up.



This labeler was normally $39.99 and I found it on sale for $9.99! (It is a great size- not too big, not too small- it measures something like 6 inches x 6 inches.)

I bought it and I have been having so much fun labeling everything in sight!!! I am a born organizer. I love to be organized and I LOVE to organize- so this is the perfect gadget for me!

This is the cabinet above my desk in the kitchen. A few things needed labeling. =0)







And I have even gotten into the storage room downstairs and started labeling all my boxes.



(I have a new friend and I think my family better watch out- they may have labels on their forehead's soon. =0)

front yard

I am finally finished!!! We have been working on our front yard project since the middle of July and I am so happy with how it turned out! This is how it looked before we started~



We began by ripping all but one of the bushes out.



We then moved all the rock. Washed all the rock. Laid new landscape fabric. Put all the rock back. Bought a few new plants. Went to a landscaping company and picked out a big rock, a bunch of smaller edging rocks, and a few stepping stones.



We laid some mulch down where I will plant some flowers next spring.







Drew tested out the 'thinking rock'. =0)



We added some Adirondack chairs. (Next week I am going to paint these chairs a deep burgandy color to match our front door. I will post some pictures after I get them painted.)



And finally we enjoyed all our work.









This project was a lot of work- but it was so rewarding to see all the pieces come together and it turned out just like I envisioned it! That is always good!

I am happy!

projects

I know I have been neglecting my blog when people in my family ask if I have done any new posts yet--- and then sigh when I say no. =0)

The past few days I have been busy trying to finish up my front yard landscape project. It feels like I have been working on this all summer- but I am finally see the end in sight and that is good!!! I will post pictures as soon as everything is finished- and I can hardly wait for that!!!

I also have been busy getting ready for something that I promised myself a few years ago that I would never, ever do again.....

A garage sale! Every time I do these (this is maybe my 5th or so) I say to anyone that will listen- that I will NEVER do another one!

It does feel good to go through everything and I did do a major cleaning of my storage room- but it is definitely so much work. But please remind me in a couple of years- when I start thinking about doing this again- that I promised that I would never, ever do another garage sale!! =0)

And just because a post doesn't seem right with out a picture- here is a couple of pictures that I took when we were at the cabin of some flowers that I thought were just beautiful! (And because I need to look at some pretty things after all the dust I have stirred up these past few days going through our storage room =0)






Sigh.